Musidorus finally comes upon a young Amazon named Zelmane, only
to discover that "she" is really Pyrocles in disguise.
Pyrocles-alias-Zelmane wears a jewelled adornment depicting
Hercules as a maid working Omphale's distaff. Musidorus's
amazement is compared to Apollo's wonder at seeing Daphne
metamorphosed into a laurel tree. According to Musidorus, man is
equivalent to reason and woman is equivalent to the bodily
senses, and therefore to love a woman is to become sensual and
"womanish"; to love a man is manly and virtuous, and
to love an idea is philosophic. He accordingly calls Pyrocles
"the Ill-Apparraled Knight," and accuses him of being
womanish and childish:
Musidorus repents his harsh words, and kisses away the tears of
his weeping friend. Pyrocles revives and agrees to love only
virtue henceforth, and they renew their pledge of friendship. All
of this comes to naught when later, according to the formula of
the conventional pastoral romance, Musidorus himself falls in
love with a woman.
Sidney is fond of sexually ambiguous disguises, and they occur
frequently in his romance. The real Amazon Zelmane
herself dresses as "a yong Gentleman," and is
accompanied by her maidservant Adromanas, who is
"apparrelled . . . like a Page." To confuse matters
still further, Zelmane adopts the name "Daiphantus,"
the same alias used by Pyrocles. Whenever "Daiphantus"
appears in the narrative, the less-than-vigilant reader cannot
remember if (s)he is a male or a female, and all the actions in
which (s)he participates become sexually ambiguous.
There are also several characters of the beautiful boy variety,
such as Lalus:
The anonymous poet of the Cyprian Lays,
Bion in his Epithalamium of Achilles and
Deidemia, and Statius in his
Achilleid tell of a transvestite
episode in Achilles' adolescence that was omitted by Homer, but
known to all the Renaissance poets. Achilles apparently disguised
himself as a woman in order to enter a type of convent at Scyros,
and there win the love of Deidemia. With his "hands as white
as any maiden's," "white and red blook upon the
cheeks," "mincing gait," and "maiden tresses
filleted," he was "a tender maiden fair to see."
The transvestite appealed to the Renaissance imagination as much
as the beautiful boy. In Sidney's immediate model, Montemayor's
Diana Enamorada (1542-1559), the
shepherdess Felismena follows her lover Don Felix disguised as
his page, a motif that abounds in medieval French literature, as
in the Tres chevalleureux Comte
d'Artois. In another model, Ariosto's
Orlando Furioso (1516), Rogero in his
pursuit of Alcyna becomes "effeminate":
His locks bedewd with waters of sweet sauour,
In the 1584 edition of the popular song-book A
Handefull of Pleasant delites we find the story of
Narcissus reinterpreted as a tale of a transvestite. Both the
author and title of the poem are unknown, for the title page is
missing from the unique copy. He is a bit of a country bumpkin:
In spite of Spenser's criticism of "that lothly uncouth
sight, /Of men disguiz'd in womanishe attire"
(Faerie Queene, 5.7.37); or Barnaby
Rich's reference to the Bible:
Robert Greene's rather innocent and playful introduction of a
woman disguised as a page in his play Friar Bacon
& Friar Bungay (1589) would go through various
stages of development until we come upon Margery disguised as a
boy loved by the libertine Jack Horner in Wycherley's
Country Wife (1675), but the overt
homosexual implcations of the latter merely point up the latent
homoeroticism of its precendents.
