[In the following essay, Hayles compares Shakespeare's use of sexual disguise in As You Like It and Twelfth Night, concluding that his use of the device progressed from investigating the ramifications of role-playing to questioning the very nature of sex and gender.]

In dealing with the female page disguise in Renaissance drama, one is invariably struck by the complexity of the double sex reversal implied by the presence of the boy actor. Lamb's remarks are typical: 'What an odd double confusion it must have made, to see a boy play a woman playing a man: one cannot disentangle the perplexity without some violence to the imagination.'¹ Perhaps because most of us share Lamb's perplexity, not much work has been done on the subject² other than a general acknowledgement that the device is both interesting and complex. Recently, however, sexual disguise has begun to attract attention from feminist critics because it seems to offer a way to combine Shakespearian criticism with contemporary social concerns.³ Although more work is needed, and welcome, on this complex dramatic device, the tendency to regard it solely in terms of social and sexual roles seems to me misguided. While some aspects of the disguise are common to all the plays in which it appears, its dramatic function is shaped by the particular design of each play; and the differences are fully as important as the similarities in understanding the complexity of the device in Shakespeare's hands. In fact, Shakespeare's use of sexual disguise shows a definite progression: whereas in the early plays he uses it to explore the implications of sexual role-playing, in the later plays he seems increasingly interested in the metaphysical implications of the disguise, using it as a means to investigate, and eventually resolve, the disparity between appearance and essence. Although a study of all five plays that use sexual disguise is outside the scope of this essay, I hope to demonstrate the nature of the progression by comparing the use of the sexual disguise in As You Like It with its use in Twelfth Night.⁴ The purpose of this essay is therefore not only to draw general conclusions about the nature of Shakespearian sexual disguise, but to do so in a way that does justice to the uniqueness of each play. For that we turn now to the plays themselves.

As You Like It opens with scenes that emphasize rivalry and competition. Orlando has been mistreated by his brother Oliver, and Oliver in turn feels that Orlando has caused him to be 'altogether misprised' and undervalued by his own people. The rivalry that Duke Frederick still feels with the rightful Duke is also apparent. Moreover, the chief event of the opening scenes, the wrestling match between Charles and Orlando, is a formalized and ritualistic expression of male rivalry.⁵ Against the backdrop of male rivalry, the female inti-macy between Celia and Rosalind makes a striking contrast. It is an intimacy, however, maintained at some cost. When Duke Frederick peremptorily orders Rosalind into banishment, Celia's protest is countered by her father's attempt to transform intimacy into rivalry between the two girls, too:

Thou art a fool; she robs thee of thy name,
And thou wilt show more bright and seem
  more virtuous
When she is gone. Then open not thy lips.⁶
                                  (I, iii, 76-8)

The opening scenes of the play, then, draw a society where intimacy among women is implicitly contrasted with the rivalry among men. When the scene changes to the forest, several incidents seem designed as signals that the forest is a world where co-operation rather than competition prevails. Orlando meets with civility instead of hostility when he seeks meat for the fainting Adam; Rosalind and Celia find the natives to be kind shepherds rather than would-be rapists; and the exiled Duke hails his followers as 'Co-mates and brothers'. But we soon discover that competition is not altogether absent from the Forest of Arden. Jaques accuses the Duke of himself usurping the forest from its rightful owners, the deer; Touchstone confronts and bests his country rival, William; and Silvius discovers that his beloved Phebe has fallen in love with a courtly new-comer. The situation is thus more complicated than a simple contrast between court competition and pastoral co-operation, or between female intimacy and male rivalry. The sexual disguise of Rosalind mirrors the complexities of these tensions.

We can consider the disguise as proceeding in two separate movements. First, the layers of disguise are added as Rosalind becomes Ganymede, and then as Ganymede pretends to be Orlando's Rosalind; second, the layers are removed as Ganymede abandons the play-acting of Rosalind, and then as Rosalind herself abandons the disguise of Ganymede. The layering-on movement creates conflict and the layering-off movement fosters reconciliation as the disguise confronts and then resolves the issue of competition versus co-operation.

