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‘The Weaker Vessel’?: Disguise and Empowerment in Postmodern
Shakespearean Performance.1
Sinead Larkin
This paper will consider the extent to which the employment of gendered disguise within
Michael Radford’s The Merchant of Venice (MGM, 2004), and Dominic Cooke’s As You
Like It (Royal Shakespeare Company, 2006) empowers the characters of Portia and
Rosalind.
Disguise not only provides these characters with visual masculinity, but
imbues them with a stronger voice and sense of dramatic self, enabling them to escape
the repression of their male-dominated societies, and thereby reassigning gender roles in
these productions, inscribing the two female characters as more dominant.
In his film, Radford creates a strong, visual distinction between Venetian society, and
Portia’s home at Belmont. Belmont is filmed in soft focus, with muted colours, and the
richly-furnished stately home in which Portia is framed contrasts sharply with the grimy,
dim and often overcrowded streets of Venice. As Samuel Crowl remarks, ‘Radford makes
the contrast vivid. Venice is dark, dank and nasty. Belmont is a blaze of light located on
the tip of a peninsula surrounded by water…The palace interiors are warm and
soft…This is a fairytale landscape compared to Venice’s seedy, commercial grit’ (121).
Belmont is therefore presented in the film as a private, feminised space, wherein Portia is
repressed - she is defined solely by her status as a potential bride for a series of suitors 1
This paper was presented as part of the ‘Perspectives on Power’ Conference run by Quest and
sponsored by the AHRC. This article is from Issue 4 of Quest which contains the proceedings of the
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whilst Venice is a masculinised, public space. By adopting male disguise, Portia (played
by Lynn Collins) is able to experience the freedom of a male-orientated society wherein
women do not ordinarily have a voice. The court, in which the disguised Portia defends
Antonio, is completely devoid of women, except for two female characters (Portia and
Nerissa) who are clothed in very sophisticated male disguise.
Gendered disguise empowers Collins’s character, enabling her to escape a female-centred
world and therein giving her a greater authority onscreen. Sigmund Freud believed that
physiology strongly defined self: Christopher Hauke comments on Freud’s ‘physiological
emphases on the presence or absence of a [phallus]…as formative of psychological
difference’ (114). It is not clear whether Portia adopts a faux phallus as part of her
disguise in Radford’s film, but she is, nevertheless, accepted as male because of her
physiological appearance as a man: none of the other male characters in the courtroom
scene dispute the masculinity or qualifications of Balthasar, Portia’s disguised persona.
The character’s disguise is also highly convincing by contemporary standards.
Many
critics have argued for the symbolic value and power of costume in postmodern
Shakespearean cinema.
Jack J. Jorgens, for example, remarks that costume
‘communicates not only sex, age, social class, occupation, nationality…but subjective
qualities – moods, tastes, values. Costumes speak to an audience through line, shape,
colour and texture’ (31): costume has a specific emblematic significance within
Shakespearean film; Portia’s charade therefore visually convinces both the surrounding
characters, and the postmodern cinematic audience, that she is male.
conference. It, and the other papers presented at the conference can be downloaded from
http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/QUEST/JournalIssues/
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Portia’s gendered disguise comprises a long black gown, and it is evident that her body
has been padded out around the torso, thus concealing any evidence of cleavage or of a
tapered feminine waist. The character wears a short dark wig, which strongly contrasts
with the blonde and red tones of Collins’s hair when playing the role of the undisguised
Portia. Her skin is not pale and suggestive of passive femininity, but is now covered with
traces of stubble. Visually, there is a sharp and very definite distinction between Portia
and Balthasar, which adds to the realism of the employment of disguise onscreen.
Gendered disguise also psychologically inscribes Collins’s character as male: Freud
believed that physiology defined psychological identity. Likewise, Carl Jung argued that
‘[e]very person has qualities of the opposite sex, not only in the biological sense that man
and woman secrete both male and female sex hormones, but also in a psychological sense
of attitudes and feelings’ (A Primer of Jungian Psychology, 46): within psychoanalytic
theory, it has been widely argued that men possess an inner, feminine spirit, known as the
‘anima’. The wearing of male disguise allows Portia to identify with what Jung termed
the ‘animus’: the female equivalent of the ‘anima’.
