ABSTRACT
In the exceptional circumstances of Civil War, disguise was a commonly adopted temporary expedient, which might be accompanied by a sense of liberation, as it was for Ann Fanshawe (170). It was as a plea for just such an invigorating liberation from constraint and custom that the pamphlet HæcVir defended female cross-dressing (171), in answer to the tract Hic Mulier. Unhappily, its advocacy is problematized by Hic-Mulier’s concluding concession that she would rather dress as a woman would men but dress in their proper habits, which prompts in Hæc-Vir a resolution to reform his manners. Hæc-Vir, it seems, is after all quite as convinced as Hic Mulier that women should no more dress as men than men as women. It may very well be that both these popular pamphlets were in fact exercises in journalistic opportunism from the same pen, coming as they do in the year of King James’s admonition to his clergy.