In the most complex layering, Rosalind-as-Ganymede-as-Orlando's Rosalind, Rosalind presents Orlando with a version of his beloved very different from the one he imagines in his verses. When Rosalind-as-Ganymede insists that Orlando's Rosalind will have her own wit, her own will and her own way, implicit in the portrayal is Rosalind's insistence that Orlando recognize the discrepancy between his idealized version and the real Rosalind. In effect, Rosalind is claiming the right to be herself rather than to be Orlando's idealized version of her, as female reality is playfully set against male fantasy. In playing herself (which she can apparently do only if she first plays someone else)⁷ Rosalind is able to state her own needs in a way she could not if she were simply herself. It is because she is disguised as Ganymede that she can be so free in portraying a Rosalind who is a flesh and blood woman instead of a Petrarchan abstraction. Rosalind's three-fold disguise is therefore used to accentuate the disparity between the needs of the heroine and the expectations of the hero.

Even the simpler layering of Rosalind-as-Ganymede accentuates conflict, though this time the couple being affected is Phebe and Silvius. Rosalind's guise as Ganymede causes Phebe to fall in love with her. Rosalind's on-layering, which inadvertently makes her Silvius's rival, causes Phebe's desires to be even more at variance with Silvius's hopes than before. It takes Ganymede's transformation into Rosalind to trick Phebe into accepting her swain, as the off-layering of Rosalind's disguise reconciles these two Petrarchan lovers. The Silvius-Phebe plot thus shows in simplified form the correlation between on-layering and rivalry, and off-layering and co-operation. It also gives us a standard by which we can measure the more complicated situation between Orlando and Rosalind.

Phebe and Silvius are caricatures of courtly love, and through them we are shown female manipulation and male idealization in a way that emphasizes the less pleasant side of the courtly love tradition. But it is important to see that this rustic couple merely exaggerates tendencies also present in Rosalind and Orlando. Rosalind's disguise creates an imbalance in her relationship with Orlando because it allows Rosalind to hear Orlando's love-confession without having to take any comparable risks herself. Rosalind's self-indulgence in demanding Orlando's devoted service without admitting anything in return could become a variation of the perversity that is anatomized for us in the relationship between Phebe and Silvius. Thus the expectations of Rosalind and the desires of Orlando are not only the responses of these two characters, but are also reflections of stereotypical male and female postures, familiar through the long tradition of courtly love. The layering of the disguise has served to accentuate the conflict between men and women; now the unlayering finally resolves that traditional tension between the needs of the female and the desires of the male.

The unlayering begins when Oliver appears to explain why Orlando is late. Oliver's tale reveals, in almost allegorical fashion, the struggle within Orlando when he sees his brother in peril, and the tale has as its point that Orlando put the needs of his brother before his own natural desire for revenge. More subtly, the tale with its depiction of the twin dangers of the snake and lioness hints at a symbolic nexus of male and female threats. The specificity of the imagery suggests that the details are important. The first beast is described as a lioness, not a lion; moreover, she is a lioness in suck, but now with teats sucked dry, her hunger presumably made more ferocious by her condition. The description thus links a specifically female animal, and a graphically specific female condition, with the threat of being eaten. The details, taken in sum, evoke the possibility of female engulfment. The snake about to enter the sleeping man's mouth, again a very specific image, suggests even to a non-Freudian the threat of phallic invasion. But perhaps most significant is simply the twinning of the threats itself, which suggests the presence of two different but related kinds of danger.

By overcoming the twin threats, Orlando conquers in symbolic form projections of both male and female fears. Rosalind responds to Oliver's account by swooning. Her faint is a literal relinquishing of conscious control; within the conventions of the play, it is also an involuntary revelation of female gender because fainting is a 'feminine' response. It is a subtle anticipation of Rosalind's eventual relinquishing of the disguise and the control that goes with it. The action surrounding the relation of the tale parallels its moral: Orlando performs a heroic and selfless act that hints at a triumph over threatening aspects of masculinity and femininity, and Rosalind responds to the dangers that Orlando faces with an unconscious gesture of sympathy that results, for a moment, in the loss of her conscious control over the disguise and with it, the loss of her manipulative control over Orlando. Rosalind's swoon thus provides a feminine counterpart to Orlando's selflessness.

