There are as many as 80 early modern dramatic works that feature cross-dressed heroines, with overt motivations ranging from following a (male) lover, avoiding rape, scandal, or death, traveling freely, or as a deliberate expression of gender non-conformity. In roughly 30 of these plays (written between 1580 and 1660), the cross-dressing also precipitates female homoerotic desire in some fashion. This raises the question of how and why this motif was employed.
La Cintia (Giambattista della Porta)
16th century Italian play involving multiple homoerotic scenarios, both where a cross-dressed woman courts a woman, and where a man cross-dressed as a woman courts a woman.
