1. Call Me Ganymede
2. Ruminatory structure: start with problem and wander around it
1. Caesario means noli me tangere and cut; she says she'll be eunuch; castrated
2. What does this mean? eunuch could be asexual but frustrated as Mardian in AC--eunuch also a woman--on castrati; cf. the movie
3. Fathers decided to have their boys be castrati, like they decided girls to go to convent or marry. Castrati sang and played boys roles to entertain the celibate clergy
4. double gendered figure: man and maid/ all daughters and brothers too; master-mistress of sonnet 20
5. Oliva and Orsino have fallen in love with Cesario; gender is mutable, constructed a matter of choice [57]
6. Ganymede is catamite for whom Jove abandons marriage bed, i.e. a boy who incapacitates marriage--dangerous.
7. Why does Rosalind stay in her doublet and hose after she knows Orlando loves her [reasons from Montrose?]
8. English Ren. culture tolerated love for boys; legal definition of sodomy was very restricted
9. Restoration stage had attractive young men played by women.
3. Homosexuality didnt exist. Antonios were eccentric. Bixesuality the norm--e.g. Sade and Rochester; metamorphic quality of gender
1. eroticized boys appear to be a middle term between men and women...enabling fiugres...a way of getting from men to women.
2. Society has investment in seeing women as imperfect men
3. Danger point: where women have independent essence, existence not under male control, not a parody of maleness but distinctly female.
1. where Viola and Ros feel trapped by their disguiese rather than protected.
2. Ren. fantasy about voracious female sexuality--male sexuality out of control
3. Rosalind's disguise is for Orlando's benefit and protection
4. In epilogue, Ros. reveals she's still a boy--although she denies it, is this what spectator really wants? (64) Apology for making what you want of the text; transition to historicist investigation; archival history
4. Boys in the company
1. they were there as apprentices to the craft guilds to which actors belonged
2. some were forcibly impressed--like army
3. guild membership also provided respectability and security for actors
4. apprentice-master is like woman-man relationship
5. apprentices playing women could go on to other trades; no evidence many became adult actors
5. Ren. ideal of female beauty was boyish: slim hipped and flat chested
1. examples of gender being performed: Kabuki, Noh
6. Boys like women were acknowledged sex objects of men.--
1. love of men for boys axiomatic(71)...Pastoral and Vergil and Theocritus--Shepherd's Calender
2. see 4.1--the kiss, and Ganymede's retreat, and TN Orsino kissing Cesario
7. On Women
1. Women also like boys--beard play--Olivia and Ros.
2. There were women in the theatre; no law against it and despite historians' claims, there were women apprentices and guild members--cf. Wife of Bath: blacksmiths, bootmakers, etc. 48% in Southampton
3. Women eased out later because of economic, not social reasons, when competition went up [just like Rosie the Riveter]
4. Joan Kelly's theory that medieval women had more rights than Ren.;
5. Women were voting in parliamentary elections during 17th c.--stunned historians
8. What did women enjoy about a theatre we find mysogynistic? (74)
1. love matches liberate from patriarchy [contra Montrose]
2. cuckoldry plots empower women
3. Viola the eunuch and Rosalind the catamite and the woman's ring plot at end of MV--"ELISION" [not Elysian] 75
1. preference for boys rather than wives
2. threats and fears of cuckoldry and pederastic fantasy of Nerissa's ring
3. patriarchal structure always in place, always threatened
4. play ends with the unresolved dilemma of man forced to choose between loyalty to his wife or his patron [like PL] and making wrong choice
1. Portia is Antonio's gift to Bassanio
5. A wife is supreme gift of male friendship; Portia engineers a marriage that does constitute a repudiation of male friendship--problem can only be resolved by tranvestite
4. Our own responses to classic texts are uncertain guides
5. Playing the woman's part--male effeminacy--is act for male audience appreciation
6. Women instigate male tranvestitism--
1. Cleo and Antony
2. Hercules story--gender switches with Omphale; bearing distaff
7. Sidney's arcadia--transvestite plot based on Symposium--Greek love--the sacred band
1. Dominating woman and transvestite man--Pyrocles' ability to perform as a woman persuades Philocleia to love him.
2. Romance written for women readers
8. If boy actors come on stage, women will fall for them and abandon men.
9. Female in 12th Night most attracted to Cesario--transvestite boy/as girl as boy/ maid and man; Rosalind most attracted to wrestler but feminized Orlando
10. Danger of falling in love with "real"men--Othello, Cassio, Iago
11. gender as socially constructed
12. transformations that give women power and pleasure--
9. [Elizabeth, Shann, Kris--English majors?]
1. players 12th night--Orsino, Viola, Sebastian, Antonio, Fabian, Clown-