Orlando's struggle and Rosalind's swoon mark a turning point. When they meet again, Rosalind tries at first to re-establish their old relationship, but when Orlando replies, 'I can live no longer by thinking', she quickly capitulates and re-assumes control only in order to be able to relinquish it. From this point on, the removal of the disguise signals the consummation of all the relationships as all four couples are married. The play suggests that control is necessary to state the legitimate needs of the self, but also that it must eventually be relinquished to accommodate the needs of another. Consummation is paradoxically achieved through an act of renunciation.

The way that sexual disguise is used reflects the play's overall concern with the tension between rivalry and co-operation. The disguise is first used to crystallize rivalry between the woman's self-image and the man's desires; in this sense it recognizes male-female discord and implicitly validates it. But because the disguise can be removed, it prevents the discord from becoming perpetual frustration. The workings of the disguise suggest that what appears to be a generous surrendering of self-interest can in fact bring consummation both to man and woman, so that rivalry can be transcended as co-operation brings fulfillment. In As You Like It, fulfillment of desire, contentment and peace of mind come when the insistence on self-satisfaction ceases. Duke Senior's acceptance of his forest exile and the subsequent unlooked-for restoration of his dukedom; the reconciliation between the sons of Rowland de Boys, in which Oliver resigns his lands to Orlando and finds forgiveness and happiness in love; the miraculous conversion of Duke Frederick by the old hermit and the voluntary abdication of his dukedom—all express the same paradox of consummation through renunciation that is realized in specifically sexual terms by the disguise.

When the boy actor who plays Rosalind's part comes forward to speak the epilogue, the workings of the sexual disguise are linked with the art of the play-wright. The epilogue continues the paradox of consummation through renunciation that has governed sexual disguise within the play, as the final unlayering of the disguise coincides with a plea for the audience to consummate the play by applauding:

My way is to conjure you, and I'll begin with the women. I charge you, O women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as please you. And I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to women—as I perceive by your simpering none of you hates them—that between you and the women the play may please. If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied not. And I am sure, as many as have good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths, will for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.

At this moment the playwright relinquishes control of the audience. As with Rosalind and Orlando, his success is marked by a control that finally renounces itself, a control which admonishes only to release as the audience is asked to 'like as much … as please you'. Our applause is a gesture of acceptance which encompasses both the working of sexual disguise within the play, and the art whose operation parallels it as the play ends. At the same time, the boy actor alludes to the fact that he is not after all the woman he plays ('if I were a woman'), and so relinquishes the last level of the sexual disguise. For the last time, the unlayering of the disguise is linked with a reconciliation between the sexes as the boy actor speaking the epilogue appeals separately to the men and women in the audience. Within the play these two perspectives have been reconciled, and the joint applause of the men and women in the audience re-affirms that reconciliation and extends it to the audience.

The sexual disguise in As You Like It therefore succeeds in interweaving various motifs. Many of the problems considered in the play (Duke Frederick's tyranny, Oliver's unfair treatment of Orlando, Phebe's exultation over Silvius) stem from excessive control, and the heroine exercises extraordinary control over the disguise. The removal of the disguise signals a renunciation of control on her part, and this in turn is linked with a voluntary renunciation of control by others, so that the unlayering and the resolution of problems neatly correspond. Moreover, the sexual reversal inherent in the disguise, which itself implicitly promises a reconciliation of male and female perspectives, is used to reconcile the men and women in the play. Since the key to reconciliation has been the renunciation of control, the playwright uses his relinquishing of control over the play to signal a final reconciliation between the men and women in the audience. Because of the correspondence between Rosalind as controller of the disguise, and Shakespeare as controller of the disguised boy actor who plays Rosalind's part, Rosalind's control over her disguise is paradigmatic of the playwright's control over the play. Both use their control creatively and constructively, but for both the relinquishing of control corresponds with the consummation of their art.

