Sexual Disguise In Twelfth Night, As You Like It And The Merchant Of Venice

Disguise usually acts as an important factor in Shakespeare's comedies. Shakespeare developed his own tradition of women who control events in their plays - sometimes aided by disguise in the manner of Viola in Twelfth Night, Rosalind in As You Like It or Portia in The Merchant of Venice. Particularly, the comedies Twelfth Night, As You Like It, and The Merchant of Venice , though performed within a short time span, provide varied examples of a woman's use of cross-dressing in response to society's patriarchal constraints. All effectively comment on the weaknesses and even the frivolity of such a patriarchy while illuminating the necessity of homosocial relationships within the structure in order to keep it cohesive and exclusive. After all, from a realistic point of view, the disguise signals the difference between the sexes, in such a way that the temporary exchange of sex roles does renew the force of normality and of the teleology of event; from another point of view, it has the opportunity to show its "subversive" quality.The legendary story about disguise is often seen in the ancient Greek myths, and is frequently used on the Renaissance stage. Many academic fields are interested in the research of transvestism, especially the psychoanalysis, woman and gender studies and anthropology. First, the anthropologists, not like the psychoanalysts, don't see transvestism as an inappropriate behavior, but a kind of custom. A large amount of cross-cultural research proves that cross-dressing has different development and functions under different race and culture background. For instance, among the Latmul people in New Guinea, when the tension between genders becomes too volatile, people initiate a transvestite ceremony in which the...