Crossdressing and disguise in The Merchant, Twelfth Night and The Country Wife , Guide, Progetti e Ricerche di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Crossdressing and disguise in The Merchant, Twelfth Night and The Country Wife e più Guide, Progetti e Ricerche in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Crossdressing and disguise in The Merchant, Twelfth Night and The Country Wife Most of the plays involving heroines in male disguise take a sympathetic view of cross- dressing. They usually present it as a strategy used by wives and girlfriends to follow or rejoin the men they love. In other plays they put on male clothes in order to protect themselves from male sexual desire. Note that if a woman is cross-dressed, she usually becomes a boy of a lower status. Although generally a cross-dressed man was more acceptable than a cross-dressed woman, in Shakespeare’s comedies we seldom encounter men in women’s clothes. The merchant of Venice Bassanio needed some money because he wanted to court the rich Portia, so he asked some money to his friend Antonio, a merchant. Antonio went to Shylock, a Jewish usurer who lent him the money. Antonio had to give the money back to the Jewish in three months or Shylock would have taken a pound of his flesh. Meanwhile Portia was talking with her waiting-woman Nerissa about her pretenders. They had to choose among three caskets made of gold, silver and lead. If they found Portia’s picture, they could marry her. The Prince of Morocco came to Portia and chose the golden one. But he was wrong because in the golden casket there was no picture. A night Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, ran away with her lover Lorenzo, a friend of Bassanio and Antonio. She took with her some money and a ring. Shylock was robbed by her daughter! Then The Prince of Arragon arrived in front of the three caskets and chose the silver one. He was wrong too. At the same time Antonio lost his ships and goods in a shipwreck. Bassanio went to Portia’s house and chose the lead casket. When he opened it he found a beautiful picture of Portia. He will marry her! Graziano, a servant of Bassanio, got engaged to Nerissa. The girls gave two rings as a sign of love to their own lovers. Bassanio told to Portia that Antonio had debts, because he helped him and now he could not return the money to Shylock. Portia said that she would have helped Antonio and she had a plan. The day of trial Shylock wanted a pound of Antonio’s flesh, precisely of his heart, but suddenly Portia and Nerissa arrived dressed up as a lawyer and his clerk. They said that if Shylock wanted a pound of flesh, he should have not spilled a drop of blood and cut exactly a pound of flesh. So Shylock gave up. Portia and Nerissa as lawyers asked to their lovers the rings as payment and they agreed. Then the women pretended to be offended that their husband gave the rings to somebody. But finally they told the truth to the men and they confessed to have not recognized them! Twelfth night Orsino, the Duke of lllyria, is in love with his neighbour, the Countess Olivia. She has sworn to avoid men’s company for seven years while she mourns the death of her brother, so rejects him. Nearby a group of sailors arrive on shore with a young woman, Viola, who has survived a shipwreck in a storm at sea. Viola mourns the loss of her twin brother but decides to dress as a boy to get work as a page to Duke Orsino. Despite his rejection Orsino sends his new page Cesario (Viola in disguise) to woo Olivia on his behalf. Viola goes unwillingly as she has already fallen in love at first sight with the duke. Olivia is attracted by the ‘boy’ and she sends her pompous steward, Malvolio, after him with a ring. Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby Belch, her servant Maria, and Sir Toby’s friend, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who is also hoping to woo Olivia, and is being led on by Sir Toby, who is trying to fleece him of his money, all plot to expose the self-love of Malvolio. By means of a false letter they trick him into thinking his mistress Olivia loves him. Malvolio appears in yellow stockings and cross-garters, smiling as they have told him to in the letter. Unaware of the trick the Countess is horrified and has Malvolio shut up in the dark as a madman. Meanwhile Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian, who has also survived the shipwreck, comes to Illyria. His sea-captain friend, Antonio, is a wanted man for piracy against Orsino. The resemblance between Cesario and Sebastian leads the jealous Sir Andrew to challenge Cesario to a duel. Antonio intervenes to defend Cesario whom he thinks is his friend Sebastian, and is arrested. Olivia has in the meantime met and become betrothed to Sebastian. Cesario is accused of deserting both Antonio and Olivia when the real Sebastian arrives to apologize for fighting Sir Toby. Seeing both twins together, all is revealed to Olivia. Orsino’s fool, Feste, brings a letter from