Why Do Yo Change

In this paper I will try to answer to the question of why some of the characters in Shakespeare’s comedies change or transform themselves into somebody else, in many cases of the opposite gender. To do so, I will focus on three main comedies in which this phenomenon occurs - Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It – although I might also mention some features and examples from other comedies such as The Taming Of The Shrew or The Comedy Of Errors.

To begin with, and as I always do on my papers, I will briefly give some information about the time and place in which these comedies were written, performed and/or published, which is information that I consider to be taken into account.

‘As You Like It’ was written between 1599-1600 and first published – in the Folio edition – in 1623; the main source William Shakespeare used for this play is Rosalynde (1590), a prose romance from Thomas Lodge[1] (ISE).

As I said in my earlier paper on the comparison between Benedick and Antipholus of Syracuse ‘Antipholus vs. Benedick’, “ ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ “was likely first performed in the winter of 1598-1599,^[1] and it remains one of Shakespeare's most enduring plays on stage” (Wikipedia). “It is believed that the script was first printed in 1600” (Alchin).

According to Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, ‘Twelfth Night’ “ was thought appropriate to the festive occasion of Candlemas (2 February) 1602 when, in the first known allusion to it, John Manningham, a law student of the Middle Temple on London, noted ‘at our feast we had a play called Twelfth Night, or What You Will’”(719).

We can say that the three comedies were written, more or less, one after the other in a moment – the end of the 16^th century and the beginning of the 17^th century, the Elizabethan time – in which theatre was dominated by men since “during the Elizabethan era only men were allowed to act in the theatre until 1660 - it was judged to be unseemly for a woman to undertake such a role” (Alchin). And this fact is essential to what I am trying to explain.

William Shakespeare, like the playwrighters of his time, wrote plays in which characters of both sexes were present. Thus young boys or men committed themselves to act as women. And this was forced by law – as explained above. But, why did Shakespeare change these men – like – women into women – like – men?

Starting with ‘As You Like It’, we can see that in this comedy – in 1.3. 40-56 - Celia and Rosalind, after hearing Duke Frederick and his lords urging Rosalind to leave the Court, accusing her of treachery just because she is the daughter of her father – the Duke’s brother, already banished by the Duke himself – they make a decision: to get out of there and go to “the forest of Ardene” (1.3. 406). But they do not want to be discovered and Rosalind decides, as she explains in 1.3. 114-124, to disguise herself as a man called Ganymede[2] and Celia becomes now Aliena (1.3. 127).

The reason why the man-woman turns into woman-man, in this comedy is because of looking for a way to escape. Rosalind needs not to be herself and Shakespeare ‘needs her’ to be Ganymede to achieve the comical scenes in the forest by making Phoebe – the shepherdess, wooed by Silvius – fall in love with her and alive the subplot of the play. And this is the purpose of this ‘change of body’.

In ‘Twelfth Night’ we find Viola, a lady that appears in Illyria (1.2. 2) after the ship in which she was travelling sinks and who, at the same time, has – apparently - lost his twin brother Sebastian. She asks the captain that has saved her from drowning to tell her “Who governs here?” (1.2. 22). This question and its answer leads us readers to know that Orsino is the Duke that governs Illyria and that he loves Olivia, “a virtuous maid” (1.2. 32) but she does not love him, since she lost her father and brother and was left alone in a world of men. Viola wants to meet Orsino and stand by his side and the only way to do so is to disguise herself as a lad and “present me as an eunuch to him” (1.2. 52). Now Viola is no longer Viola but Cesario.

The aim of changing appearance in this case is also to escape, in some way, and to find love. In my opinion Viola wants to escape from her past, from the fact that she no longer has a house or a place to go, not even a family to care about, and she realizes that becoming a man, in a society ruled by man, is the only way she has to be somebody and be near the only person she thinks about now – Orsino.