Shakespeare in As You Like It (1590)
directly imitated Lodge's Rosalynde,
expanded all of its homosexual implications, and added the
significant dimension that the woman disguised as a boy was
in fact a boy playing the part of a woman. The
Elizabethan audience, in spite of the modern view that they
complacently accepted this stage convention without a chuckle or
a raise of the eyebrows, would be fully aware that the boy upon
the stage was in this instance playing his real self as a
boyfriend of another actor. In the Epilogue, when Rosalynd makes
his/her curtain call, Shakespeare plays upon the awareness of
this fact by the male members of the audience:
Rosalind in her disguise - which would really be the boy-actor
without a disguise - is a "pretty youth", a
"Fair youth", a "Sweet youth",
"effeminate." (S)he chooses to be called "young
Master Ganymede" specifically because of its mythical
connotations: "I'll have no worse a name than Jove's own
page." The name of Jove is ever upon his/her lips:
"Jove, Jove! This shepherd's passion / Is much upon my
fashion." (S)he even alludes to the erotic metaphor of the
acorn as the glans penis, when Celia says she found
Orlando "under a tree, like a dropped acorn," and
Rosalind replies "It may well be called Jove's tree when it
drops forth such fruit."
When Orlando meets Rosalind disguised as Ganymede and tells
him/her of his incurable love for Rosalind, (s)he offers to cure
it, and tells a tale according to which the boy Ganymede was once
loved by a man who treated him as his mistress:
Within the area of apparent androgyny, rather than literal
transvestism, perhaps the finest example is the addressee of
Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609), Master
W.H., the Muse in boy's attire.
Go on to 7. Faithful Friend and Doting
Lover
CITATION: If you cite this Web page, please use the following form of citation:
While the Ovidian erotic narrative tradition is the hotbed of
lovely lad androgyny, the pastoral prose romance tradition is the
hotbed of sexual ambiguity arising from literal transvestism. In
the most influential prose romance, Sir Philip Sidney's
intermittent historiology The Countesse of Pembrokes
Arcadia (1590), the two faithful friends Musidorus
and Pyrocles encounter numerous Marlovian "maids in men's
attire" in their search for one another.
the effeminate love of a woman doth so womanish a man, that (if
he yeeld to it) it will not onely make him an Amazon;
but a launder, a distaff-spinner.
The Renaissance conception of the cause of "effeminacy"
was in some respects the opposite of our own. But Pyrocles
stubbornly defends women and his love of them, and asserts that
his counterfeiting an Amazon fulfills his honourable service in
the religion of love. He argues so vehemently that he faints.
there comes into the place where they ranne, a shepheard
stripling . . . very lovely withall . . . perfectly proportioned
. . . doing all things with so pretie grace
or Agenor, "whose face as yet did not bewray his sex, with
so much as shew of haire." In spite of all this ambiguity,
there is only one homosexual allusion in all of the
Arcadia. Basilus,
fearing his wife were not fully asleepe, . . . came lifting up
the cloathes, as gently as (I thinke) poore Pan did,
when, instead of Ioles bedde, he came into the rough imbracings
of Hercules: and laying himself downe, as tenderly as
a new Bride, rested a while with a very open eare, to marke each
breath of his supposed wife.
This allusion to Hercules' homoerotic tastes is made more
explicit in "The Lady of May" lyric which was appended
to the 1598 edition of the Arcadia:
Sidney's transvestites are modeled upon numerous sources, some
of them classical, but most of them contemporary. The three best-
known classical legends concerned three of the most virile men,
Hercules, Theseus, and Achilles. According to the ancient tale,
Hermes once sold Hercules to Omphale for her slave. She lavished
him with diamond necklaces, golden bracelets, a silver girdle,
a purple shawl, a yellow petticoat, and a green turban from which
peeped forth his curly perfumed locks. She in turn wore his
armour and his lion's pelt. Whenever he missed a stitch in
sewing, she slapped him with a golden slipper. One night Pan the
satyr sneaked into their tent, having in mind a pleasant tryst
with Omphale. But in the darkness he could not distinguish
between the figures on the two beds, until his fumbling fingers
came upon the sleeper clad in silk. Trembling in anticipation,
he crept in beside Hercules, and began unlacing his girdle. He
reached down to the hairy loins and discovered his mistake,
whereupon Hercules awoke and kicked him across the room, while
Omphale, now also awakened, laughed uproariously. Pan, mortified
as well as bruised, departed ruefully and began spreading the
rumour that Hercules' exchange of garments with Omphale was more
habitual than whimsical, and no doubt perverted. The story is
told by numerous authors, the most readily available being Ovid.
