LHMP #434 Poulsen 2005 Women Performing Homoerotic Desire in English and Italian Comedy: La Calandria, Gl’Ingannati and TwelfthNight

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night draws on two prominent motifs of Italian theater: a cross-dressed heroine who provokes female desire, and the ideal of the Italian actress, who combined beauty and rhetorical skill. Shakespeare and other English playwrights backed off somewhat on the lesbian eroticism, but retained the image of a female character claiming power through performance and improvising, as manifested in Viola/Cesario’s ambiguous teasing banter with Olivia.

The central dramatic motif (cross-dressing and F/F desire) appears from the early 16th century in Italian plays, such as La Calandria and Gl’Ingannati (commonly seen as the most direct inspiration for Twelfth Night). When I first introduced, the Italian precursors—like Shakespeare’s performances— would have been performed by all-male companies. But by the time Shakespeare was creating Twelfth Night, female performers were a mainstay of Italian theater. This shift changed the transgressive and erotic potential of cross-dressed characters. The cross-dressed woman plot was often combined with a twin plot, such that the female lead (and sometimes her male twin) is not simply taking a random male disguise, but taking on the sibling’s role. Their similarities and equivalence are emphasized.

The Italian plays are far more overt about the possibility of the disguised heroine to stand in for her brother sexually as well as socially. Where Shakespeare’s cross-dressed heroines often emphasize their conventional feminine natures and desires, the Italian heroines focus more on the social constraints and expectations of gender roles, and the potential legal consequences of carrying the role into another woman’s bed. In these plays, the homoerotic tension is resolved via the “convenient twin brother” motif, but also by creating a familial bond between the two women, typically mediated by marriage of one to the other’s relative. Homoerotic desire is not repudiated, but is diverted to an acceptable form. (The article notes tangentially that, although it focuses on two specific Italian plays, the central motif of cross-dressing and resulting homoerotic desire is present in many other 16th century plays in Italy, France, and Spain.)

The article explores the multi-valent nature of the audience reception (including other characters in the plays as audience). Is the audience aroused by the depiction of superficially m/f erotics? By the underlying “true” f/f erotics? (Or in English theater by the sex of the male actors playing the parts?) Is the transgressive nature of the f/f encounter undermined via the disguise or is it deliberately played for the titillation of a (presumed) male audience? The article notes that the performance of Gl’Ingannati was produced and dedicated to a primarily female audience. So scenes of f/f eroticism must have been expected to entertain and please women. And some scenes in the play imply that f/f eroticism could be accepted and excused.

In both plays, the women initially cross-dress for the safety and mobility it affords them, or even in support of heterosexual desire, which gives them a realistic and excusable motivation. The plays embrace both tragic and comedic potential in the motivations and consequences. The desiring women of the Italian plays express more physicality, where Shakespeare’s heroines feel a more diffuse, romanticized yearning. English spectators of Italian plays, often commented on the “wantonness” of the female characters (and by extension, the actresses playing them). In Gl’Ingannati Isabella, in her desire for the disguised Lelia, is described as being “in heat”, not merely restless, but masturbating when thinking of her beloved. F/f erotics are treated more openly in Italian theater, but are more closely policed in Italian culture and law, giving them a clear vocabulary and substance. English society and law expressed anxieties about cross-dressing and gender roles, but shy away from acknowledging female homosexuality. [Note: And had no laws specifically addressing it.]

But another difference is that Shakespeare’s Olivia has far more social power and freedom than her Italian counterpart. Olivia has power over her potential suitors, while Isabella (in Gl’Ingannati) is under others’ control and seeks her goals through deceit. In the Italian plays, the cross-class nature of the forbidden relationships is more highlighted than the cross-dressing. Thus the Italian cross-dressing comedies are transferred for an English audience in a variety of ways, while still retaining the central motif and ambiguous f/f desire.