Here Shakespeare uses this character to introduce the story of Orsino and Olivia. She – Viola - appears to let us know who they are, but she can only do this by being a man. What had happened if she had stayed as a lady? Probably she would have ended up marrying one of the surviving sailors of the sinked ship or even the captain that rescued her, leading the play to a completely different story. By making her become a man Shakespeare makes sure she is going to have a happy ending finding her disappeared brother and marrying Orsino.

Something similar happens, for example, in ‘The Taming Of The Shrew’. Here Lucentio disguises himself as a Latin Tutor – Cambio - in order to woo Bianca and gain her love. Meanwhile, Tranio, Lucentio’s servant, disguises himself as if he were his lord, Lucentio, to try to convince Bianca’s father – Biondello - that he – Lucentio – is the best suitor for his daughter. All of a sudden, Hortensio does the same and makes Biondello think he is a music tutor – Licio - for Bianca. These three men, Lucentio, Hortensio and Tranio also change their appearance to love and be loved, thus to find some sort of happiness.

And we also find something similar to happen in ‘The Comedy Of Errors’. In this case Shakespeare also plays the change of ‘body’ with both Antipholus and Dromio, thanks to the fact that both of them have their twin brothers. But this time the characters do not change their appearance because they want and it is their own decision but because they are mistaken. The cause is not in their hands but in the others’.

However, although all these comedies deal with the fact that somebody changes his/her appearance because or due to something, with the next play I found something different.

Whereas in the previous commented plays, the change is physical, I have found that in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ what changes is not only the body but also the mind.

By changing the body I understand that either a man or a woman starts seeming to be a woman and a man, respectively or a man or a woman begin to be someone else not themselves, like Celia being Aliena or Hortensio being Licio. And this is what I think happens to Hero.

Once Hero identity has been ‘stolen’ by Don John (2.2) and after the sad not-wedding scene (4.1) when Claudio accuses Hero of being with another man the night before the wedding (4.1. 83-86), Hero faints and the Friar proposes to tell people that she has dead because of the abuse she has suffered. She is not really dead, but seems to be. And this change from ‘being’ to ‘not being’ is placed here to give tension to the comedy and reveal the fact that Don John is not as good a gentleman as he might seemed.

On the other hand, transforming the mind is what happens to Benedick and Beatrice in this play.

These – at first sight – good-rival characters that every time they find themselves together start criticizing one each other, making ‘much ado about nothing’, eventually fall in love. There has been a great change in their minds – and in their hearts so. But why? Obviously, the other characters, especially Don Pedro, want them to fall in love with each other, and do their best to achieve their plans – as we can see in 2.3 and 3.1. But which is the aim of this transformation?

Shakespeare by making Benedick fall in love with Beatrice makes him become what he always had avoided and criticized: “a man is a fool when he dedicates his behaviours to love” (2.3. 9-10). And the same happens with Beatrice. She says that she “may sit in a corner and cry ‘Haigh-ho for a husband’” (2.1. 299-300) and she finds love in front of her, walking along ‘the other side of the street’. The main cause is love but the purpose is to make people dream that the deepest desire can come true with the proper ‘push’. And that is the main function of comedies; to allow the audience to dream of a different life.

To sum up with, I think that the change in gender can be, from the point of view of the characters, due to personal motivations to achieve love and, from a functional point of view, the ‘role’ they ‘play’, in most of the cases is that of being a link between the main plot and the subplot – as in ‘As You Like It? -, between the characters and the audience/reader of the play – as in ‘Twelfth Night’ – or just to be the union between real life and dreams – as I think happens in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’.

"Thomas Lodge." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. © 1994, 2000-2006, on Infoplease. © 2000–2007 Pearson Education, publishing as Infoplease. 25 May. 2007 http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0830135.html .

Wells, Stanley and Taylor, Gary eds. et al. Introduction to “Twelfth Night.” The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works. 2^nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press 2005.

[1] “Lodge, Thomas, 1558?–1625, English writer, grad. Oxford, 1577”.

[2] “Ganymede is the young, beautiful boy that became one of Zeus' lovers” (Mythica).