Shakespeare s utilization of sexual and gender

12th Night

Sexual is one of the constants in human being experience, libido, one of the parameters.

Bruce Smith, Lgbt Desire in Shakespeares Britain.

Sexuality in Renaissance England was ambiguous. The existing common thought or definition of homosexual did not exist in Renaissance England. Today, individuals are defined as gay, this becomes their id: I i am a lgbt. In Renaissance England, this sort of sexual identification did not can be found. One would not really refer to your self as a gay. According to Stephen Orgel in Impersonations: The Overall performance of Sexuality in Shakespeares England, the class of homosexual did not are present as a mode of home identification or self-definition. It was an act, not an identity, a labeled, or a life-style as it is seen today. Right now there existed no word to define oneself as homosexual. They referred to sodomy or buggery which were obscene sexual acts that included heterosexual divergences. This distinction among homosexual men and heterosexual men did not exist. Alan Bray states, Outside an immediately lovemaking context, there is little or no sociable pressure pertaining to to determine for himself what his sexuality was (70). A definition of this kind takes sexual desire as a removing point for personal identity. This involves that a intimate essence is available, which is not the case for the folks of this time and place (Bruce Smith 12). In this lumination, in this article, the word homosexual will be not really be used to refer to an identification, but to anyone participating in a same-sex relationship, either sexual or sensual.

In his book, Homosexuality in Renaissance England, Alan Bray, the foremost college student in Renaissance homosexuality studies, conducts a thorough examination of the views of and methods of homosexuality in Renaissance England. Bray asserts that homosexual functions (sodomy, buggery) were common in Renaissance English contemporary society. He declares that homosexual relations among master and servant or between learn and apprentice were common as intimate outlets to get unmarried teenagers before they will took wives. Apprentices and servants were living with their experts for many years while young solitary men. These types of young men were generally sexually mature pertaining to the years before they were committed. Bray claims that unmarried apprentices and servants were encouraged to find alternative sexual outlets to minimize the number of illegitimate children that fell on the poor price. This alternate sexual wall socket often had taken the form of the homosexual affair with their experts. This was even more socially suitable than pre-marital heterosexual affairs because they can not create offspring, as well as the relationships were likely to remain secret (Bray 47-49). Event Sedgewick asserts that this type of relationship was never deemed a menace to culture, because it did not run table to heterosexuality and marriage (qtd. in Orgel 46). Secret contact between older master/younger stalwart were prevalent scenarios in a patriarchal and hierarchal home/institution (Bray 49).

Though Bray asserts that the prevalent practice of homosexual relationships was common, he claims that the common sense view in England is that homosexual serves were an abomination… punishable by death (62). There is certainly a dichotomy between thought and practice. Laws and regulations existed preventing sodomy and buggery. In the event that found guilty, the treatment was suspending. However , regardless of commonness of such homosexual associations, there were few reports of or indictments of sodomy or buggery on the record books (71). It seems that these kinds of relationships had been rarely prosecuted unless violence was included (50). These kinds of relations were more a matter of ease than of homosexual lust. And, these types of abominable functions kept many illegitimate children off the brains and the ebooks of the govt. It seems there was clearly a strong disparity between the sociable beliefs regarding homosexuality as well as the actual practice of it. Sodomy was severely disapproved of, but ignored as an electrical outlet for intimate angst that will not produce children and, therefore , disrupt the economy (an illegitimate which the government has to pay for) or the interpersonal hierarchy (a child between master and servant, or a child that forces a new man to quit his apprenticeship and get married to early). Bray asserts that this disparity was not evidence of patience. There persisted a tough fear and loathing of sodomy, devoid of justification of action believed in the contemporary society. This was not patience, but a reluctance to identify homosexual human relationships for what these were: no definitions, just a everyday blindness (75-6). According to English observation, homosexuality would not exist inside the Elizabethan world.

Beyond all of the anxieties of homosexuality, the people of Renaissance England had their own biology to contend with. Male or female issues themselves caused superb anxiety, especially to males. In his document Fiction and Friction, Stephen Greenblatt explains the roots of much in the gender and sexual stresses of the time. This individual explicates the Renaissance idea of the one-body theory. Greenblatt has facts that, at the moment, science presumed that men and women had been of one body. Women were simply frigid, imperfect, upside down versions of men. More explicitly, that female genitalia were merely male genitalia turned inside out and kept inside instead of worn on the outside. There were possibly records of women, during achievements of great exercise, turning into males by delivering their male organs to their even more perfect (male) form. Greenblatt even goes so far as to assert that men and women had dreams (or anxieties) of becoming the opposite sex. There was no true difference between the male gender plus the female male or female. This theory explains much of the gender stresses and issues of gender definition of enough time. It is the fact of how just gender boundaries break down and turn ambiguous.

