Why do women pose as men in Shakespeare?

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Usually poncey or bi-poncey ...

― brian nemtusak (sanlazaro), Monday, 6 October 2003 22:39 (twenty-one years ago)

prob because men played women on stage

― ryan (ryan), Monday, 6 October 2003 22:58 (twenty-one years ago)

letting women pose as men gave them greater freedom within the play's action: they could escape their strict social roles and get up to all sorts of things that would normally be forbidden. now that i think of it, aren't all the high comedies - Midsummer, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Much Ado, even Merchant of Venice - mainly about this one theme?

also it allows them to make the men in the plays look like right fools, which is always commendable.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 6 October 2003 23:15 (twenty-one years ago)

How old are YOU, Justyn Dillingham? I'm bisexual!

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Monday, 6 October 2003 23:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Easy: women were rarely allowed to act as more than wives or courtesans (Titania, Medea and Portia were few exceptions). To get a plan into action (like in the Merchant of Venice), the woman would need to step into breeches just to keep from being seen as inferior by her "contemporaries".

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Monday, 6 October 2003 23:18 (twenty-one years ago)

mainly about this one theme

And mistaken identities and, unfortunately, the whole Female Ideal of Purity.

(I don't think you can really call, say, Much Ado much of a comedy anymore ...)

― brian nemtusak (sanlazaro), Monday, 6 October 2003 23:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Purely by chance, I just read a piece by Oscar Wilde, entitled Portrait of Mr. W.H. that incorporates this subject matter in a very clever theory about the Sonnets. Well worth reading if you are interested in Shakespeare.

― Aimless, Tuesday, 7 October 2003 15:08 (twenty-one years ago)

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