DRAMA QUEENS: PART 4: 17TH CENTURY GAY THEATRE

gay Shakespeare

David McGillivray’s new history series continues this week…

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LIFE UPON THE WICKED STAGE

By the turn of the 17th century it was common knowledge that the theatre was a favourite haunt of gay men. In Ben Jonson’s play Poetaster (1601) a character exclaims, “What! Shall I have my son a stager now? An engle for players?” (An engle was a man’s younger male partner). Plays with gay content weren’t unusual. George Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois (1603?) is about the bisexual French aristocrat of the title, who was the lover of the Duke of Anjou. In John Fletcher’s Monsieur Thomas (1610-16?) Hylas snogs Thomas, who’s disguised as a girl (“Methinks her mouth still is monstrous rough.”) But of course the playwright who now seems to be the gayest of his generation is Bill Shakespeare (1564-1616). One book, Shakesqueer: A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, finds gay subtext in every one of the Bard’s plays. Present-day productions sometimes imply that Iago destroys Othello because he loves him; that Romeo and Mercutio have been lovers; and even that Hamlet is in the closet. Many scholarsare intrigued by the fact that there are three men called Antonio in Shakespeare plays and each could be said to be romantically involved with a man called Sebastian (or, in the case of The Merchant of Venice, Bassanio, the Italian form of Sebastian). To add more fuel to the fire, St Sebastian was a gay icon long before Shakespeare’s time.

The Puritans, who split from the Protestant Church during Elizabeth I’s reign, became increasingly powerful in the 17th Century. Civil War in 1642 led to the execution of Charles I, and the proclamation of a republic headed by Puritan Oliver Cromwell. Shortly after the start of the War, London’s theatres were closed. Subsequently plays could be published but not performed. Illegal theatres were raided and actors arrested. One play of interest from this period is The Loyal Lovers (1652) by Cosmo Manuche (1613-73). It features a drunken monk, Sodom, a “beast in mans cloaths.” Sodom: “Pray name the place most convenient for you, and I’le not faile to attend you.” Riggle: “What think you of the Naked-boy in Flesh-lane?”

Within months of the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, theatres re-opened and England’s first professional actresses took to the stage. Boy actors continued to play women’s roles until 1662, when hetero Charles II said no. One of the most famous boy actors was Ned Kynaston, much admired by Samuel Pepys, who mentions him in his diary (“He made the loveliest lady that ever I saw in my life.”) Kynaston was the lover of George Villiers, who had been the lover of James I. Another gay actor was James Nokes. More about him next week.

The Restoration brought with it Restoration Comedy and a new breed of effeminate man, the fop, who flirts with women, but loves anything fashionable. In Colley Cibber’s Love’s Last Shift (1695) Sir Novelty Fashion claims to have introduced an item of clothing called the “bardash”. (The word actually means the same as engle!) But it seems that only one character in Restoration Comedy is unequivocally gay. In John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse (1696), the matchmaker Coupler makes a move on Lord Foppington’s brother Young Fashion, who says, “Keep your hands to yourself, you old dog you,
or I’ll wring your nose off.”

The most scandalous Restoration play? It’s Sodom, or The Quintessence of Debauchery (1672?), perhaps written by John Wilmot (1647-1680). In it Bolloxinian, King of Sodom, says, “I do proclaim that buggery may be used o’er all the land so cunt not be abused.” A copy of the script was sold at Sotheby’s in 2004 for £45,600.

 

WAY OUT EAST

While they were disappearing from the London stage, boy actors were changing the course of history in the Far East. In Japan Kabuki theatre banned women from the stage in 1629. Young men and boys took the female roles. Gary Leupp writes, “The homosexual appeal of the Kabuki actor was…a brash, provocative sensuality that drove male (and female) spectators wild with desire.” Kabuki helped make homosexuality fashionable. Laurence Senelick adds, “So great was the popularity of male same sex love at this time that it has been cited as a cause of the decline of the population in the second half of the Tokugawa period [about 1733 onwards].”


GREAT GAY PLAYS

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1593)
Today students compete with each other online to find “Shakespeare’s gayest play.” With its fairies, Greeks and men in drag, this has got to be one of his campest. It includes a performance of Pyramus and Thisbe, performed badly by amateur actors. Flute says, “Nay faith let not me play a woman”, but ends up playing the “beauteous lady Thisbe”, who communicates with her lover Pyramus through a wall. She says, “My cherry lips have often kiss’d thy stones.” (Stones = testicles).

As You Like It (c. 1599)
Rosalind disguises herself as a boy and significantly takes the name Ganymede (boyfriend of Zeus). Orlando is disturbed that he’s attracted to Ganymede. Celia is disturbed that she’s attracted to Rosalind.  Naturally this situation is funnier if Rosalind is actually played by a man. Consequently the play is occasionally done with an all-male cast. The very successful 1991 production had Adrian Lester as Rosalind.

DRAMA QUEENS: PART 5: 18TH & 19TH CENTURY GAY THEATRE

 

 

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