Men and Their Female Sons

Taking a step back from the theme centered attributes of Shakespeare's work, I wanted to touch on a subject that still has me in disbelief: the lack of women in theatre during the Elizabethan era and resultant cross-dressing young men. Now to understand why young boys paraded around on stage as pretty woman we have to take into account women's role in society as a whole.

Unlike today, obviously, in the early 1600's women had an extremely minute - if existent - role in the public sector. They did not partake in community officiating, public occupation, or really any major task in recognition, aside from the queen... How's that work? Women were focused upon gaining marriage and subsequently serving their spouse, which most likely would consist of rearing children and taking care of the home. Not too surprising. However, I never actually made the connection, and I would venture to guess I'm not alone, that this included acting in the public theatre. During Shakespeare's time women were not allowed to partake in the theatrical performances, and as we can tell from his work, not all of Shakespeare's characters were male. This produced two distinct outcomes:

1. Men & boys were forced to take on the feminine roles, which lead to a drastic amount of cross-dressing. Yet at the time this was not nearly as culturally conspicuous as we consider it nowadays, people were used to it and the acting did not necessarily detract from the plays. 
2. After reading A Midsummer Night's Dream, I got the sense that Shakespeare actually used this cultural enigma to enhance the humor of his comedies! This feeling was furthered during one of our presentations on A Midsummer Night's Dream when I was actually able to see the "play-within-a-play" in the modern day film. The cross-dressing in the scene very effectively added to the hilarity.

In point, as much as I was stunned by the cross-dressing that took place during the times of William Shakespeare, I was far more impressed after reading several comedies by the way in which it felt he was able to "blow up" distinct characters using this modern day taboo.