When wanton Pan, deceiv'd with Lion's skin,
Came to the bed, where wound for kisse he got,
To wo and shame the wretch did enter it,
Till this he tooke for comfort of his lot:
It is no shame, since Hercules was he.
About his necke a carknet rich he ware,
The allusion is probably to the Jesuit school of Valence,
believed to be a hotbed of sodomy.
Of precious stones, all set in gold well tride,
His armes that erst all warlike weapons bare,
In golden bracelets wantonly were tide,
Into his ears two rings conuayed are,
Of golden wyre, at which on either side,
Two Indian pearles in making like two pears,
Of passing price were pendent at his eares.
Stood curled round in order on his hed,
He had such wanton womanish behauour,
As though in Valence he had long beene bred.
(trans. John Harington, London, 1591)
I read of manie a woman faire,
Thomas Lodge in Rosalynde (1590)
brought transvestite shape-shifting to new heights. Alinda and
Rosalynd, whose parents thwart her love of men of low estate,
decide to leave home:
Did come this Narcissus to see,
Who perished when they came there
. . . [for he] vnto loue would not incline.
. . .
When vnto Venus it did appear,
How that his hart would not remoue,
She punisht him as you shal heare:
. . .
For when he went vpon a daie,
With other mo in strange disguise,
Himself forsooth he did aray
In womans attire of a new deuise,
And ouer a bridge as he did go. Ladie, ladie.
In the water he sawe his own shadow, My.
Which when he did perceiue and see,
A Ladie faire he saith it seemeth:
Forgat himself that it was he,
And iudgde that it was Dianaes Nymph,
. . .
With armes displaied he took his race,
And leapt into the riuer there,
And thought his Ladie to imbrace,
. . .
And there was drownd without redress, Ladie, Ladie.
His crueltie rewarded was, with such follie.
Cheerelie woman, as we have been bedfellowes in royaltie, we will
be fellowe mates in povertie: I will ever bee thy ALINDA, and
thou shalt ever rest to me ROSALYND: so shall the world canonize
our friendship, and speake of ROSALYND and ALINDA, as they did
of PILADES and ORESTES.
They decide that it would be unseemly (and dangerous) for two
maidens to wander without the company of a man, so Rosalynd
offers a suggestion:
I (thou seest) am of a tall stature, and would very well become
the person and aparell of a page, thou shalt bee my Mistris, and
I will play the man so properly, that (trust me) in what company
so ever I come I will not bee discovered; I will buy me a suite,
and have my rapier very handsomely at my side, and if any knave
offer wrong, your page wil shew him the point of his weapon.
Rosalynd accordingly adopts the appropriate name of
"Ganymede." After exhausting the ironic possibilities
of their being disguised as mistress and page, the two girls set
out to exhaust the possibilities of sexual innuendo by disguising
themselves as shepherd and shepherd's swain. They meet Rosader,
lover of Rosalynd, who sings a song in honour of her beauty.
Rosalynd-alias-Ganymede protests that men can be beautiful also:
if boyes might put on their garments, perhaps they would proove
as comely; if not as comely, it may be more curteous.
Then Rosalynd, still disguised as Ganymede, takes the part of
Rosalynd in a singing match with Rosader:
How now Forrester, have I not filled your turn? have I not plaide
the woman handsomely, and showed myselfe as coy in graunts, as
courteous in desires, and been as full of suspition, as men of
flatterie.
Rosader agrees, and suggests a transvestite mock marriage
ceremony:
And thereupon (quoth ALIENA) Ile play the priest, from this day
forth GANIMEDE shall call thee husband, and thou shalt call
GANIMEDE wife, and so weele have a marriage. Content (quote
ROSADER) and laught. Content (quote GANIMEDE) and changed as
redde as a rose: and so with a smile and a blush, they made up
this jesting match, that after proved to be a marriage in
earnest.
