ABSTRACT
The complexity of social struggles in the period, particularly those surrounding gender, and the complexity of the public theater’s participation in those struggles, can be teased out still further by looking next at the theater’s involvement in one of the most overtly stigmatized practices enumerated in the antitheatrical tracts; namely, crossdressing. 1 Again, this phenomenon can not be approached solely on the level of representation. There are many female characters who dress as men in Renaissance drama, and a smaller number of men who assume the clothes of women. On the other hand, every single performance of a public-theater play involved members of an all-male acting troupe putting on female attire in order to “personate” whatever women characters a given play might specify. As we have seen, it was this confounding of sexual “kinds” on the actor’s part that particularly roused the fury of a Northbrooke, a Stubbes, a Prynne.