Gender id, both the biology and the psychology of it, was ambiguous in Renaissance England. Sexual id was just like indistinct. Homosexuality secretly existed, but not since an identification, and was severely disapproved of by simply society. Yet , all of these issues were generally ignored. There was clearly little really defining sexual intercourse or gender language. The techniques and way to determining or discussing gender identity were lacking, and a discourse to work out the gender concerns was only just beginning to occur. There been around a need for someone to look at this issue, instead of looking away. Many of Shakespeares comedies formed part of this discourse. He was conscious of the blindness to sexuality issues and homosexuality in the society, and used his plays to try to bring these issues to light. The sexuality and homosexuality play in Twelfth Nighttime make this an excellent sort of Shakespeares conversation on the basic blindness and stigma linked to these issues. Shakespeare used intimate and male or female ambiguity, which includes cross-dressing actors, cross-dressing personas, and lgbt references in Twelfth Nighttime in order to produce blurred concepts of gender and sexuality both in his play and the brains of his audience. These blurred restrictions served as being a discourse to start working out these kinds of gender and homosexuality issues that had been hidden under the group rug of Renaissance Great britain.

A lot of Renaissance Englands discussion about gender issues and homosexuality took place in literary situations. Bray asserts that much with the literature of that time period included unambiguous offers of male like. However , he believes that a person must be cautious to make the differentiation between homosocial and platonic male love, and homoeroticism or gay male lust. For Bray, the latter is a lot less likely to get expressed (60-1). However , in accordance to Gregory W. Bredbeck, Peter J. Smith, and Claude L. Cady, this is not at all the case. Literature was your only available expression of lgbt desire. Cady affirms sexuality was hidden in much of the materials of the time. Lgbt desire would be disguised in vague terms, such as those of friendship and beauty. He offers good examples from Francis Bacon, Jones Heywood, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare. According to Peter Jones, the language of friendship and attraction were truly homoerotic. And Bredbeck states that homosexual desire could also be stated in terms of fable (Ganymede was obviously a very popular character name) or perhaps hidden in emblematic language. However in all situations, this homosexual desire was only satisfactory in these invisible or implicit forms. Literature was the simply safe place to exhibit gay desire in public places.

Enter the theater. In respect to Michael Shapiro, certainly one of theaters most potent effects is precisely the blurring of restrictions between skill and life (145). Here, the playwright has the opportunity to use hype to represent or mirror the anxieties from the real world. Taboo subjects could be brought out in the open in a safe online community. And, this gender/sexuality blurring meaning will not be lost in the playing from it. In movie theater, there is collaboration between the playwright and the viewers in the creation of which means (Bruce Cruz 17). There is also a sense of play and creation involving the words as well as the actors, and between the actors and the viewers. It becomes safe to widely discuss sex and gender implicitly and somewhat clearly.

Fictional discourse (such as the discourse of theater) often mediates between official best and the quotidian real (Bruce Smith 22). As recently stated, the state ideal is that homosexuality was abominable and gender classification did not are present. In practice, this did not include necessarily the situation. Theater presented the opportunity to evaluate the norm of heterosexuality and lack of gender identity. This is especially true in England, in which women are not allowed within the stage, therefore their parts were played by young boys. This offered theater the cabability to dramatize the socially created basis of a sexuality that is certainly determined by gender identity (Charles 122). Theater worked with the truth that sex and gender had been socially made ideas. Bruce Smith says, Sex could possibly be rooted in instinct, but that behavioral instinct is mediated and transformed by human being rationality (4). Whatever the Nature may be, our social bounds keep it within certain limits. The theater staple of the youngster actor playing a girl figure disguised once again as a youngster accentuated this kind of constructedness of gender in society (Charles 124). The boy constructs himself inside the fashion of the girl making herself in the fashion of your boy. Cinema emphasized the self-fashioning of gender and disrupted the paradigms of sexuality (122).