Malvolio and on his release the conspirators confess to having written the false letter. Malvolio departs promising revenge. Maria and Sir Toby have married in celebration of the success of their device against the steward. talking about the taking of a pound of Antonio's flesh in his bond, "If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. The issues of appearance versus reality and racial discrimination are surely two issues which are still relevant today. They are discussed mainly through the characters' interactions with one another throughout the play. Appearance versus reality is explored when Shylock pretends to be Antonio's friend, with the choosing of the caskets, and when Portia and Nerissa go to court in disguise to help out Antonio and Bassanio. Racial discrimination is shown in depth with the confrontations of Antonio and Shylock. Overall 'The Merchant Of Venice' explores both appearance versus reality and racial prejudice, which are two issues that still hold importance in present-day society. Portia is one of Shakespeare's great heroines, whose beauty, lively intelligence, quick wit, and high moral seriousness have blossomed in a society of wealth and freedom. She is known throughout the world for her beauty and virtue, and she is able to handle any situation with her sharp wit. In many of Shakespeare's plays, he creates female characters that are presented to be clearly inferior to men. The one female, Shakespearean character that is most like Portia would be Beatrice, from Much Ado about Nothing. Both of the women are known for their wit and intelligence. Beatrice is able to defend her views in any situation, as does Portia. Shakespeare gives each of them a sense of power by giving their minds the ability to change words around, use multiple meanings and answer wisely to the men surrounding them. By adding a loving heart to both of these women, Shakespeare makes their intelligence more appealing. Even though Beatrice hides the loving side of her character for most of the play, she still expresses her kindness and love in other ways. Like Portia, she is a dear friend and an obedient daughter. Besides saving the life of Antonio, Portia is also used to convey the theme of deceptive appearances. Throughout the play, Shakespeare uses his characters to show the audience that a person cannot be judged by how they appear to the eye and that a person can truly be identified by their inner soul. When Shakespeare created Portia's character, he contributed the likeness of Beatrice and added the elements of a perfect Renaissance woman. Even though Portia is a woman, she still posses the intelligence to use and manipulate words, the beauty to woo men, and the soul that stands above many others. Her appearance adds to her angelic reputation and her wisdom allows the audience of the play to acknowledge the theme of deceptive appearances. Throughout the play a distinction is made between how things appear on the outside and how they are in reality, or on the inside. The issue of appearance versus reality is demonstrated in varied ways, mainly by the use of real-life situations. Portia, who cross-dresses to save the life of her new husband’s friend. She does not cross-dress for survival but to gain the power a man can have by simply being a man. Women didn’t have any right’s in a court of law during this time period. A woman would not have been able to manipulate the outcome unless she were thought to be a man. In both plays we see women who pretend to be men. In both cases this is a temporary measure employed to serve a particular purpose, and to give them the power needed to obtain what they want or need. Viola needs masculinity to survive in a male dominated world on her own. Portia adopts the male guise in order to “purchase[] the semblance of [her] soul/ From out the state of hellish cruelty”. The Merchant of Venice offers another unique perspective on cross-dressing as it existed on the English Renaissance stage. Howard suggests that Portia’s cross-dressing is “more disruptive than Viola’s” because Portia herself was an unruly woman to begin with. Portia has become the master of her own destiny with the passing of her father. It is also very significant to note that all of Portia’s femininity does not vanish the moment she adopts her disguise as Balthazar. Shakespeare is able to use the blurring of gender lines around his boy heroines as both the device by which the conflict is created and that by which it is resolved. It is as Balthazar that she is able to save Antonio, “but her female reality, which enables her to love and marry Bassanio, is what motivates her to do it in the first place”. Just as in Twelfth Night, we have a boy actor playing a female protagonist disguised as a boy. Truth in the play has become an illusion from the viewpoint of the literal world, whereas the disguise seems to be a restoration of order, of the actor’s true sex, and of truth. The Merchant of Venice is able to separate the truth of the play from the