The means by which resolution is achieved in As You Like It says a great deal about the kinds of problems the play considers. By having Rosalind as surrogate playmaker, the playwright must not pose problems that are beyond her power to solve. There are a few hints that Rosalind's control exceeds the merely human; she tells Orlando she possesses magical powers, and Hy-men mysteriously appears to officiate at the wedding. The playwright likewise allows himself some hints of supernatural intervention—witness Duke Frederick's miraculous conversion. But positing a human problem-solver almost necessitates limiting the problems to human scale. Moreover, because the disguise is the key to Rosalind's ability to solve problems, the emphasis on male and female perspectives inherent in the sexual disguise places the problems in the context of the social roles of each sex. The disguise thus gives the play artistic unity, but it also imposes limitations on the play's thematic scope. The brilliance of As You Like It is that it so perfectly matches what the play attempts to the inherent limitations of its techniques that it makes us unaware there are limitations.

In Twelfth Night the techniques, and the problems, are of a different order. Rather than conferring control upon the heroine, the disguise withholds it from her. Concurrently, the nature of the problems changes; in Twelfth Night, they cannot be solved by a renunciation of control, because part of the problem is an anxiety about who (or what) is in control. That the removal of the disguise is insufficient to achieve resolution implies an enlargement of the play's thematic scope. In Twelfth Night the problems—and the solution—are associated with forces more than human.

Joseph Summers has remarked that Twelfth Night has an unusual structure for a comedy, because there are no parents to erect obstacles for the lovers.⁸ In the absence of parents, the ruling figures of the society could be expected to fill parental roles; but the Countess Olivia and the Duke Orsino are engaged in love problems themselves. As a result of the displacement of the ruling figures into the romantic plot, a vacuum exists at the top of the social hierarchy. This peculiarity of the play's structure is, I believe, related to the function of the sexual disguise in Twelfth Night. As we shall see, the disguise links ambiguity of sexual identity with a concern that this ambiguity can be exploited by super-human forces for evil ends. The absence of human controllers, because it creates a vacuum in which super-human forces can operate, facilitates the shift from the physical to the metaphysical implications of the disguise.

The ambiguous nature of the controlling forces arises first in the underplot. If (as Maria and her accomplices pretend) Malvolio really were possessed by devils, his acts would express not his spontaneous reactions but the desires of the controlling devils. In this sense he would be following a diabolical script, just as he earlier followed the script of the forged letter. The underplot thus introduces the idea that when Malvolio plays a role at odds with his real identity by appearing cross-gartered and smiling, he has unwittingly given diabolical forces the opportunity to usurp his identity for their own ends. Offsetting the seriousness of these implications is our knowledge that this is pretense, the festive revenge of the 'lighter folk' against Malvolio's self-righteous solemnity.⁹

The issues implicit in the playful exorcism of Malvolio are present in the main plot as well, but here the festive mockery that is the essence of the underplot is mingled with a more serious treatment. The connection between masking and the diabolical continues as a cluster of images associates the disguised Viola with the devil. For example, when Cesario first appears at Olivia's gate, Sir Toby in response to Olivia's query about the visitor replies, 'Let him be the devil and he will, I care not' (I, V, 129). Sir Toby again associates Cesario with the devil when he concocts the duel between the foolish Sir Andrew and Cesario. 'I have persuaded him the youth's a devil' (III, iv, 298) Sir Toby assures Fabian; and indeed, after Sir Andrew has his head bloodied by Sebastian, he is convinced, when he happens upon Cesario again, that 'He's the very devil incardinate' (V, i, 179-80). Along with the mis-apprehensions of Sir Andrew are a related set of images in a more serious vein. Sir Toby's careless intimation that Cesario might be an aspect of the devil is echoed by Olivia after she has seen the visitor for herself. 'A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell', she tells Cesario.

The evocation of the diabolical puts into a new context the word-play on divinity and divine texts in the initial meeting of Cesario and Olivia (I, V). If we are distracted from our delight in the wit-contest into a serious consideration, we see that the source of the wit is blasphemy. Thus our delight is being finely balanced against a suppressed recognition of moral ambiguity. Occasionally this recognition is almost allowed to surface; such a moment occurs when Olivia lifts her veil. In this moment of unmasking, the mock-adoration of Cesario's set speeches suddenly gives way to Viola's spontaneous reaction to Olivia's beauty. 'I see you what you are, you are too proud', she tells Olivia. 'But if you were the devil, you are fair' (I, V, 254-5).

