Desiring Cross-Dressed Female Heroines in The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night
Brittany Alsot
Shakespeare had little use for the model of Petrarchan love inherited from the commedia
dell’arte tradition except to critique it. He was, according to Stephen Orgel, interested instead in
“relationships between men and women…but not, on the whole, as husbands and wives” (18).
With the trials and tribulations of wooing brought into the spotlight and the ceremony of nuptials
swept nearly into the background, desire becomes of utmost importance, and “all love is sexual
in Shakespeare” (7), as Maurice Charney asserts. By shifting the focus away from the happy
heterosexual marriage at the end of the play and towards the banter of young, sexual men and
women, Shakespeare grants weight to homoeroticism, whether or not the characters pair with the
opposite sex in the end. The cross-dressing female characters in The Merchant of Venice and
Twelfth Night play on this homoeroticism and complicate the comedies’ notions of love and
desire.
Desire, Catherine Belsey reminds us in her essay “Love in Venice,” is a dangerous
emotion, especially in The Merchant of Venice, in which “lovers give and hazard all they have”
(199). As Portia takes power and Bassanio follows his desire, in the end a new, more egalitarian,
kind of marriage is established. Her account of the play is an accurate one, but she downplays the
implications of Portia’s cross-dressing, leaving unexplored some important elements pertaining
to the question of desire in the comedies. A new kind of nuptial is created between Bassanio and
Portia, but the road leading up to it (and, we could infer, away from it as well) is fraught with the
strain on traditional notions of gender and sexuality created by cross-dressing. While Portia
disguises herself as a man for the fourth act of The Merchant of Venice, Viola explores this
tension of transvestitism more fully in Twelfth Night by remaining in disguise throughout the
entire play.
One meaning of the full title – Twelfth Night or What You Will – is what you wish to be
or, perhaps, what you wish others to be. Viola is the suitor that Olivia wishes Orsino were. Olivia
even says to Cesario, “I would you were as I would have you be” (III.ii 142), but he is not as he
appears to anyone. It is only Cesario who knows how to woo a lady because, of course, he is a
lady only dressed as a man. Thus, Olivia is attracted to Cesario because he understands the
female sensibility but speaks in the wooing language of a young male suitor. This is certainly not
the way society intended things to be. At the start, Viola is set with quite the challenge: to change
the situation of a still-mourning Olivia, who is not prepared to accept any suitor, much less a
tunnel-vision Orsino, whose sights are cast fully and irrevocably on Olivia, in spite of her
impassiveness. Once cross-dressed as Cesario, though, Viola finds she has the power to subvert
these seemingly static circumstances. This is not because she has become male and therefore has
risen in status, but rather because she has accepted a doubled gender identity, one which she is
arguably predisposed to because she is one half of a male/female set of twins.
Love and desire are dealt with differently depending on gender. And gender, it turns out,
particularly in Twelfth Night, depends on costume and performance. On a Renaissance scale,
men are greater than women in that the latter lack what the former have – a point Shakespeare
reminds us of constantly. “But,” Janet Adelman argues, “if the allusions to lack in Shakespeare’s
transvestite comedies serve initially to secure difference by registering the woman’s presence
under the masculine costume, they also serve to undermine the difference.” She goes on to
conclude that “lack disappears because women disappear” (24), an assertion which comes off as
true only on a literal level and blatantly incorrect on a mimetic level. If Portia does not remind us
often that she does indeed lurk beneath the robes of the doctor, Viola can certainly be found
alone or speaking in riddles revealing of her female self throughout Twelfth Night. Viola dressed
as Cesario even points to her physical “deficiency” when faced with a duel, crying, “Pray God
defend me! A little thing/ would make me tell them how much I lack of a man” (III.iv 302-3).
