Mark,

Well, if we extend the issue into gender-bending, Bill the Bard is obviously
central, with the Ganymede name that Rosalind takes on as a (possible) index
of a  male gay figure.

[Ages ago, I think backchannel, Rictor and I tried to work out how early the
"male homosexual" element in the term "gay" comes in.  I think conventional
wisdom has it that it appears sometime in the nineteenth century.  Rictor
can document this pretty thoroughly at least as far back as the early 18thC.
I managed to make a kind of case (via the collocation of "minion" with
"gay") to take it back to the sixteenth century.  Something that seems to
have been conveniently airbrushed out of linguistic history.]

And the whole issue is mushed here with the
boy-actor-plays-female-character-who-takes-on-a-male-role stuff.

I think, for me, the most gender-bent play by WS is 12N, with the
Antonio/Sebastian bit as having a (pretty obviously?) male gay subtext.

There's a play by Lily that's pertinent here, but at this time in the
morning, damned if I can remember which one.

> A wee bit earlier, I think 1684(ish), Thomas Otway's comedy The Atheist
> features, as marplot, a revengeful scorned woman who decides to get her
own
> back by seducing her beloved's beloved.  Genders are artfully bent all
over
> the place.

This sounds as if it might link into the Moll Cutpurse play about the same
period, Moll being a female who dressed and swashbuckled as a man.  Gill
Spraggs (_Outlaws and Highwaymen: The Cult of the Robber in England from the
Middle Ages to the 19th century_) did some work on this, I know, but I don't
know if she ever published it -- an article maybe, certainly not a book.

http://www.outlawsandhighwaymen.com/

But to come back for a moment to the area of specifically male
homosexuality, it always struck me that there was a much better case to be
made, in terms of the Renaissance, for Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_ as a
classic gay text rather than _Edward II_.  The way in which Leander is
presented in terms of female imagery, and Hero as a "neutral" distanced
"straight" female figure -- talk about crossing gender-bending with a gay
subtext!

Enough from me.

Robin