Shakespeare was especially adept at this type of cultural criticism. Having been aware of the social reality of irrelavent gender functions based on irrelavent definitions of gender. He was aware of the stigma haunting the socially ignored practice of lgbt relationships. Having been aware of the sex and gender concerns in his universe and explained something about it. William shakespeare works with this kind of idea of gender as a social construct. His characters often perceive their selves through costume/clothes (evidence of the effects of the sumptuary laws? ) and other social constructs. Shakespeares use of cover and costume often identified his personas.

Laws and regulations and remedies (legal and governmental documents) can only treat homosexual serves and policy. More importantly in social background, theater can address gay desire (Bruce Smith 17). Shakespeare performs with sexuality and sexual in many of his comedies to do that: to show sexual desire, both heterosexual and homosexual, and to play with it. William shakespeare refuses to dissolve the difference involving the sex from the boy acting professional and that from the heroine this individual plays (Rackin 55). He uses self-referential language and jokes to emphasise the gender ambiguity. Then he uses this kind of sexual halving to complicate his plots, and then again to resolve his and building plots. This is Shakespeares sense of play. He emphasizes that his boy-heroines are amazing to men and women. He counts on the sexuality ambiguity this individual produces. Shakespeare makes humor to expose the boy under the gown (Peter Smith 202). Shakespeare even goes in terms of to usually resolve these ambiguities eventually of the play, he leaves a necessary fencesitting surrounding the ends of countless of these not series (Rackin 61). He constitutes a conscious and purposeful examination of gender description. He plays with sexual ambiguity showing a change of society, blurring male or female definitions and making people think.

Shakespeares the majority of mature humor, Twelfth Nighttime, is an excellent example of his usage of play to accentuate and obnubilate gender and sex issues. Here, William shakespeare presents homoeroticism in the darkness of the organic bias of heterosexual marital life (Charles 121). He contains a cast of characters who fight to realize their details, most importantly, their very own sexual and gender details.

12th Night is definitely has strong identity finding themes. Most of the characters happen to be in the midst of finding their own identities and identifying identity in general:

Conceal me what I are (1. installment payments on your 53)

Non facit monachum (the hood makes certainly not the monk) (1. 5. 53-4)

What style o person is this individual? (1. your five. 152)

What manner of person? (1. five. 154)

The honorable lady of the house, which is she? (1. 5. 169)

I am not which i play (1. 5. 185)

If I do not usurp myself I was (1. five. 186-7)

Exactly what are you? What would you? (1. 5. 219)

What I was and the things i would, will be as key as maidenhead (1. 5. 219)

I realize you everything you are (1. 5. 254)

I are a man (1. your five. 283)

My spouse and i am the man (2. installment payments on your 24)

I actually am every one of the daughters of my dads house and all the siblings too (2. 4. 120-1)

Olivia: That you do think you’re not what you are

Viola: In that case think you right

Olivia: If I think so , I do believe the same of you

Viola: Then believe you right, I am not the things i am

Olivia: I would you were as I would have you be (3. 1 . 140-4)

There is no discussion that id is a problem in Twelfth Night. William shakespeare uses vocabulary to case this simply. Feste, the wise trick, delivers the primary line by simply telling us (in Latin, of course) that the hood makes not really the monk. Beware. From this unreal associated with Illyria, few things are what it seems. The disguised female personality Viola tells Olivia that she is a gentleman, after which realizes after the significance of the fact while she tells herself, My spouse and i am the person (2. installment payments on your 24). Afterwards, Viola increases to see her gender duality when your woman states, My spouse and i am each of the daughters of my fathers house and the friends too (2. 4. 120-1). There is a growing sense of Viola attempting to know her true id. Viola is usually not the sole character through this pursuit. A lot of the characters generate some make an effort to define id in general as well as to discover their own identities. I am certainly not what I i am (3. 1 ) 143) can be described as significant theme in this play. Shakespeare converts everything his audience feels they find out upside down in order to shake up the status quo and deliver a search for identity.

Plainly, identity as well as the search to define it are important elements of this play. But additional, the importance of gender identity is a key element. For example , Viola is tossed into a odd land in which she will not know how to action or whom to be. The lady lacks personality, including gender identity. She says to the marine captain, Thou shall present me because an eunuch to him (1. 2 . 56). The girl then disguises herself as a young man and takes on a false personage and sexuality. This is the quintessential a lack of gender identity.