Adelman’s point is bound up in the contemporary cross-gendered casting of Shakespearean
plays, meaning that a female character dressing up as a man would be played by a boy who
basically dressed and acted as some version of himself. Thus the cross-dressing characters of The
Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night remind audiences of the many layers of gender that are
constantly present on the stage. Portia plays on this ambiguity, desiring the doubled identity and
taking pride in acting like a boy but appearing feminine, as she tells Nerissa,
When we are both accoutered like young men,
I’ll prove the prettier fellow of the two
[…] and speak of frays
Like a fine bragging youth, and tell quaint lies,
How honorable ladies sought my love. (III.v 63-70)
But the mere presence of the cross-dressers is not enough because, as Stephen Orgel says,
“[t]here has always been a crucial behavioral element to gender that has nothing to do with the
organs of generation” (19). Especially in Twelfth Night, the convincingness of this performance
depends on the costume when Orsino will not accept or refer to Viola as a woman until she is in
the right clothes (Orgel 104). It is precisely this ambiguity that does the work of undermining
gender differences in the cross-dressed heroines by giving them freedom and power within their
relationships with men rather than eliminating their presence as Adelman suggests.
In their male clothing, Viola and Portia can enter into situations otherwise closed to them,
but they also learn that this is a potentially dangerous power. “A fiend like thee might bear my
soul to hell” (III.iv 217), Olivia admits to the sway Cesario has over her. Viola, however, does
not possess much physical prowess, which puts her in a potentially dangerous situation when Sir
Toby sets up a duel between Cesario and Sir Andrew. She is ultimately saved from such violent
consequences of her cross-dressing by the forces of the comedic narrative. The Merchant of
Venice does not prove so lenient with all its characters. In the realm of the court, Portia,
disguised as a doctor, desires to use her power to save Antonio, but her prosecution gets out of
hand and, in a tragic turn, Shylock’s entire livelihood is stripped away from him. To corroborate
Shakespeare’s conflation of the power of disguise, Malvolio in Twelfth Night takes Feste, the
clown, seriously when the latter is dressed as a curate. None of these characters are entirely
“what they will,” in spite of their costuming. In the end, when the illusive power of their
disguises is stripped away, it is their respective husband’s recognition of their constructed gender
presentation that empowers Viola and Portia (Orgel 82).
The nature of the love relationships must first be illuminated in order to understand the
importance of the male acceptance of the heroine’s cross-dressing. Love, in The Merchant of
Venice, is strongly tied to commerce, and desire is the force that causes lovers to throw frugality
to the wind and hazard all for the person they want. Most notably, it is Antonio who enters into
contracts that risk his life and livelihood in order to display his love for Bassanio. This sounds
remarkably similar, however, to what Portia does for Bassanio. Portia’s hazard dresses her in
men’s clothing and sends her into the commercial world of Venice to fight for what has become
her charge: her new husband, Bassanio, and his “love,” Antonio. Here, the love between friends
and the love between husband and wife become at once conflated for Portia and conflicted for
Bassanio. Portia takes it upon herself to care for Antonio as she would for Bassanio, at the same
time that Bassanio favors Antonio’s love over Portia’s. Her riddle of the ring, executed while in
male disguise, only serves to complicate matters for Bassanio since, Bruno Bettelheim says,
“[T]he riddle to be solved is a sexual one: whoever understands the secret which the other sex
presents has gained his maturity” (qtd in Belsey 201). How can Bassanio be expected to solve
the riddle of his wife when she embodies both sexes at once? Even by the end, her sexual
identity is unclear. Instead of the happy, hetero-normative marriage that is supposed to represent
the satisfactory resolution of the riddle of the sexes, Bassanio’s acceptance of both Portia and her
male alter-ego, Balthazar, establishes a much more subversive union. It is precisely his
heightened love for Antonio that allows Bassanio to accept Portia’s double-gendered identity.
