[In the following essay, Larson considers the implications of cross-dressing in the comedies of de Molina and Sor Juana.]

In an article on role change in Calderonian drama, Susan Fischer reminds us that that the “essence of the theater is change—the theoretically temporary metamorphosis of an actor into a character he is to portray onstage” (73). What we find in any number of Golden Age plays is the literalization of that metaphor, in which characters assume other roles in addition to those assigned by the dramatist, often utilizing disguises to accomplish the role change. In the theater of the Golden Age, the convention of the woman who dresses like a man was relatively commonplace, reflecting a liberating experience in all senses of the word: male clothing facilitated admittance into a world that would otherwise be closed to the female characters of the comedia, allowing them to travel freely within a restrictive, patriarchal society and to take greater control over their own destinies. In that sense, when female characters donned male clothes, they changed not only their physical appearance, but their entire dramatic definitions. They assumed new roles as the result of their change of costume, moving from states of helpless passivity to ones of independence and control, qualities normally associated more with the masculine than with the feminine.

The use of this convention is tied to the relationship between characters and audiences. In the comedia, disguise was generally considered impenetrable; this means that other characters onstage could not see through the disguise, even though the audience might be fully aware of the deception. The convention, then, forms part of the larger issue of defining an audience's experience with a play. The notion of the willing suspension of disbelief extends to cover the situation of the mujer vestida de hombre, so that the audience, while noting the deception, simultaneously accepts the multiple role playing as part of the entire possible world created onstage.

Carmen Bravo-Villasante has discussed at length the comedia convention of the mujer vestida de hombre, particularly its two most popular manifestations, the woman in love who is trying to reunite with her beloved—the case we will examine here—and the more male-oriented mujer heroica-guerrera (15). Yet, much less common in the comedia than the appearance of the woman dressed as a man was that of the man who dressed as a woman.¹ The reasons for this contrast are certainly obvious: the hint of homosexuality as well as a concomitant disinterest on the part of a male in assuming the role of a second-class citizen would make the hombre vestido de mujer a rare entity, indeed. Still, the convention was turned on its head in a few Golden Age plays. The idea of the world turned upside down is precisely what unites these two versions of the same theme.² In both cases, wearing the clothing of the opposite sex signals a carnavalesque attitude, in which cross-dressing suggests the crossing of sexual barriers, liberation, and a general subversion of social norms.

This phenomenon is not unique to Golden Age comedy; a classic example of its use in a serious drama is that of Rosaura in La vida es sueño. The present study, however, looks at two representative Golden Age comedies: Tirso's Don Gil de las calzas verdes and Sor Juana's Los empeños de una casa. Tirso plays with the convention of the woman dressed as a man, while Sor Juana inverts the technique with a male who dons women's clothing. As we will see, the two plays have much in common, but the convention—already a type of inversion—can also be inverted again in innumerable permutations, allowing for a closer examination of the entire notion of identity and role playing in the theater of the Golden Age.

Tirso's Don Gil de las calzas verdes carries the mujer vestida de hombre convention to a parodic extreme. Doña Juana, who had been jilted by her lover, dresses like a man in order to allow her freedom of movement and to facilitate her plans to avenge her lost honor. In assuming the role of Don Gil, Juana deceives her lover and her servant, causes two women to fall in love with her, and eventually wins back the hand of the unfaithful Don Martín. Throughout the comedy, Doña Juana delights in her deception, knowingly and willfully challenging the behavioral norms of society much like a female Don Juan Tenorio.³ The enredos that all of this role playing produces lead to a climax in which not only Doña Juana, but three other characters simultaneously claim that they are Don Gil de las calzas verdes, a character who is not really a character at all, but Doña Juana's invention, a fiction.

Juana's own role playing is also multiple: in addition to dressing as a man, Juana also assumes the role of a woman, Doña Elvira, as part of her scheme. She therefore moves between three separate roles in the course of the play: she is Juana, Gil, and Elvira—man and woman, avenger and victim, aggressive and passive, real and illusory—all in one.