The suppressed recognition of moral ambiguity is thus linked, in both main plot and underplot, with an ambiguity of identity. The two plots use different means to contain the moral ambiguities: in the underplot it is the allowed irreverence of festive mockery, while in the main plot it is our delight in the innuendoes and witty ambiguities that Viola's disguise creates. Both plots associate masking with a loss of control. In the underplot, we of course know that the controlling agents are not really devils but Sir Toby and his friends. In the main plot, however, it is not clear into whose hands control has fallen. Viola realizes in her speech near the beginning of act II (II, ii, 17-40) that the complications caused by the sexual disguise have surpassed her power to unravel them. But she cannot clearly see the end to which the disguise leads, or the nature of the controlling agents. If the agents are diabolical, then the end is evil, and wit and beauty are traps for the unwary, audience as well as character. In that case, the play's strategy of the witty containment of moral ambiguity is subverted, because wit, as the tool of diabolical agents, is itself morally ambiguous. Viola's speech is worth examining in detail, since it is the play's most explicit statement about the effect of her disguise and deals with the implications of her loss of control. Before looking closely at the speech, however, I want to mention a contemporary document that may throw some light on the issues being raised here.¹⁰

A principle support for the mounting Puritan attack on the stage during the last decade of Shakespeare's career was the Biblical prohibition against cross-dressing:

The woman shall not weare that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a womans garment: for all that doe so, are abominations unto the Lord thy God.

(Deuteronomy 22, 5)

Whether this passage applied to the transvestism of the boy actors was exhaustively debated in an exchange of letters between three Oxford dons, with Dr John Rainolds, an eminent Puritan, arguing for a literal interpretation of the passage, and William Gager and his friend Alberico Gentili attempting to defend the academic drama at Oxford. Six of these letters, two in English and four in Latin, were printed in 1599 in a volume entitled Th' Overthrow of Stage-Playes. The debate between these formidably learned men became widely known. J. W. Binns, writing on this controversy, notes that Prynne acknowledges his debt to Rainolds in Histriomastix, and Thomas Heywood praises Gager and Gentili in his Apology for Actors.¹¹

In response to the claim from those defending the drama that 'abomination' was too strong a term to apply to the innocent disguises of the stage, Dr Rainolds, citing the Bishop of Paris, forcefully argues for the potential evil of sexual disguise:

For the apparell of women (saith he) is a great provocation of men to lust and leacherie: because a womans garment being put on by a man doeth vehemently touch and moue him with the remembrance and imagination of a woman; and the imagination of a thing desirable doth stirr up the desire … the law condemneth those execrable villanies, to which this change of raiment provoketh and entiseth.¹²

Sexual disguise, according to Dr Rainolds, is evil even when done in play because the semblance of a woman which the attire creates leads men to desire the boy wearing that attire; and this results in practices condemned by Biblical law, practices which Rainolds in an earlier letter calls 'beastlie filthiness, or rather more than beastlie'.¹³

Rainolds's comments on the effects of sexual disguise are especially interesting (and relevant to Twelfth Night) because they suggest a complex response that depends upon the apprehension of the sexual ambiguity. The male spectator, according to Rainolds, reacts erotically to the female attire of the boy actor; yet at the same time, the spectator has some apprehension that the actor is in fact a boy, and so is led by degrees into being inflamed with lust for the boy. The important point here is that both elements—the maleness of the boy actor and the femaleness of the womanly costume—are necessary to lead the spectator into abomination.