While it is impossible and incorrect to label attraction and love between Shakespearean
characters of the same sex in modern terms, a sense of homoeroticism is inseparable from crossdressing in these plays. The confusion between Viola’s true gender and her performed gender
create many under and overtones of homoerotic desire. Although Olivia’s attraction for Viola is
accidental, the pederasty that develops between Count Orsino and Cesario seems more than
incidental. If she had wished to gain the count’s attention and affection from the outset of the
play, could Viola not have attempted some other scheme that would have allowed her to present
herself in a female gendered way? Perhaps the answer to this lies in Valerie Traub’s observation
of how “both the enjoyment with which [Viola] stands in for Orsino in wooing Olivia and the
extent to which she elicits Olivia’s desire carry a potent homoerotic charge” (56). Although
many critics point to Viola’s “willow cabin” speech (I.v 268-276) as a turning point in Olivia’s
feelings towards Cesario, it also demonstrates Viola’s full investment in the wooing, whether or
not she actually seeks a relationship with Olivia. There is something at once exciting and
repulsive to Viola about cross-dressing. She terms herself “poor monster” (II.ii 34), but does not
remove her disguise until the very end, even when she perceives the harm she does by leading on
Olivia. True, in contemporary London the law provided severe punishment for female cross-
dressing because the act was associated with illicit sex. However, Renaissance plays took a
romantic and sympathetic view of cross-dressing, and Twelfth Night, with its festive nature,
doesn’t concern itself with such legal ramifications (Shapiro 18 & 24).
There is something attractive to Orsino, as well, about his boy page, largely based on
Cesario’s feminine qualities. “Diana’s lip/ is not more smooth and rubious,” Orsino praises
Cesario in verse, “thy small pipe/ Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound,/ And all is
semblative a woman’s part” (I.iv 31-4). As a eunuch, Orgel tells us, Cesario would have been
associated with sexual desire that lacks potency, and “conceived as an equivalent, or an
alternative to being a woman” (54-5). At the same time, eunuchs presented “sexual alternatives,”
an “either-and-both” dichotomy that was attractive in its illicitness (Orgel 56). Mirroring Olivia
courting Cesario, Orsino takes the boy into his confidence and assures that they spend a
significant amount of time alone (Shapiro 156-60). Viola is not bashful about admitting her love
for Orsino either, telling him, “My father had a daughter lov’d a man/ As it might be perhaps,
were I a woman,/ I should love your lordship” (II.iv 107-9). Even in his rage in the last scene,
Orsino implicates Cesario as his love – a status Viola willingly accepts, risks and all –
Duke. Come, boy, with me, my thoughts are ripe in mischief.
I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love,
To spite a raven’s heart within a dove.
Vio. And I most jocund, apt, and willingly,
To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die. (V.i 129-33)
Surely, desire is present and comes fully alive when Cesario reveals himself as a woman and an
appropriate object of sexual desire, Joseph Pequigney asserts, “hence the immediate proposal”
(183).
We know sexual desire does exist between men, though, and probably between Orsino
and Cesario, because of the subplot with Antonio and Sebastian. Not only does Antonio show
Sebastian an uncanny and desperate level of devotion that smacks of a desire beyond friendship,
but Charney points to Antonio’s language as the litmus test of desire. His use of the word
“adore” in place of the more familiar term “love” turns Antonio’s soliloquy into an “erotic
discourse”: “But come what may, I do adore thee so/ That danger shall seem sport, and I will go”
(II.i 47-8). Later, his use of phallic imagery and the strong term “desire” in “My desire/ (More
sharp than filèd steel) did spur me forth” (III.iii 4-5) connote intensified emotions (Charney 168).
In Act V, Antonio makes explicit the sexual nature of his relationship with Sebastian, explaining
that they have been inseparable day and night for three months. “It is the classic homoerotic
relationship,” Pequigney says, “wherein the mature lover serves as guide and mentor to the
young beloved” (181). While the nature of Antonio and Bassanio’s relationship in The Merchant
of Venice is not exactly equivalent, the love they share arguably prepares Bassanio to accept
Portia’s masculine side.
In the formula of the comedies, desire is both the disrupting and the uniting force. Crossdressing, as it appears in Merchant of Venice and particularly Twelfth Night, works hand in hand
with desire’s destabilizing sensibility to further challenge the order of society. “Desire,” Belsey
admits, “is only imperfectly domesticated” (198). The gender-bending undertaken by the female
heroines even calls into question the very nature of desire. Characters that are assumed to be
heterosexual, like Olivia, are revealed as having homoerotic proclivities when they are attracted
to a cross-dressed woman, like Viola, whose feminine features can’t possibly be hidden entirely.