Shakespeare inspects the fictional of gender identity. Since the clown Feste states, Nothing that may be so is very (4. 1 . 8). Certainly, this is many apparent because the woman Viola is hidden as a man. But take this the next step additional. The audience is usually not simply looking at the woman Viola disguised as Cesario, yet at the young man actor playing the woman Viola disguised while the son Cesario. The gender personality issue is three levels deep and self-referential through the play. Viola often identifies her threefold ambiguous gender, even heading so far as to convey: I am not which i play (1. 5. 185, italics mine). In fact , in accordance to Jordan Shapiro, rather than fusing the male actor/female character/male disguise into one, the character of Viola maintains different aspects of these identities separate (144). A talented boy actor held the assertiveness of the guy disguise independent from the shyness and beauty of the persona. Olivia gives Cesario interest because he was saucy and Orsino usually takes notice of Cesario due to his girly beauty (Shapiro 158). Your other characters attempt to keep your gender boundaries straight. This is certainly significant, being this is meant to be just one person, not three. The one person reflects the smoothness traits popular among and signified by both genders. Hence, sexuality ambiguity. The boy stars are not just playing females or playing men, they are really interpreting the way a woman reacts to playing a person, which is much more difficult. This type of distinction reveals a great deal of comprehension of what it is to become female and what it is to become male and what it is to become ambiguously the two. The personas (and likely much of the audience) attempted to maintain these male or female descriptors distinct within the multiple layers of ambiguity. As perhaps is usually apparent in the discussion of the one-sex physique, this culture feared the fluidity of gender, and thus would have had a difficult time taking the blurred boundaries William shakespeare presented (Charles 124).

Shakespeare then simply takes these blurred gender boundaries one stage further. The boy-heroine in undercover dress, Viola/Cesario, draws in members of both sexes. Shakespeare uses this ambiguous character to experience with, not merely ideas of gender, yet ideas of homoeroticism, or perhaps homosexual desire. Orsino welcomes Cesario because his stalwart. For some reason (that will be discovered in time) Orsino favors Cesario. After only three days and nights, Orsino claim to Cesario: Thou knowst no less although all: I possess unclaspd/To the the book even of my magic formula soul (1. 4. 13-15). Orsino is a mellow-dramatic, take pleasure in sick personality, but even for him, this dialect is laced with some thing more than platonic friendship. Just a few lines later, Orsino examines Cesario and states: Dianas lip/Is no more smooth and rubious: thy small pipe/Is as the maidens appendage, shrill and sound, /And all can be semblative a womans part (1. some. 31-4). Evidently, Orsino and Cesario provide an erotic appeal to begin with. This is what makes his later fascination to Viola possible. It absolutely was erotic to begin with, so it is lusty after the revelation. The only thing that alterations is the newfound possibility to get marriage (Piquigney 182-3). The homoerotic romantic relationship is still there being grappled with. Orsino simply cannot fathom the attraction due to Cesarios guy status, nonetheless it is obvious that the interest between master and stalwart exists. Remember that this is the abominable and ignored homosexual relationship prevalent in Renaissance society. Shakespeare offers a fictional, comedic, and blurred edition of the hidden real world.

Most experts focus mainly on the male issue of homoeroticism, nevertheless Shakespeare concentrates equally upon female homoeroticism. Viola/Cesario woos Olivia in the name of Orsino. Seemingly, Viola is aware too well what a female wants, and woos as well successfully. Olivia falls in like with Viola/Cesario. Nearly all the time is usually spent coping with this homoerotic relationship being spent while using male homoerotic liaison. The chinese language of the wooing scenes is some of the most gorgeous poetic terminology. Violas conversation:

Make me a willow vacation cabin at your door

And call upon my soul within the property

Write devoted cantons of contemned love

And sing them loud even at the hours of darkness, (1. 5. 271-4)

Is one of the most well know appreciate speeches of times. And it was from one feminine to another. Include the 3rd coating, and it is from cross-dressing young man to another. Shakespeares sense of sex/gender play is endless. In fact , juxtaposing the boy-heroine in disguise with a non-disguised boy-heroine probably heightened the self-referential impact. It would focus attention to the theatrical representations of stresses of sexuality role definitions and controversies (Shapiro 52). The audience could have been keenly aware of the gender twisting and intimate deconstruction occurring in front of their eyes.

What Viola ends up with, though, is nothing. In most of the perform, her deficiency of gender binds her. Orsino cannot knowingly comprehend his attraction to Cesario because of his evident gender. Olivia is denied her interest to Cesario because of his actual gender. Viola is definitely trapped by simply her ungendered situation and cannot act. Viola detects the limitations of her ungendered position and views her disguise because wickedness (Rackin 61). Violas anxieties about her gender/sex situation permit the audience to measure their own worries about gender and sex definition.