Although Doña Juana is able to fool all of her peers until the end of the play, the gracioso, her servant Caramanchel, notes that there is something strange associated with his mistress. In this sense, Caramanchel is able to penetrate the disguise that Juana has donned; her true identity is not totally masked. Caramanchel sees Don Gil as a kind of hermaphrodite, embodying both male and female qualities:

Capón sois hasta en el nombre;
¡Qué bonito que es el tiple moscatel!
Aquí dijo mi amo hermafrodita que me esperaba … (1718b-1719a)

Scholars who have analyzed this farce tend to see the division within Doña Juana as representative of a larger issue: the conflict between the love and vengeance themes.⁴ Although Juana arrives in Madrid vowing to avenge her stained honor, critics such as Everett Hesse and David Darst have noted that Juana's real, interior motivation is her love for Don Martín and her desire to force him to marry her. Darst observes that

the pants Juana wears, which visibly represent her decision to pursue Martín in an active and forceful way, are green, a color representative, not of vengeance, but of hope. … There is thus an optical appearance to Juana that belies her verbal expressions of vengeance. (74)

Nonetheless, Darst also sees in Doña Juana a woman unaware of this underlying motivation and of her divided self. His allusions to the character's weak “qualities and characteristics typical of womankind—confusion, variability, deceit; in short, a never ending changing of forms” (73) indicate a perspective that would tend to negate the strengths others have found in her characterization. Thus, according to Darst, the climax of the play signals a Pyrrhic victory for Doña Juana, because

the multiplication of the Gil disguise represents a complete decomposition of Juana's mastery of the role, since she never expected the Gils to reproduce as they did, and cannot possibly hope to control them all in the future. (82)

Still, Doña Juana has been able to accomplish her goal; the play ends with the real (and witnessed) promise of marriage from Don Martín. It is only in the mouth of the gracioso that Tirso leaves us with a question regarding the characterization of his protagonist: when Juana finally confesses to Caramanchel that she really is a woman, he replies, “Eso bastaba / para enredar treinta mundos” (1762b).

Sor Juana's Los empeños de una casa generally follows the Calderonian model of the comedia de enredo or de capa y espada, although her play also offers a few twists that could only have come from this Mexican nun. The plot involves a brother and sister, each of whom pursues—and is pursued by—others. Sor Juana has one of the female characters recount elements of the dramatist's own life story, including the conflict that arises when an intelligent woman tries to exert control over her own destiny. Like many other Golden Age plays of this type, the action of the comedy is ultimately about such issues as control, since the series of enredos that complicate the dramatic action results from multiple attempts to manipulate other characters in the name of love and for the game of love.

One technique that serves these love battles between the sexes is the use of disguise. A number of characters use disguises, with examples ranging from the mujer tapada convention to those in which men disguise themselves to carry out an abduction. Night scenes also function to create an atmosphere of confusion, as characters repeatedly bump into one another in the dark, mistaking the identities of others in the process. The quintessential example of disguise, however, appears in the most humorous scene of the play. It involves the gracioso, Castaño, who decides to wear women's clothing so that he can leave the house undetected and unchallenged. In this scene, Castaño dresses on stage in an inverted strip tease, talking not merely to himself, but to the ladies in the audience:

Lo primero, aprisionar me conviene la melena, (I.319-20)

Ahora entran las basquiñas. ¡Jesús, y qué rica tela! No hay duda que me esté bien, porque como soy morena me está del cielo lo azul. (I.327-31)

Temor llevo de que alguno me enamore. (I.405-6)

¿Qué les parece, señoras, este encaje de ballena? (I.349-50)

Dama habrá en el auditorio que diga a su compañera:—Mariquita, aqueste bobo al Tapado representa. Pues atención, mis señoras, que es paso de la comedia, (I.377-82)

Castaño's onstage dressing functions on a number of levels; its self-referentiality underlines the notion of role playing, in which the actor, first seen preparing for his role, then steps out of that role to speak directly to the audience. As each piece of clothing is added, the audience witnesses Castaño's transformation into a woman, but the gracioso also subverts that characterization by breaking role, calling attention to the use of convention in the theater, and reminding the audience that they are only attending the performance of a play.

