Cross-Dressing in Shakespeare

[faustus]

It's been a while since I read MUch Ado about Nothing but whilst the girl (Hero?) pretends to be dead, am I right in thinking that this is one of the Shakespeare comedies without women dressing as men or vice versa (As You Like It, Twelfth Night, say)

Comments

[maryread.livejournal.com]

But in Beatrice it does have one of the sharpest women in Shakespeare. "You dare easier be friends with me than fight with mine enemy... O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace." &c.

And the Much Ado is About one woman being mistaken for another.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

The Beatrice and Benedict stuff is so much sharper than the sub-R&J narrative which this time gets a happy ending. But there's a novel (which I won't name for fear of spoilers) with lots of cross dressing by women as men, then women as men as women, where a character says "That's much ado and not mistake" which I was fairly certain was an inapt allusion (albeit possibly ironically inapt...)

If inapt is a word.


I saw a production at the RSC with Clive Merrison as Benedick. Can't remember who played Beatrice. They stole the show.

[maryread.livejournal.com]

Inapt, inept, let's call the whole thing off.

American Players Theatre here did Much Ado in Spanish-American War period dress (late Victorian) which costuming was not annoying enough to obscure the play, that blew me away (far more than the Branagh film). It was the year Eastwood's Unforgiven came out which I remember cause I did a mash-up in my apazine of the women's revenge themes.

Oh come on. I don't care about spoilers, and no one's listening. ?

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

Monstrous Regiment

[maryread.livejournal.com]

Oh!

I gave my copy to Number One Son last summer, no the summer before when he went to Nicaragua, and when everyone on the trip started trading around the books they had brought to read he gave it to all the girls (it was mostly girls on the trip) so they all read it, but all they brought along were girl books so he was out of luck there. Then he brought it home really in rather good condition. So it was probably only one or two others who read it actually.

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

I was remembering the Annotated Pratchett File:

"'Much ado, in fact, about nothing.'"

"A Shakespeare play in which women dress as men, and which includes a character named Benedick"

Since I'm (still bloody) writing about TP right now I thought it wiser not to take the annotation on trust.

[korintomichi]

Don't recall much cross dressing - but there was lots of mistaken identity. The film version amusingly had Keanu Reeves trying to be serious. He managed a better accent than in Dracula - remember Caarfaarx Abbaay?

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

That film logically cast all the Americans as English and all the English as foreign. Hilarious. I didn't know Harker hard a faam in Arfricar.