When Women Fight

Abstract

The previous chapter presented dramatic and polemical texts that offer insight into conceptions of masculinity among early modern men of different social strata. In this chapter, I consider how female duellists were represented in the drama and what we can learn about cultural expectations from the dramatic convention of cross-dressed characters and their frequent use of the sword.¹ As Stephen Greenblatt has commented, “a culture’s sexual discourse plays a critical role in the shaping of identity. It does so by helping to implant in each person a system of dispositions and orientations that governs individual improvisations” (SN 75). As a dramatic representation, I would argue, each instance of the cross-dressed duellist in these plays functions as both an individual improvisation and as part of a system of orientations.