While this may seem like a great deal enough layers of gender/sex issues for starters play, Shakespeare gives us another. In respect to Frederick Piquigney, Antonio and Sebastian clearly have an explicit homosexual relationship. They speak impassionedly to one another. Their speech is not that of male friends, but regarding lovers. Antonio says to Sebastian, In case you will not murder me pertaining to my love, allow me to be your servant (2. 1 . 34), and I do adore thee so , /That threat shall seem sport, and i also will go (2. 1 . 46-7), and I could not stay behind you: my desire, / Even more sharp than filed stainlesss steel, did encourage me forth (3. 3. 4-5). These are generally not types of friendly charitable organization, but that of passionate sacrifice for one you like. Sebastians many passionate conversation is to never Olivia, but to Antonio by their re-union. Sebastian refers to Olivia as sweetness, but turns to Antonio and proclaims, Antonio! Oh my dear Antonio, /How have the hours racked and torturd me, /Since I have shed thee! (5. 1 . 216-18 italics mine).

This type of impassioned conversation clearly reveals a homoerotic desire between older and younger male, not hidden in friendly language or vocabulary of splendor, but explicitly stated, for the world to determine. Well, probably not all the world, not to start with. Sebastian shows that he used a pseudonym to get the three several weeks he spent with Antonio. The reason for this kind of? Perhaps anonymity and conserving the honor of his relatives name whilst in a drawn out homosexual addition? Or, an additional interesting societal critique by means of Shakespeare? Awkward, it is ordinary that Antonio and Sebastian have an emotional and perhaps sexual love, again, mimicking the master/apprentice human relationships so common in this culture. They enhance the idea that men fall in love and strengthen the homosexual games of Orsino and Viola/Cesario (Orgel 51).

Shakespeare will take every advantage in this enjoy to obnubilate the sexuality and love-making boundaries. Viola is an illusion of gender: none female neither male. The girl cannot address her love for Orsino or on Olivias take pleasure in for her. Since the straight brother to Viola, Sebastian supplies a bit of a sense of fact in gender. As a option, he requires the male male or female from Viola (to a point) and allows her to divide the androgyny. However , not one of these solutions are full. The reason you will find no marriage ceremonies at the end is usually to leave wide open the questions of gender identity and homoeroticism. Viola is still Cesario. Even following the revelation, Viola remains in disguise and Orsino is constantly on the call her boy and Cesario (5. 1 . 265). Antonio appears left out, but without the events, he is certainly not officially overlooked. The door is usually left open for him to not become left out whatsoever, ever.

The natural bias dictates the formal coupling, but as there are not any weddings, homoeroticism is never shut down out. There exists a lack of actual closure for the ending. Almost everything still appears ambiguous, that no queries were truly answered. The ending would not give the impression that it basically honors the hastily manufactured heterosexual unions. According to Valerie Traub, Twelfth Evenings conclusion seems only ambivalently invested in the natural heterosexuality it imposes (Qtd. in Charles 139). We are informed that while the characters most seem satisfied in the all-natural solution, without the androgyny, non-e of the complements would have recently been possible.

Some experts do not sign up for this type of male or female bending meaning of Twelfth Night. In the article, Androgyny Seen Through Shakespeares Cover, Robert Kimbrough states that, in fact , Shakespeare did not get the youngster actor/female character dichotomy. He believes that theater is definitely where a single checks types literal mindedness at the door and voluntarily believe[s] nearly anything [one is] asked to trust (17). Kimbrough states we do Shakespeare a disservice to not imagine his women as ladies and miss the complete effect and significance with the language. This individual agrees that Shakespeare plays with the girl into young man androgyny, but does not imagine the 3rd layer should be in play. Kimbrough states this androgyny turns into the ability to include all of the gender defining factors into one getting without characterizing some while inherently female or man (19). Nevertheless , he cannot allow that this androgyny and effect can be made more powerful by recognizing that the females in undercover dress were being played by males.