In Twelfth Night, the sexual ambiguity of the disguise—the male attire of Cesario and Viola's underlying femininity which both Olivia and Orsino sense—frees Orsino and Olivia from their initial rigidity. C. L. Barber's perceptive analysis of Olivia's and Orsino's reactions to the disguise demonstrates how the disguise functions to release the two.¹⁴ Olivia has refused to admit suitors of any sort prior to Cesario's appearance; in particular, she has refused Orsino, the suitor who by her own admission is a fine specimen of up-right manhood. Yet when she sees the effeminate Cesario, she immediately falls in love with 'him'. Thus she is led by degrees to be able to love Sebastian, who is masculine in person as well as in attire. 'So comes it, lady, you have been mistook. / But nature to her bias drew in that', Sebastian tells Olivia at the end of the play. Meanwhile Orsino has been obstinately intent on pursuing a woman who rejects him. He admits Cesario into his service, and quickly prefers this girlish boy before all of his other attendants. As Cesario's patron, he comes to love 'him'; and when it is revealed that Cesario is in fact a woman, Orsino is content to claim Viola as his bride. As C. L. Barber concludes, it is the combination of masculinity and femininity in the love-object that accomplishes what neither could by itself. Thus the very sexual ambiguity which Dr Rainolds claimed would lead the spectator into abomination, releases the characters in Twelfth Night from frustration. Whereas Rainolds suggests that the fluidity inherent in sexual disguise will lead to moral chaos, the play shows that fluidity leading to fruition and fulfillment.

It is of course not necessary to suppose that the use of sexual disguise in Twelfth Night owes anything to the Rainolds-Gager controversy. It was commonplace in Puritan attacks on the stage to say that the theater in general, and cross-dressing in particular, was the work of the devil, so the play's association of sexual disguise with diabolical forces need not come from Th'OverThrow of Stage-Playes pamphlet, even assuming it is indebted to the Puritan attacks generally.¹⁵ The principal new element in the Rainolds-Gager controversy is the dynamic of sexual disguise, the suggestion that the spectator apprehends the sexual ambiguity of the actor, and that this apprehension affects the moral state of the spectator. But it is just this dynamic which illuminates the complex effects created by the disguise, as an analysis of Viola's speech shows.

Let us turn now to that speech (II, ii, 17-40). Viola prays, 'Fortune forbid my outside have not charm'd her!' invoking the goddess of chance to intervene so that her appearance is not mistaken for her essence. As she thinks over Olivia's response, Viola convinces herself that the lady does indeed love Cesario, and concludes:

Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
                                (II, ii, 26-7)

'Pregnant enemy' is invariably glossed as the devil, the 'dextrous fiend', as Dr Johnson called him, who uses any disruption of the established order to wreak havoc on man. Viola then imagines the matter that the 'pregnant enemy' forms to his ends:

How easy is it for the proper false
In women's waxen hearts to set their forms!
Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we,
For such as we are made of, such we be.
                                 (II, ii, 28-31)

The plasticity of the female heart, inherent in woman's flawed nature, allows a 'form' to be set there, and the form evokes love, even when the essence may be at odds with the form. So far the progression Viola describes is similar to that in Dr Rainold's letter, and, like his prediction, carries the sense of a sequence of association exploited by a diabolical agent to lead fallible mankind into damnation. Viola ends the speech by resigning the complexity of the situation to time:

O time, thou must untangle this, not I
It is too hard a knot for me t' untie.
                                           (II, ii, 39-40)

Ultimately, the sexual disguise in Twelfth Night leads to happiness rather than abomination because the meta-physical entities being invoked—fortune, nature and time—are benign. The plasticity of Olivia's female nature allows her heart to receive Cesario's form. When she sees Cesario again and is refused by 'him', she despairs; but the disguise has already begun to release Olivia from frustration by impressing on her heart the twin's form. Fortune lends its aid by arranging events so that Sebastian is there to take Cesario's place with Olivia when the proper time comes and, by becoming Sebastian's wife, Olivia 'reaps a proper man' she never could have had in Cesario. The discrepancy between appearance and essence, which could have been exploited by diabolical agents for evil ends, has instead allowed Olivia to find fulfillment.

