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Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage: Boy Heroines &Female Pages. By MICHAEL SHAPIRO. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Pp. viii + 242. $37.50 cloth.
Reviewed by TRACEY SEDINGER
Michael Shapiro's book provides an interesting and valuable departure from recent historicist treatments of early modern crossdressing. In an introductory review, Shapiro notes that several critics have tended to conflate what he calls "theatrical" and "social" forms of crossdressing; in other words, to overlook specific dramatic conventions when making connections between the dramatic text and the larger social context. He therefore utilizes a "historically sensitized formalism," which results in two projects.
First, Shapiro distinguishes between the various practices that have been grouped together under the rubric of crossdressing. Though he includes an appendix of legal records documenting incidents of social crossdressing (compiled by R. Mark Benbow and Alasdair D. K. Hawkyard), the book actually focuses on plays in which crossdressing is integral to the plot and on the "boy heroine" and the "female page." He then constructs a typology of crossdressers in early modern dramatic practice, the key to which lies in five Shakespearean plays: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Cymbeline. In defining this typology around Shakespeare's female crossdressers, Shapiro takes into account not only the crossdresser's structure (e.g., one or two disguises) but also the number...