The English had been keenly aware of this. That they knew that on the place, women enjoyed womens functions in the theatre. The Puritans constantly worked to close the theaters right down to clean the associated with cross-dressing. The group would have had a great knowing of the fact the fact that female characters were in fact boys underneath the dresses. You cannot find any reason to think that they cannot find humor in self-referential identity and gender text messages or a 3 rd level of which means behind split speech. Inside the epilogue of As You Like It, the boy-heroine Rosalind speaks to the target audience: It is not the style to see a lady in the epilogue (self-referencing the smoothness Rosalind) (5. 4. 198) and then afterwards: If I had been a woman, We would kiss as many of you as acquired beards that pleased me personally (self-referencing the boy actor under the dress) (5. some. 214-16 italics mine). It really is clear that Shakespeare counted on his viewers catching the double and triple symbolism apparent with all the knowledge and awareness that, under the dresses, they were every boy.

Another vit, Lorna Hutson, goes as long as to state that gender blood pressure measurements are of limited benefit in Shakespeares plays. Hutson claims that too much the latest thought have been focused on body-criticism when, to Shakespeares target audience, this would have the ability to been inesperado. The meaning that this audience would have obtained from Twelfth Evening is among social growth, gentility, education, and civility. She promises that this was an educated talk serving like a lesson in civility. Hutson argues that today we are distracted by gender and identity issues, but that Shakespeare actually intended a comedy of social improvement and economical and cultural laws. This seems improbable. Refer to the discussion in identity.

There are simply too many referrals to identity search and definition in this to be inesperado. The play on gender and homoeroticism anxieties would not have already been lost on the society thus disjointed in their sexual thoughts and procedures. Shakespeare was starting an educated discourse, but it was not about social advancement. The talk was meant to blur the boundaries from the gender and sex problems and trigger thought through laughter.

William shakespeare was successful in creating this discourse. The androgyny that Viola represents can be described as celebration from the transcendence of gender range of the individual condition. Her androgyny is usually presented as a form of prelapsarian perfection (Rackin 54). The two Orsino and Olivia really are a manner of absurd suitors. However Viola/Cesario, while androgynous, is usually not silly, but very successful. Viola/Cesario collapses the polarities heterosexuality is based on simply by becoming an androgynous/ambiguous target of desire that distorts the difference between homo- and hetero-erotic attraction (Charles 128). 12th Night does not represent a difference between women and men, but an id between them. Renaissance theater was a moment wherever gender definitions were open for interpretation and had been played with, equally physically and psychologically. No one handled this kind of gender-bending get more expertise than Shakespeare in 12th Night.

Works Cited

Bray, Alan. Homosexuality in Renaissance England. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.

Bredbeck, Gregory Watts. Tradition as well as the Individual Sodomite: Barnfield, Shakespeare, and Subjective Desire. Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment England: Fictional Representations in Historical Circumstance. Ed. Claude J. Summers. New York: Haworth Press, 1992. 41-68.

Cady, Claude J. Masculine Love, Renaissance Writing, plus the New Invention of Homosexuality. Homosexuality in Renaissance and Enlightenment Great britain: Literary Illustrations in Historical Context. Education. Claude T. Summers. New York: Haworth Press, 1992. 9-40.

Charles, Casey. Sexuality Trouble in Twelfth Nighttime. Theatre Journal 49: 2 (1997) 121-41.

Hutson, Lorna. In Not Being Robbed: Rhetoric and the Body in Twelfth Night. Shakespeare and Gender. Eds. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilen. Ny: Garland, 99. pgs 148-182.

Kimbrough, Robert. Androgyny Seen Through Shakespeares Cover. Shakespeare Quarterly 33: you (Spring 1982) 17-33.

Orgel, Sophie. Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeares Great britain. New York: Cambridge UP, mil novecentos e noventa e seis.

Piquigney, Joseph. Both the Antonios and Same-Sex Appreciate in Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice. William shakespeare and Gender: A History, Eds. Deborah E. Barker and Ivo Kamps. New York: Poema, 1995.

Rackin, Phyllis. Androgyny, Mimesis, and the Matrimony of the Youngster Heroine on the English Renaissance Stage. Shakespeare and Male or female. Eds. Sophie Orgel and Sean Keilen. New York: Garland, 1999. pgs 53-66.

Shakespeare, Bill. Twelfth Night. Eds. M. M. Lothian and Big t. W. Craik. The Arden Edition from the Works of William Shakespeare. New york city: Routledge, 1975.

Shapiro, Michael. Sexuality in Use the Shakespearean Stage: Youngster Heroines and feminine Pages. Ann Arbor: U of The state of michigan P, year 1994.

Jones, Bruce Ur. Homosexual Desire in Shakespeares England. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991.

Smith, Philip J. Sociable Shakespeare. Ny: St . Martins Press, 95. Chapter almost eight.

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