Shakespeare offers us a path to self-actualization

Last semester, I was watching the clock tick, marking the disturbingly slow passage of time, when I overheard a statement from one of my peers that confused me. The topic of the day was William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” and while I count myself a fan of his work, I just couldn’t get myself to care about the discussion at hand.

One of my classmates posed the question as to why there were no women actors in Elizabethan England’s theaters, wondering if this was because of some archaic belief that women weren’t deemed “worthy enough” to perform drama for the masses.

Instead, the reasoning was due to the low reputation of theater. Theaters were seen as places of immorality and an affront to the Church of England, with boys cross-dressing as girls, depictions of moral grayness and general debauchery. In an attempt to guard the moral purity of Elizabethan women, they were not permitted to perform — a move still misogynistic in nature and in practice, just with different reasoning.

While an interesting supposition, although not accurate, it got me wondering: What did Shakespeare think about women? What did he think about gender? For a playwright from so long ago, could the arguments he posed then still be of value to us today?

Case studies on cross-dressers

It’s very easy to write off the works of a man who died hundreds of years ago as “antiquated,” as many of us were introduced to his work begrudgingly in some high school English class, likely by a teacher droning on about the significance of Shakespeare’s work. However, there’s clearly a good deal of his work that has resonated with modern audiences if he remains heralded as the world’s greatest playwright.

“[These plays are] 500 years old by this guy in England, and yet there are still so many scenes and lines that are just emotionally resonant for me, they still really get me in my heart and in my guts” said Camila Reyes, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences’ English department. “I just think the exploration of gender and sexuality in the plays is really beautiful and moving.”

When depicting gender in his plays, Reyes noted a distinct style.

“[Shakespeare] is quite playful about it and kind of meta. There are quite a few instances where he’s being a bit cheeky and referring to the fact that this is a boy actor playing the role of a girl that is dressed up as a boy,” Reyes said.

This was a feature necessitated by the aforementioned fact that women were not allowed onstage; however, it would become the basis for multiple of his comedies as he examined what gender presentation can look like.

Two of the most apt examples of Shakespeare questioning the way gender identity is performed and thus internalized are some of his most famous comedies, “Twelfth Night” and “As You Like It,” respectively starring Viola and Rosalind. Both of these characters undergo comedically harrowing journeys into foreign lands under the guise of men as a form of protection, from Viola as Cesario to Rosalind as Ganymede.

“It seems to me that both Viola and Rosalind have such huge intelligence. They’re so smart, both of them,” said Laura Flanagan, an associate professor of theater practice in acting at the School of Dramatic Arts and the director of the School of Dramatic Arts’ recent production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” “Viola is such a good actor, she does that Cesario bit to a T … That new costume gives them a place where their intelligence can actually thrive in the world where they don’t have to be hampered by their social aspect.”

Both of these heroines come from nobility and the rigid social roles that accompany it. But by escaping into lawless lands, they’re both able to explore who they are outside of what the feminine prescription of behavior dictates.

“[Rosalind] being able to go off into the woods and become a man for a period of time, there’s some sort of catharsis that comes from being able to leave the restrictions of the city of society,” said Amelia Cruz, a doctoral candidate in Dornsife’s English department.

It is in both the forest of Arden and the city of Illyria, cloaked in men’s garb, that Rosalind and Viola come into themselves.

“It’s a way for them to step outside themselves and play a different role … It’s kind of a weird way of self-actualization or learning to come into their own,” Reyes said. “I feel like because they’re in disguise or costume, it kind of allows them a way to be more vulnerable or emotional.”

It’s funny how this anonymity is what allows them access to this vulnerability, shielding them from the purview of society and the expectations of others — which then allows them to find themselves in defiance of those expectations.

“I think they have a lot more freedom and a lot more fun,” Flanagan said. “Those are female-identifying people who get to put on men, and as men they get to give direction. They get to talk back to power. They get to do all of these things that in their other identity they don’t get to do.”

At the end of their plays, Rosalind and Viola both return to their presentation as women and enter heterosexual marriages, supposedly returning to the fold. However, the return to stasis isn’t a one-to-one parallel to the beginning of the play. While they may be in the same presentations as they were when they began, they have unlocked deeper facets of themselves through self-fashioning that many live their whole lives without uncovering.

This knowledge gained isn’t for naught, as they proved to their husbands that they are just as capable of knowledge and wit as they are.

Shakespeare urges audiences to question which parts of ourselves are imposed upon by external influences, and what our true selves truly look like. The inclusion of defiance and experimentation within gender identity highlights the possible depths of self-understanding one can go when rejecting conformist views. Both Rosalind and Viola thoroughly explore their gender and subsequently return to their identities as women, but with a greater understanding of who they are beyond being women in society.

In a 2017 blog post for the Globe Theatre, Director of Education Will Tosh wrote that “Shakespeare’s vision of a gender identity that can slip along the scale from female to male and back seems, in 2017, intriguingly familiar … It’s worth remembering that gender fluidity is no 21st-century invention: Shakespeare’s comedies show that when it comes to gender, it’s all a matter of performance.”

Viewing these characters as proto-genderqueer figures in literature can shed light on the historical prevalence of gender queerness, as well as the beauty that comes from exploring expression. It can be easy to think that transsexuality and gender fluidity are new concepts, but it’s important to look back on history and literature to remind ourselves that the human condition has never changed, only our environment.

“The past is not as straight or cisgender as a lot of people may want it to be,” Reyes said. “I think people who aren’t very familiar with [Shakespeare’s] work kind of like to see him as this pillar of conservative Western values when that truly wasn’t the case.”