Indeed, the character, whilst
disguised, is more forthright and dominant, arguing strongly against Shylock whilst in
court, as well as later confronting Bassanio and demanding the ring which he was given
by her undisguised self. Disguise therefore allows Portia a freedom of expression which
only the male characters in the film can possess. However, this empowerment continues
even after the disguise has been removed and the outwardly masculine form has been cast
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aside. Portia wields power over Bassanio: she dictates when they will go to bed, thereby
exhibiting sexual control over her husband.
Keith Geary argues that ‘Portia’s disguise allows her to intervene directly to recover her
husband, not, of course, from another woman, but from another man’, and that she ‘has
no qualms about disguising as a man; she intervenes strictly on her own terms – those of
a wife’ (64). This clearly applies to Radford’s film: here, the homoerotic threat which
Antonio poses to the heterosexual union between Portia and Bassanio is made explicit.
In an erotically-charged scene between Antonio and Bassanio, which takes place in a
private bedchamber, the two characters share a kiss, suggesting a very strong bond
between them. The fact that this scene occurs on-screen in such an intimate venue
suggests that Bassanio (played by Joseph Fiennes) and Antonio, in particular, (played by
Jeremy Irons) are allied with a homosocial status in the film.
Later, in the courtroom scene, Bassanio declares devotion and loyalty, not to his wife, but
to Antonio, thus emphasising the intensity of this male-male relationship within the film:
[L]ife itself, my wife, and all the world
Are not with me esteemed above thy life.
I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all
Here to this devil to deliver you (The Merchant of Venice, 4.1.279-282).
Irons’s Antonio has been described by Crowl as the ‘ultimate commercial
insider…displaced by his homosexuality’ (119). Upon the revelation to Bassanio that
Portia convincingly masqueraded as a man, and displayed visually masculine
characteristics during this charade, the insider is physically displaced by Portia. At the
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end of the film, Antonio stands alone in the grimy Venetian streets, whilst Bassanio has
been integrated – bodily and psychologically – into the female space of Belmont, under
the newly-developed control of his wife.
Cooke’s theatrical appropriation of As You Like It utilised a more contemporary style of
costume than the strong Renaissance setting of Radford’s film. Here, Rosalind, played
by Lia Williams, first appeared onstage wearing a sumptuous blue taffeta gown, with a
long train. Visually, this garment was flowing and very feminine, and accentuated
Williams’s biologically-female body.
Her voice was soft in her initial scenes as
Rosalind, and upon the entrance of Orlando (played by Barnaby Kay), she coyly hid her
face behind a fan and kept close company with Celia (Amanda Harris), whilst glancing
furtively at Kay’s character. Williams’s behaviour as Rosalind in this scene clearly
suggested a dramatically-constructed heterosexual attraction to Kay’s character. Indeed,
strong emphasis was placed, by Harris, on Celia’s declaration that ‘[i]s it possible on such
a sudden that you should fall into so strong a liking with old Sir Rowland’s youngest
son?’ (As You Like It, 1.3.22-23).
However, before the relationship between Rosalind and Orlando could deepen, both
characters were banished by Duke Frederick, and fled separately to the Forest of Arden.
Here, Rosalind initially adopted male disguise for the purpose of protection, enabling her
to conceal her identity from the Duke’s men. This disguise consisted of a pair of tancoloured trousers, bold stripy socks, no shoes, and an oversized, man’s white shirt, which
did not cling to her feminine curves. Rosalind was therefore inscribed, materialistically,
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with a tomboyish status. Furthermore, her disguise matched the style of attire worn by
other male characters in Cooke’s production, particularly Orlando and Oliver, thus
visually authenticating the gendered masquerade.
The disguised Rosalind re-encountered Orlando in the Forest, and Williams’s voice
became instantly gruffer.
Orlando did not recognise his disguised lover, and this
empowered Rosalind: Susan Baker has argued that, in Shakespeare’s comedies, ‘the
young women who dress as men gain a freedom of movement denied them in their
women’s weeds’ (315). This freedom of movement was, in Cooke’s production, also
emotional, because Rosalind (in the guise of Ganymede) could secretly uncover
Orlando’s feelings for her undisguised self. For example, she discovered Orlando’s love
poems, which declared that:
From the east to the western Ind
No jewel is like Rosalind…
All the pictures fairest lined
Are but black to Rosalind (As You Like It, 3.2.76-81).
