The issue of women's cross-dressing during the Renaissance was exactly that: an issue. The transgressive practice sparked much debate as members of society connected the changing of one's clothing with the desire to change one's social status. According ly, the practice is often reflected in the drama of the times. Various Renaissance plays depict characters who disguise themselves in the garb of the opposite sex in order to achieve a desired goal.
Complicating any reading of this practice in Renaissance drama, however, is the fact that in Elizabethan England, women were not allowed on the stage. In what Stephen Orgel points out is a uniquely English practice, young boys played the parts of women .(1) This practice itself was controversial; Orgel notes that during this time period, public sentiment linked the theater with promiscuity and with encouraging promiscuity in both its actors and its audience. The corresponding fear, then, would be a fea r of arousing homosexual desire for the young male actors; in spite of this concern, however, the English continued to allow the practice of boys playing women since they feared the actual consequences of homosexual desire less than the actual consequenc es of "unleashed" heterosexual desire. Encouraging the sexual desire of and for women led to increased illegitimate births, disrupting the patriarchal inheritance and lineage and threatening the stability of society.
Thus readings of Renaissance drama are filtered through the knowledge that the cross-dressing women in these plays were actually "cross-cross-dressing" boys. While cross-dressing may be a plot-device or sub-theme in most Renaissance drama, it becomes a central focus in The Roaring Girl, written by Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton and performed in 1611. The title character, Moll Cutpurse, is based on the real-life persona of Mary Frith, infamous for her habit of wearing men's clothing and her life of crime. The character of Moll in The Roaring Girl assumes and discards men's costuming throughout the play, sometimes appearing in a mix of men's and women's garb. Moll differs from the real-life Mary Frith in her honesty and integrity. Critics have also noted that the character of Moll in The Roaring Girl is distinct from other "cross-dressers" in Renaissance drama in that she never dresses in men's clothing out of an intent to disguise herself. The other characters on stage al ways know that she is the woman Moll Cutpurse, regardless of what she wears. It is interesting, then, to examine the question of cross-dressing in The Roaring Girl in terms of what it might suggest thematically.
Mary Beth Rose situates The Roaring Girl within the contemporary societal debate over female cross-dressing. In her article "Women in Men's Clothing: Apparel and Social Stability in The Roaring Girl"(2) she links concern over the issue in _TRG_ with two pamphlets published in 1620 which debate the appropriateness of women in men's clothing. "Hic Mulier," published first, proposes that women wearing men's clothing are more likely to practice unconventional, loose sexual behaviour, thus p osing a threat to the stability of society. "Haec-Vir," published soon after as a rebuttal, protests the conventional ideal of the passive woman, defending the right of women to behave more independently as in the best interest of society.
Although "Haec-Vir" thus seems to defend women's right to wear men's clothing and assume more "mannishly" independent positions in society, it ends in a sudden reversal, blaming men for acting too effeminately and suggesting that once men regain their proper virile roles in society, women will return to their feminine norm. Rose points out that the strong emphasis in The Roaring Girl on Moll's rational behavior and her role as "defiant champion of female freedom from male sexual dominion"(381) is undercut in the end by Moll's exclusion from the "new comic society" which is restored at the end of the play in the reunion and marriage of Sebastian and Mary. Sebastian and Mary, and even Moll herself, recognize Moll's "strangeness" (385), denying t he character of Moll the "full social acceptance" (386) that would signify complete social acceptance of women in men's clothing and, in turn, the societal changes that that transgressive behavior signifies.
Rose suggests that cross-dressing in The Roaring Girl reflects the cultural ambiguity in society about the issue of women in men's clothing. In "The Logic of the Transvestite," Marjorie Garber notes that the issue of cross-dressing reflects not only an anxiety about women's changing social status but also a concern about the ownesrship of sexual desire.(3) Moll signifies sexual desire but Garber suggests that she is not the only one; Garber points out strong associations between Moll and Mary Fitzallard which indicate that the two characters should be considered as "doubles" of each other. Mary Fitzallard finally dresses as a male herself, and, in the disguise of the page, kisses Sebastian on stage. To Garber, the sight of the two "men" kiss ing reinforces the idea of homoerotic desire already present in the Elizabethan theatre and cements the links previously suggested between Mary and Moll. Thus The Roaring Girl subversively identifies the marginal "outsider" character, conventional ly "allowed" to protest, with the traditional upper-class heroine, making her a part of the protest as well.
Since Moll refuses to fall into her costume of masculinity and make it into a disguise, she herself appropriates the role of subject of desire, traditionally a male role. The issues of cross-dressing for women and of boys playing the parts of women co mbine to reflect a contemporary anxiety over not just women's changing social status but also over the question of sexual desire and who is allowed to have it and for whom one is allowed to have it.
Susan Krantz declines to view the play as quite as subversive; in her opinion Dekker and Middleton seek to avoid the question of "socio-sexual issues that could not be resolved positively" and appropriately in their comedy(4). The playwrights most oft en identify Moll with "hermaphrodite"; popular culture was currently relating hermaphrodites to the "neo-platonic ideal of bisexual oneness"(5). Krantz notes several positive cultural references to hermaphroditic imagery and suggests that by having Moll represent this male/female both-in-one self-sufficiency, the character actually transcends any attempted reading in terms of male-female relationships, social or sexual.
(1) Orgel, Stephen. "Nobody's Perfect: Why Did the English Stage Take Boys for Women?" South Atlantic Quarterly 88 (1989).)
(2) Rose, Mary Beth. "Women in Men's Clothing: Apparel and Social Stability in The Roaring Girl" English Literary Renaissance 14:3 (1984).
(3) Garber, Marjorie. "The Logic of the Transvestite" Staging The Renaissance ed. David Scott Kastan and Peter Stallybrass. New York: Routledge, 1991.
(4)Krantz, Susan. "The Sexual Identities of Moll Cutpurse in Dekker and Middleton's The Roaring Girl and in London"Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Reforme 19:1 (1995), p.13.
(5) Ibid., p. 12