Castaño's comic cross-dressing scene therefore deals with a number of weighty issues. In subsequent scenes, however, he seems to enjoy his new role as woman so much that he flirts shamelessly, until, at the end of the play, two men are ready to fight over “her”; Castaño asks the audience, “Miren aquí si soy bello, / pues por mí quieren matarse” (1196-97). Castaño's experience with dressing in women's clothes is clearly intended to function as a principal source of humor for the play. Still, this male who dresses like a woman also helps the audience explore the relationship between the sexes, as well as the very nature of the theater.

What happens in these two plays when women dress as men and men as women? Among many other things, this type of role reversal undercuts traditional views of gender roles in Golden Age society—or at least in comedia representations of that society. Tirso presents a woman intent on taking control of her own destiny, even if such an act requires her to leave her home, dress as a man, court other women, and even propose marriage to them. This characterization inverts the vision of the typical comedia dama, confounding the masculine and the feminine in a baroque fusion of illusion and reality. Sor Juana turns the convention of the mujer vestida de hombre—already an inversion of the norm—upside down by having a male character dress like a woman. When Tirso and Sor Juana use this specific type of role playing, they achieve any number of similar effects, both for the other characters on stage and for the audience.

One obvious result of such role playing is the incorporation of a self-conscious, metadramatic attitude within the dramatic text, since the wearing of new clothes and the adoption of new roles lead to a kind of role playing within the role. Richard Hornby describes such layered role playing as “an excellent means of delineating character. … Even when the role within the role is patently false, the dualistic device still sets up a feeling of ambiguity and complexity with regard to the character” (67). This multiple role play projects multiple ironies upon the text, explores areas of gender identification, and raises such existential questions as those dealing with the nature of human identity; Hornby observes:

Theatre, in which actors take on changing roles, has, among its many other functions, the examination of identity. For the individual, theatre is a kind of identity laboratory, in which social roles can be examined vicariously. … Role playing within the role sets up a special acting situation that goes beyond the usual exploration of specific roles; it exposes the very nature of role itself. The theatrical efficacy of role playing within the role is the result of its reminding us that all human roles are relative, that identities are learned rather than innate. (68, 71-72)

Hornby's comments, which emphasize the connections between human identity and the theater, underscore the role playing found in the examples of this study.⁵

Everett Hesse sees the role playing that occurs in Don Gil de las calzas verdes as related to the concept of the play within the play, in which disguise performs a dual function:

la técnica de una comedia dentro de un drama se desarrolla como una mascarada, una especie de commedia dell’arte en que los personajes (sobre todo Juana) parecen improvisar el diálogo para dominar la acción en cualquier cambio inesperado. En la mascarada se emplean disfraces no sólo para ocultar la identidad sino también los verdaderos motivos de los personajes.(49)

Other critics have concurred with Hesse's assessment; Henry Sullivan suggests that Tirso's protagonists are fond of producing

theatrical tableaux to influence other characters and … assume spurious roles to mystify and manipulate opponents. Such play-acting was seen as a complex of goal-directed energy, will and practical intelligence that often led to a splitting of personality into two or three personae. (135)

Such comments indicate that frequently the woman who dresses like a man not only reverses sexual roles and sexual stereotypes but also functions as a metagonist, “who reshapes the expected outcome of the play through her own inventions” (Ziomek 100).

Such role play and role change consequently also underscore the place occupied by the sexes within society. The mujer vestida de hombre convention might then emerge as a type of feminist strategy, in which the woman dons the clothing of the more powerful Other to gain power, authority, freedom, and equality. Patricia Kenworthy describes this as the use of male dress to move from dishonor to honor (106). In that context, John Varey describes Doña Juana of Don Gil de las calzas verdes as intelligent, daring, and manly, facing problems and seeking resolutions the only way a woman of the day could: by disguising herself as a man (367).