Williams’s character used this information to her advantage: playing the role of
‘Ganymede’, her male persona, she declared to Orlando that ‘[l]ove is merely a
madness…I profess curing it with counsel’ (As You Like It, 3.2.359-363), thereby
challenging her lover to prove whether his feelings were genuine, before she would enter
into a heterosexual union with him when undisguised: knowledge is power.
Ganymede frequently verbally chastised Orlando onstage: in Act 4 Scene 1, Williams’s
character demanded of him, her voice loud and facial expression clearly agitated, ‘Where
have you been all this while? You a lover? An you serve me such another trick, never
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come in my sight more’ (As You Like It, 4.1.34-36). S.P. Cerasano and Marion WynneDavies have argued that, during the Renaissance, ‘a woman who was ‘loose of tongue’,
that is outspoken…would also have ‘loose morals’’ (3): in the context of this
performance, the undisguised Rosalind would be unable to verbally chastise Orlando
without damage to her dramatic reputation. Disguise therefore allowed the character a
freedom of expression which could not be achieved in her ‘woman’s weeds’.
Ultimately, Rosalind was empowered by her masquerade because disguise inscribed her
with greater self-confidence. Although the initial motivation for the character’s gendered
masquerade was to provide safety, Rosalind also suggested that:
Were it not better,
Because that I am more than common tall
That I did suit me all points like a man,
A gallant curtal-axe upon my thigh,
A boar-spear in my hand, and in my heart,
Lie there what hidden women’s fear there will (As You Like It, 1.3.108-113).
Williams gradually rose from a sitting position whilst reciting this speech, and a smile
broadened on her face: male disguise could enable this Rosalind to conceal her feminine
shyness, and ultimately overcome it. Indeed, elsewhere, the character chastised an urge
to cry as symptomatic of weakness, referring to her repressed femininity as ‘the weaker
vessel’ (2.4.4). Furthermore, her body language when interacting (disguised) on-stage
with Orlando, provided a contrast to her initially coy and repressed behaviour whilst in
the guise of a woman. Freud argued that ‘when you say ‘masculine’, you usually mean
‘active’, and when you say ‘feminine’, you usually mean ‘passive’’ (147-148): in playing
the role of a man, Rosalind was able to conquer her female passivity, and she could enact
a fictitious courtship with Orlando, actively flirting with him and even, briefly, kissing
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him onstage. In the context of the play’s period setting, Rosalind could not be so forward
with her lover when undisguised; such behaviour would sully the character’s social status
as chaste and virtuous noblewoman.
Rosalie L. Colie has argued that ‘[t]he re-created self…may replace the original…The recreated self is a threat to the self’ (356).
If this argument is applied to Cooke’s
production, it would suggest that disguise does not merely empower Rosalind, but that
the masculine attributes which disguise provides overwhelm and replace the remaining
aspects of femininity within her character. However, Jean E. Howard has instead posited
that ‘[m]obile, loquacious and bossy, Rosalind confutes the idea that women are by
nature passive, silent, and in need of masculine supervision’ (1595): the male
characteristics with which Rosalind is inscribed on-stage do not threaten her feminine
identity. In the final scene of Cooke’s production, Rosalind reappeared, undisguised,
clothed in a white wedding gown.
This visually asserted her feminine status, and
contrasted with her boyish physiology when disguised as Ganymede. Rosalind stood onstage, alone, to deliver the epilogue, in a loud and clearly confident voice, her arms
spread wide: the confidence which the character gained whilst in the guise of a boy
continued, and did not consume her female identity.
In conclusion, as the final quotation on the handout indicates, Kathleen McLuskie has
argued that ‘[t]he cross-dressing of Shakespeare’s romantic heroines is…a means of
asserting their true femininity.
Their characters as women are seen as something
essential and internal and not a simple result of their clothes’ (104). The masculine
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confidence and authority which Portia and Rosalind gain whilst disguised is retained after
the visually-male guise is cast off, ultimately enabling the women in these cinematic and
theatrical performative appropriations to develop and wield a stronger voice and sense of
self within their male-dominated societies.
SINEAD LARKIN.
School of English,
Queen’s University Belfast.
[email protected]
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