Crossdressing in Volpone

Summary of Individual Tasks

The subject of our web project is cross-dressing in Ben Jonson's comical play Volpone. Our main focuses are how it was done on stage, how women used it to gain power, the antitheatrical movement of the Puritans, and the homoeroticism it implimented. Each of the four members of our group chose one of these four areas to specialize in. Joel Culpepper found images to go along with the web page and both he and Jennifer Cwiok found the links to outside web pages.

Celeste Collins was responsible for researching how the Renaissance dramatists managed to convincingly make a male actor look like a woman on the stage. She was responsible for finding out what kinds of costumes were used to make the transformation, wh at the audiences opinion of the character's gender really was (i.e. really a woman or just a boy in drag), and what some of the dangers of this cross-dressing may have been.

Michelle Epstein focused on how the act of cross-dressing affected women and their social standing. The women in society were looked down upon and there was very little social mobility. Michelle was responsible for finding out the purpose behind women wanting to disguise themselves as men and how it affected their position in society.

The antitheatrical movement was Joel's area of study. He focused on how the Puritans reacted to cross-dressing on the Renaissance stage and what they did to try to stop it. Joel also focused on how blatantly Johnson ignored the Puritans and how he repr esented his female characters.

Jennifer focused on the fact that cross-dressing on stage alluded to homosexual behavior between male actors. She also focused on how these homoerotic scenes affected the audience and the types of fear it caused society.

All four members of the group were given an equal amount of work and held up to their responsibilities.