The claim for the beneficial effects of the disguise thus rests on the assumption that the control has been put into the hands of benign entities (fortune, nature, time) rather than diabolical agents. Such a disposition of control still does not resolve all the ambiguities, however, because these entities, although not evil, can nevertheless be ambiguous. For Malvolio, for example, time brings in its revenges. Antonio too is disillusioned rather than freed by disguise. When Cesario is confused with Sebastian, Antonio feels the confluence of this unknown element with his beloved Sebastian as a betrayal. For Antonio, the proper love-object is Sebastian, so the ambiguities introduced by Viola's disguise cannot lead him to a more appropriate choice; they only cause him pain. When Cesario denies Antonio his purse, Antonio uses imagery which again sets into opposition the diabolical and the divine, but now there is no redeeming potential in the confusion. Instead Antonio reacts to the ambiguity as if a true god had been transformed into an idol:

     O how vile an idol proves this god!
Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature
  shame.
In nature there's no blemish but the mind:
None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind.
Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil
Are empty trunks, o'er-flourish'd by the devil.
                                          (III, iv, 374-9)

Antonio sees the discrepancy between appearance and essence, which allowed Orsino and Olivia to be freed, as a diabolical trap designed to lure the unwary into worship. The ambiguity of the disguise, helpless to release Antonio from the anguish of his love, can at most restore the loved one to him, as it does when he meets Sebastian again at the end of the play.¹⁶

Perhaps Antonio's worship explains why Sebastian at the end uses language which denies the claim of godhood and places him firmly in the world of the flesh. When he first sees Cesario, Sebastian says,

Do I stand here? I never had a brother;
Nor can there be that deity in my nature
Of here and everywhere.
                                  (V, i, 224-6)

And then, when Viola takes him for a spirit, he replies,

              A spirit I am indeed,
But am in that dimension grossly clad
Which from the womb I did participate.
                            (V, i, 234-6)

Sebastian's statements imply a reintegration of form and essence when he presents himself not as a god (or a devil) but as a man, a spirit in a corporeal body. There is indeed an ambiguity in this union of spirit with flesh, but it is an ambiguity which defines the essence of man, as Sebastian proclaims himself a man, and one which is finally cause for celebration and happiness rather than temptation. The closing scenes, which resolve some of the ambiguities, reassure us that the ambiguities which cannot be resolved will nevertheless lead to good rather than evil. Gaiety, not melancholy, is finally the appropriate response to an ambiguous world.

Sexual disguise is thus a multifaceted device in Shakespeare. The progression from As You Like It to Twelfth Night shows a shift in emphasis from a sexual disguise to a sexual disguise. In Cymbeline, the last play where Shakespeare uses the device, the emphasis is almost entirely metaphysical rather than social. The growing sense of wonder that accompanies the removal of the disguise in the later plays is possible only because its implications transcend the merely social, or even the human. It would be unfortunate if our modern preoccupations blind us to this sense of wonder, or to an appreciation of the rich diversity with which Shakespeare uses the device. In Shakespeare's hands, sexual disguise illuminates not only the relationship of woman to man, but also the relation of appearance to reality and human beings to forces more than human. The multiplicity of meanings with which Shakespeare invests the disguise does not really 'disentangle the perplexity [of seeing] a boy play a woman playing a man', but it provides a thematic counterpart to that complexity of vision, and so orders it into one aesthetic whole.

Notes

¹ Charles Lamb in remarks on Philaster, quoted in V. O. Freeburg, Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama (New York, 1915), p. 22.

² The principle book length study is V. O. Freeburg's Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama, in which he undertakes an anatomy of disguise plots, classifying them according to kinds of disguises. M. C. Bradbrook in 'Shakespeare and the Use of Disguise in Elizabethan Drama', Essays in Criticism, 2 (1962), 159-68, after taking exception to Freeburg's definition of disguise as a change in physical appearance, considers psychological poses as well as physical masking. In trying to cover the whole range of possible disguises, Bradbrook is forced to be suggestive rather than comprehensive, and although she comments perceptively on the interconnections between disguise and identity—the area Freeburg most neglects—her conclusions remain interesting but vague. F. H. Mares in 'Viola and Other Transvestist Heroines in Shakespeare's Comedies', Stratford Papers, 1965-1967, ed. B. A. W. Jackson (McMaster Univ. Library Press, 1969), pp. 96-109 gives an urbane and sensible, if not deeply reasoned, perspective on the disguised heroine in four plays. Mares considers Twelfth Night and As You Like It to be the most dramatically economical uses of the disguise, Two Gentlemen of Verona simplistic in its responses, and Cymbeline complex but not integrally related to the theme. Two dissertations have appeared on the subject. Doris Feil in 'The Female Page in Renaissance Drama' (Arizona State University, 1971) gives a statistical overview of the female page in Renaissance drama from 1592-1642. In 'The Disguised Heroine in Six Shakespearean Comedies' (Univ. of Connecticut, 1970), James P. O'Sullivan discusses Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Two Gentlemen of Verona, All's Well and Cymbeline. His analysis is not concerned specifically with sexual disguise.