Rosalynd as Ganimede is the formosus puer beloved by
Phoebe:
PHOEBE all this while gazed on the perfection of GANIMEDE, as
deeplie enamoured on his perfection, as MONTANUS inveigled with
hers: for her eye made survey of his excellent feature, which she
found so rare, that she thought the ghost of ADONIS had been
leapt from ELIZIUM in the shame of a Swaine.
Ganimede is described as "the amorous Girle-boye", and
Phoebe dreams of him:
As she lay in her bed, she called to minde the severall beauties
of yong GANIMED, first his locks, which being amber hued, passeth
the wreathe that PHOEBUS puts on to make his front [forehead]
glorious; his browe of yvorie, . . . his eyes as bright as the
burnishing of the heaven . . . in his cheekes the vermilion
teinture of the Rose flourished upon naturall Alabaser, the blush
of the Morne and LUNAES silver showe were solively portrayed,
that the TROJAN that fills out wine to JUPITER was not halfe so
beautiful.
One indeed suspects that Phoebe is really Phoebus in woman's
guise. Rosalind's final transformation, when she reappears as a
woman, is as "DIANA triumphing in the Forrest,"
whereupon all couples are heterosexually married. But the
homoerotic ambiance is undeniable.
The woman shall not weare that which apperteineth to the man,
neither shall a man put on womans rayment: for all that doeso,
are abomination to the Lord thy God. (My Ladies
Looking Glasse, 1616; the reference is to
Deuteronomy, 22.5)
or the Puritan's attack on the vicious habits resulting from boys
playing the roles of women on the Elizabethan stage - in spite
of all this, Renaissance poets delighted in portraying the
transvestite in almost every imaginative literary genre.
If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that
pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied
not. And I am sure as many as have good beards or good faces or
sweet breaths will, for my kind offer, when I make curtsy bid me
farewell.
In As You Like It, Lodge's Rosalynd
remains Rosalind, Alinda becomes Celio, Rosader becomes Orlando,
Phoebe becomes Phebe, and Montanus becomes Sylvius. The implied
lesbian relationship between Rosalynd and Alinda is expanded.
Lodge pictures Rosalynd and Alinda as two faithful friends,
similar to Pylades and Orestes, and "bedfellowes in
royalty"; Shakespeare shows Rosalind and Celia as one soul
in bodies twain, with "the love / Which teacheth thee that
thou and I am one." But their love surpasses even
Renaissance friendship, and Celia addresses Rosalind as an
infatuated lover: "I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be
merry"; "Herein I see thou lovest me not with the full
weight that I love thee"; "Therefore, my sweet Rose,
my dear Rose, be merry"; "Shall we part, sweet
girl?"; "Why, how now, Ganymede! Sweet Ganymede!"
Celia says of herself and Rosalind, "We still have slept
together, / Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together,
/ And whereso'er we went, like Juno's swans, / Still we went
coupled and inseparable." And the courtier Le Beau observes
that their "loves / Are dearer than the natural bond of
sisters."
He was to imagine me his love, his mistress, and I set him every
day to woo me. At which time would I, being but a moonish youth,
grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking, proud,
fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of
smiles, for every passion something and for no passion truly
anything, as boys and women are for the most part cattle ofhis
color. Would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him,
then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I
drave my suitor from his mad humor of love to a living humor of
madness, which was to foswear the full stream of the world and
to live in a nook merely monastic.
This boy-actor, playing the part of a girl disguised as a boy,
telling of his past homosexual adventures, blatantly solicits the
favours of Orlando: "I would cure you if you would but call
me Rosalind and come every day to my cote and woo me."
Orlando, to the amazement of a modern audience and the chuckle
of an Elizabethan audience, agrees, and follows him/her into the
forest to play their sport.
Return to The Homosexual Pastoral Tradition
Rictor Norton, "The Maid in Man's Attire",
The Homosexual Pastoral Tradition, 20 June 2008 <http://rictornorton.co.uk/pastor06.htm>.
Return to Gay History and Literature