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How Drag Culture Resolves Tensions In Victorian Shakespearean Cross-Dressing; Or, Slay, Feste, Slay, Isaac Robertson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In 2017, Madame Le Gateau Chocolat, a black drag queen, sashayed onto the stage of the Globe theater to portray Feste in Emma Rice’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. This bold move not only gave anxiety to its investors (eventually leading to the stepping down of Emma Rice), but also raised questions about the validity of drag performance within Shakespeare plays. Shakespeare has historically been inseparable with traditional cross-dressing (both in performance and in the narrative itself), although the relationship has not always been cordial. In Victorian England, cross-dressing was often set equal to homosexuality or moral deviance, and …