³ Examples are Carolyn Heilbrun, Toward a Recognition of Androgyny (New York, 1973), and Shakespeare and the Nature of Women, Juliet Dusinberre (New York, 1975).

⁴ The other plays using female sexual disguise are Two Gentlemen of Verona, Merchant of Venice, and Cymbeline. Two Gentlemen of Verona shows in rudimentary form what the later plays show more fully (see Harold Jenkins, 'Shakespeare's Twelfth Night', Rice Institute Pamphlet, 45, No. 4 (1959), 19-42 for a discussion of Two Gentlemen of Verona as an anticipation of Twelfth Night). In Merchant of Venice, the disguise is more obviously functional and less explored in itself than in either As You Like It or Twelfth Night. The case of Cymbeline is complex, and is the subject of an article in preparation. Two plays contain instances of male sexual disguise, the Induction to Taming of the Shrew and Merry Wives of Windsor, both of which use boy brides. Male transvestism is mentioned as well in Antony and Cleopatra, but not shown on stage. Male disguise is not discussed because it seems clear that Shakespeare was mainly interested in the possibilities of sexual disguise offered by the female page.

⁵ Ralph Berry in Shakespeare's Comedies: Explorations in Form (Princeton, 1972), comments on the need to control others in As You Like It, and remarks in passing that the wrestling match may be symbolic of what he sees as the dominant theme (p. 177). We part company in our interpretation of the play's later scenes. Berry singles out for attention the discordant elements, even in the final scene, whereas my emphasis is on the final resolution and reconciliation.

⁶ Quotations are from the New Arden: As You Like It, ed. Agnes Latham (1975); and Twelfth Night, ed. J. M. Lothian and T. W. Craik (1975).

⁷ A felicitous phrase supplied by a private communication with Ellen Cronan Rose.

⁸ Joseph Summers, 'The Masks of Twelfth Night, in Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Leonard F. Dean (Oxford 1967), pp. 134-5.

⁹ C. L. Barber's important book Shakespeare's Festive Comedy: A Study in Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom (Princeton, 1959), discusses the functions of festive misrule in Shakespeare's comedies. Barber's general formula for festive comedy is a movement through release to clarification, a formulation that does much to illuminate Twelfth Night.

¹⁰ For much of the information that follows I am indebted to J. W. Binns's excellent article, 'Women or Transvestites on the Elizabethan Stage?: An Oxford Controversy', Sixteenth Century Journal, 2 (1974), 95-120. Besides drawing attention to the Rainolds-Gager controversy, Binns supplied translations and summaries of hitherto unpublished letters in the controversy.

¹¹ Binns, p. 119.

¹² Binns, p. 103.

¹³ Binns, p. 102.

¹⁴ See 'You are betroth'd both to a maid and man', Shakespeare's Festive Comedies, pp. 245-7.

¹⁵ For an overview of Puritan rhetoric against the stage, see Elbert Nevius Sebring Thompson, The Controversy Between the Puritans and the Stage, Yale Studies in English, 20 (New York, 1903), especially pp. 102-9 for theaters as purveyors of sin.

¹⁶ I take Antonio's dilemma in Twelfth Night to be another version of the dilemma of that other Antonio in Merchant of Venice: both Antonios love another man, and both are forced to come to some kind of accommodation when the man they love takes a wife. The pain that surrounds both Antonios seems to me an expression of the consequences of a homoerotic love in a heterosexual society. The men that the Antonio figures love (Bassanio, Sebastian) may return the love, but both ultimately marry women and give their allegiance to their wives.