And in spite of the apparently happy marriages that round out each comedy, heterosexuality
doesn’t necessarily win out over homoeroticism. Pequigney argues that the pre-marital
homoerotic relationships that have been established are not forsaken with the exchange of
marriage vows in Act V:
The way [Portia] returns the ring is particularly compelling. She does so not
directly but by symbolic indirection from wife through friend to husband. This
gesture, in accord with the accompanying words, does not signify the rejection of
Antonio but, to the contrary, his incorporation into the marriage (191).
He goes on to argue that Twelfth Night’s Antonio will be greeted with a similar acceptance,
evidenced by Sebastian’s “most impassioned speech” when he again encounters his love,
exclaiming, “Antonio, O my dear Antonio!/ How have the hours rack’d and tortur’d me/ Since I
have lost thee!” (V.i 218-20) (Pequigney 182). For Olivia’s part, her only verbal
acknowledgement of her marriage to someone other than Cesario is directed at Viola, indicating
their continued relationship with the jubilant cry, “A sister! you are she” (V.i 326).
The acceptance of sexual duality doesn’t only exist as an appendage to marriage, but,
more importantly, within the marriages as well. Through their previous relationships with men
(or male-dressed women), each male hero has been prepared to embrace his wife along with her
male gendered alter-ego. As proof of his commitment, Orsino in the final lines of the play still
insists on calling Viola by her male name:
Cesario, come—
For so you shall be while you are a man;
But when in other habits you are seen,
Orsino’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen. (V.i 385-8)
Similarly, Bassanio welcomes Balthazar as much as Portia into his bedroom, “Sweet doctor, you
shall be my bedfellow/ when I am absent, then lie with my wife” (V.i 284-5). This acceptance of
gender as well as sexual duality allows the heroines a fuller identity within marriage, working to
create the marital partnership that Catherine Belsey longed for. This is a give-and-take for the
women as much as for the men. If Viola can accept Orsino’s inconstancy in love, then he can
accept her inconstant and dual sexuality:
Duke. For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women’s are.
Vio. I think it well, my lord. (II.iv 32-5)
Limits must be set, though, and Portia will not tolerate talk of cuckoldry. ‘Speak not so grossly’
(V.I265-6), she reprimands Gratiano. Yet, Pequigney notes, “[s]he does not… find the joking
about men going to bed together ‘gross’ or disquieting” (192-3). The basis for this
companionable marriage is respect for the notion that “[t]he gender of these figures is mutable,
constructed, a matter of choice” (Orgel 57), and the same goes for the sexuality.
Cross-dressing serves not only to complicate desire, but also to illuminate the multigendered nature of love and the importance of many types of relationships. In The Merchant of
Venice and Twelfth Night, desire is no longer restricted only to those whom society says are
acceptable to love and marry. And marriage, for that matter, is not as strictly heterosexual as it
would seem.
Works Cited
Adelman, Janet. “Making Defect Perfection: Shakespeare and the One-Sex Model.” Enacting
Gender on the English Renaissance Stage. Ed. Viviana Comensoli and Anne Russell.
Urbana: Uof Illinois P, 1999.
Belsey, Catherine. “Love in Venice.” Shakespeare and Gender. Ed. Deborah E. Barker and Ivo
Kamps. London: Verso, 1995.196-213.
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales.
London. 1978. 128.
Charney, Maurice. Shakespeare on Love and Lust. New York: Columbia U P, 2000.
Orgel, Stephen. Impersonations. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1996.
Pequigney, Joseph. “The Two Antonios and Same-Sex Love in Twelfth Night and The Merchant
of Venice.” Shakespeare and Gender. Ed. Deborah E. Barker and Ivo Kamps. London:
Verso, 1995. 178-195
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore
Evans et al. Boston: Houghton, 1997. 288-317.
---. Twelfth Night. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. Boston: Houghton,
1997. 442-474.
Shapiro, Michael. Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P,
1996.
Traub, Valerie. The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England. Cambridge:
Cambridge U P, 2002.