Crossdressing

            
             Women's cross dressing plays a major role in the plays "The Roaring Girl" and "Twelfth Night". Women would change their physical appearance to the opposite sex to achieve a certain goal. Sumptuary laws were used to tell people of that time who could wear what. For example, royalty were the only ones who could wear the color purple because it was expensive to wear and it showed what class you were in. While cross dressing was not breaking any laws, the people who did it were sometimes viewed as criminals. A lot of the cross dressers who couldn't find work turned to the world of criminals and also prostitutes. Women were not allowed out on the streets so dressing like boys gave them a chance walk around in the city in which many believed gave the cross dressers a chance to be criminals. Also, women were not allowed to be on stage. So, women characters were played by young feminine boys. So, instead of cross dressing women, they were actually cross dressing boys. The sumptuary laws were sort of a dress code for social order. So, to change their clothes you could say that they were trying to change their social status. The state regulated the dress code to keep people in their correct social place. While cross dressing was legal, you could not dress out of your social class. Whatever class you were in decided the punishment for what they called transgression. The punishment ranged from getting sent to prison to just getting whipped. Despite the threat of punishment, women still cross dressed. Dekker and van de Pol seeked out motives for why women would dress as boys knowing full well what the punishment could be for their actions. Through transcripts and court documents, they tracked cases through the years of 1550 through 1839 and found that most of these women came from lower class society and broken homes. .
             In "Twelfth Night", Viola dresses like a boy in fear of what was to become of her.