Full citation:Benbow, R. Mark and Alasdair D. K. Hawkyard. 1994. “Legal Records of Cross-dressing” in Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines and Female Pages, ed. Michael Shapiro, Ann Arbor. pp.225-34.
Since this book is primarily focused on how roles were played in Shakespearean theater, it concerns all-male acting companies and male actors playing female roles. As such, it largely falls outside the scope of my interests, but as context for the main discussion, there is a chapter on real-life cross-dressing by women, as well as an appendix of legal records of such. As the appendix has different authors than the main book, I’ll be covering the two as separate publications.
Appendix: Legal Records of Cross-dressing
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As a supplement to the discussion of records of women cross-dressing, the book has an appendix with quotations from the court records. It notes that these are not an exhaustive record—indeed the number of records is relatively small. It’s likely that the attention given to cross-dressing as an offence varied depending on what other concerns might draw attention, for example a rise in the concern over vagrancy in the 1590s.
What I found interesting was the relatively small number of cases where overt evidence of sexual offences was mentioned. Of the 14 women mentioned in the cases, by my analysis 4 were accompanied by a solid accusation of a sexual offense, 3 were “probables” but the question was more complicated, and for the remaining 7 the only offense mentioned was wearing men’s clothing.
For the “yes” group: A woman was “enticed…to whoredom” which for some reason involved cutting her hair short and wearing men’s hose and doublet, cape and cloak. Another woman habitually went abroad “in man’s attire” and also was said to have engaged in sex with various persons. A third case involves the testimony of a servant of the multiple women he was asked to procure for his master for sexual purposes, one of whom “came in a man’s gown and a hat.” One woman had been persuaded by a man to put on man’s apparel, but though she denied having sex with him, she was notorious as a prostitute.
The case of Magdalyn Gawyn is complicated. There’s a long recitation of her movements through various households, after the summary charge that “contrary to all honesty of woman hood” she wore men’s clothing abroad in the streets. Throughout her narrative, she regularly interacts with one Thomas Ashewell and eventually he persuades her to run away with him, at which she insists on going in disguise in men’s clothing. He, alas, doesn’t show and she arouses suspicion and is apprehended. In a different long narrative, Margaret Bolton gets caught up in delivering clandestine messages to one Mrs. Luddington, and in the ensuing brangle Mr. Luddington says that Margaret and her daughter “went abroad in man’s apparel.” Neither Margaret nor the daughter is accused of any sexual offense, though they do seem to have been abetting the potential offense of Mrs. Luddington. The third “maybe” is a woman who confessed both to having a bastard child and having gone in man’s apparel.
The “no” group includes a woman who arranged with her husband to be “disguised and appareled in all things like a soldier” and accompanied him as his lackey. Whatever her purpose might have been, any sexual aspect would have been between husband and wife and so no crime. In several cases, the record describes the cross-dressing itself as being inherently “lewd,” “like a rogue,” “more manlike than womanlike.” One quite non-judgmental record notes a woman “brought in boy’s apparel” and punished for it, with no other context given.
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