truth of reality by assigning each to a specific location: fantasy to Belmont, and truth to Venice. Her description seems to be that of a mythical lady, a legend, rather than any living creature, and indeed it is only in Belmont that we can see the play’s truth of Portia as this tremendous woman. Venice gives back to us the literal reality of the actor as a boy, where trials are held in a court of law, and riddles and caskets do not decide grave matters. It is undeniable that Portia experiences an increase in social authority with the transformation into Balthazar. Her overall power, however, remains fairly constant as compared to the characters around her. Cross-dressing in Shakespeare’s comedies makes the heroines’ gender identity ambiguous: they are both men and women, owning both femininity and masculinity, thus cross-dressing helps to deconstruct Renaissance gender stereotypes, the binary opposition of gender, and eventually, patriarchy. From a more practical perspective, the represented female character who cross-dresses relieves the boy actor, at least for a time, from the burden of impersonating a woman. The ending of comedies usually brings the fictitious world back to balance. All the heroines get what they wanted. In Renaissance England, dress was the code of one’s identity, symbolizing one’s gender and social class. The stability of the social order depended much on maintaining absolute distinctions between male and female. If a woman put on men’s clothes, she transgressed the gender boundary, and encroached on the privileges of the advanced sex. Renaissance gender stereotypes required women to wear women’s clothes, to be submissive, passive, silent, closed off, and immured within home. However, in his plays, Shakespeare dresses his heroines with men’s clothes, indirectly encroaching on the privileges of men, and deconstructs the gender stereotypes. To summarize: 1. Cross-dressing helps women characters to travel alone, to enter the men’s world, and to act as men, instead of being confined at home. 2. In men’s clothes, the heroines Portia, Rosalind, Viola, and Julia all demonstrate masculine qualities such as intelligence, wit, capability, and courage. 3. The heroines also demonstrate their admirable feminine qualities such as tenderness, chastity, Constancy, and selflessness, so their combination of feminine and masculine qualities proves that femininity and masculinity are not two opposites and masculinity is not superior to femininity. 4. All the heroines take the initiative and control the action, especially when they pursue love. Shakespeare transforms each heroine, activating her, giving her voice and empowering her with subjective initiative, but without depriving her of the qualities of traditional femininity such as affection, tenderness and selflessness. For him, there is an easy, cross-over of masculine and feminine traits to both genders. Shakespeare saw men and women as equal in a world which declared them unequal. He did not divided human nature into the masculine and feminine, but observed in the individual woman or man an infinite variety of union between opposing impulses. To talk about Shakespeare's women is to talk about his men, because he refused to separate their worlds physically, intellectually, or spiritually. The country wife Mr. Horner, a gallant with a bad reputation for seduction, pretends that he was made impotent through disease and causes word of his misfortune to be spread throughout the town by his quack doctor. Immediately, men who were afraid to let him meet their wives for fear of seduction hasten to assure him that he can visit their homes and escort their women anywhere. Horner’s old companions among the town gallants tease him unmercifully, and at first, the women will have nothing to do with him. Among his friends is Jack Pinchwife, who is vastly afraid of being made a cuckold. He does not even let it be known that he is married. His wife is a woman from the country; she, he thinks, does not know enough about fashionable city life to think of taking a lover. Pinchwife makes the mistake, however, of escorting his wife to a play, where she is seen by Horner and some of his friends. When Pinchwife returns to his lodgings, his wife, tired of being kept locked in the house, asks her husband to let her go walking. A relative, a woman from the town, speaks for her as well. Pinchwife becomes angry with both: at his wife for wanting to go out and at his relative who is, he claims, corrupting her morals. Pinchwife foolishly tells his wife what she is missing in town life—plays, dinners, parties, and dances—and so arouses her interest in all that he is attempting to keep from her for the sake of his honor. When a party of women come to take his wife to... William Wycherly's The country wife provides a rich textual basis for exploring the tension between subversion and submission in female cross-dressing. The breeches scenes in The country wife cannot be properly examined until a theoretical basis for