Yet—and there always seems to be a “yet” when we talk about the comedia—the convention also has a down side from a feminist perspective. The very freedom that male clothing grants the female character could also be viewed—and probably was viewed by at least some in the audience—as a means for exposing the actress in a very literal way: the breeches that Doña Juana wears leave much less to the imagination than a long dress worn over several petticoats. It is for this very reason that Anita Stoll recently discussed the convention of the mujer vestida de hombre as one likely to produce titillation in the audience; the character's outward expression of sexual ambiguity functions as a type of tease in addition to serving as a source of humor.⁶

Moreover, another aspect of this issue surfaces in a farce such as Don Gil de las calzas verdes. Although Doña Juana is disguised as Don Gil at the time, she dances with the two other female characters, who exclaim following the dance, “Ya sé que a ser dueño mío / venís. … ¡Muy enamorada estoy!” and “¡Perdida de enamorada / me tiene el don Gil de perlas!” (1725a). Certainly, this scene is remarkable for the humor that the incongruity and sexual ambiguity produce. For at least some members of the audience, however, the sight of three women dancing together and the immediate response that the dance provokes could also be described as titillating. If those audience members assume the role of voyeurs, the convention of the mujer vestida de hombre works on yet another level, and we find that the more positive strategy of creating an autonomous female character has been simultaneously undercut.

At the very least, it would be fair to say that the examples of cross-dressing that appear in the comedia tend to occur to socially marginalized characters, usually women and graciosos. There is a certain Golden Age logic in having a comic male character dress as a woman, since the humorous aspect of the sex reversal would fit perfectly with the gracioso's characterization, and the more virile galanes would not be threatened by even the hint of such an “unmanly” act. Consequently, an analysis of the nature and number of men who dressed like women in the comedia would have to take into account the dramatic and theatrical motivations of those characters. Although the majority of women who dress like men seem to be trying to reunite with their lovers and exact the marriages promised earlier, the male characters do not appear to have such socially acceptable goals. More often, it seems that the dramatists utilized the scenes that involved male cross-dressing for their comic theatrical impact, although it might also be plausible to imagine that the Sor Juana who wrote such a satirical poem as the redondilla that begins “Hombres necios que acusáis / a la mujer sin razón” might have decided to turn the convention on its ear with her comic scene in Los empeños de una casa.

Still, whether the man dressed as a woman or the woman as a man, the convention served a special function within the world of the comedia. Physical disguise related to inner definitions of the self, in which by assuming a new role, the characters engaged more in acting positively than in reacting passively to external events. The sexual reversal involved in these two types of role-playing promotes an examination of the places that men and women occupied in Golden Age society, as well as the ways that such characterizations could lead to a radical questioning of the norm. In like manner, the use of this convention by definition mandates an exploration of role playing in the theater. Both Sor Juana and Tirso made good use of this Golden Age convention; yet, although on a most obvious level these two plays look like mirror images, each in its own way is a Baroque deformation that does and does not reflect the other. The woman dressed as a man and the man dressed as a woman enliven the comedia, helping not only to vary our experience with the theater of the Golden Age, but to provoke real questions about the nature of identity and the nature of the theater.

Notes

1. Bravo-Villasante describes the convention of the man who dresses like a woman as descending from a long classical tradition; it was used episodically and more in comic situations rather than for serious matters. Although it appeared less in the Golden Age than in classical comedy, several well-known dramatists employed the convention, including Timoneda, Torres Naharro, Lope de Rueda, Lope de Vega, Moreto, Calderón, and Alarcón (78-79).

