“If I were a woman”: the performativity of gender in Shakespeare

This essay argues that the current celebration of transgender performance, such as in Northern Broadsides’ As You Like It (2022), also resonates historically in the experiences of boy actors who played women’s roles in Shakespeare’s company. It outlines the different kinds of contracts and apprenticeships that the boy players experienced. It then draws on this empirical research to argue that the coming of age experienced by boy actors exists as a subtext of Shakespeare’s scripts that would have been palpably obvious in early modern performances. Focussing in particular on Twelfth Night, As You Like It, and Antony and Cleopatra it demonstrates how the scripts are wittily original in the ways they deploy a series of theatrical in-jokes about the practices governing apprenticeship: the point at which young actors crossed the threshold to “freedom” of a trade or to adult male roles; the process of passing on the woman’s part; and the rehearsal process. It argues that the scripts register the deeply moving experience of passing on the woman’s part from the perspective of the boy actors who spoke the words “If I were a woman”.