   Bravo-Villasante's study, however, deals much more extensively with the convention of the woman dressed as a man than with her male counterpart. She views this type of characterization as a literary convention rather than a common contemporary practice, although she also notes that the convention was condemned by moralists throughout the Golden Age (151).

2. See J. E. Varey, “Doña Juana, personaje de Don Gil de las calzas verdes de Tirso de Molina,” in Studies in Honor of Bruce W. Wardropper, eds. Dian Fox, Harry Sieber, and Robert Ter Horst (Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1989) and Julio Caro Baroja, El Carnaval (análisis histórico-cultural) (Madrid: Taurus, 1965).

3. See, for example, Henryk Ziomek's A History of Spanish Golden Age Drama (Lexington: Kentucky UP, 1984), 100. It should be noted, however, that while Don Juan offers promises of marriage only as an ingredient of his seduction, Doña Juana's actions are most frequently motivated by a desire to marry the man she loves. What both characters share is a goal-oriented attitude, in which the ends always seem to justify the means, causing innocent people to get hurt in the process.

4. Such scholars include Everett W. Hesse, Análisis e interpretación de la comedia (Madrid: Castalia, 1968), E. W. Hesse and William C. McCrary, “La balanza sujetiva-objetiva en el teatro de Tirso: ensayo sobre contenido y forma barrocos,” Hispanófila 3 (1958): 1-11, and David H. Darst, The Comic Art of Tirso de Molina (Chapel Hill: Estudios de Hispanófila, 1974).

5. Henry Sullivan observes:

   role-playing within the drama is a salient Tirsian fingerprint, but when the dramatist sets role against part and sends deep divisions into the individual's conscience, he gives the impression of having his hands on the genetic code. He achieves intimacy into ‘character’ through such fragmentation, and thus the debates between part and role produce an interioridad or inwardness which has struck all commentators on the Mercedarian's art (115).

6. Stoll made these comments in a presentation given at an NEH Summer Seminar held at the University of Kentucky (Summer 1989).

Works Cited

Bravo-Villasante, Carmen. La mujer vestida de hombre en el teatro español. 3rd ed. Madrid: Mayo de Oro, 1988.

Caro Baroja, Julio. El Carnaval (análisis histórico-cultural). Madrid: Taurus, 1965.

Darst, David H. The Comic Art of Tirso de Molina. Chapel Hill: Estudios de Hispanófila, 1974.

Fischer, Susan L. “The Art of Role Change in Calderonian Drama.” Bulletin of the Comediantes 27 (1975): 73-79.

Hesse, Everett W. Análisis e interpretación de la comedia. Madrid: Castalia, 1968.

Hesse, Everett W. and William C. McCrary. “La balanza sujetiva-objetiva en el teatro de Tirso: ensayo sobre contenido y forma barrocos.” Hispanófila 3 (1958): 1-11.

Hornby, Richard. Drama, Metadrama, and Perception. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1986.

Inés de la Cruz, Juana. Los empeños de una casa. Poesía, teatro y prosa. Ed. Antonio Castro Leal. 10th ed. Mexico City: Porrúa, 1984.

Kenworthy, Patricia. “The Spanish Priest and the Mexican Nun: Two Views of Love and Honor.” Calderón de la Barca at the Tercentary: Comparative Views. Eds. Wendell M. Aycock and Sydney P. Cravens. Lubbock: Texas Tech Press, 1982. 103-117.

Sullivan, Henry W. Tirso de Molina and the Drama of the Counter Reformation. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1981.

Téllez, Gabriel (Tirso de Molina). Don Gil de las calzas verdes. Obras completas. Vol. I. Ed. Blanca de los Ríos. Madrid: Aguilar, 1969.

Varey, John E. “Doña Juana, personaje de Don Gil de las calzas verdes.” Studies in Honor of Bruce W. Wardropper. Eds. Dian Fox, Harry Sieber, and Robert ter Horst. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta, 1989. 359-369.

Ziomek, Henryk. A History of Spanish Golden Age Drama. Lexington: Kentucky UP, 1984.