LETTER Critics, Puritans, and Shakespeare To the editor, It was refreshing to read T h o m a s Martin and Duke Pesta's correction to the excesses of those g e n d e r critics who insist that the Renaissance theatrical practice of cross-dressing inescapably leads to "homoerotic theater" ( S u m m e r 2003). T h a t these same critics find themselves the strange bedfellows o f a small s e g m e n t o f antitheatricalist Puritans is a delicious irony. Interested readers may wish to consult Jeffrey K n a p p ' s Shakespeare's Tribe (2002), which argues that m a n y o t h e r Puritans (as well as o t h e r Protestants and Catholics) warmly e m b r a c e d the theater and its conventions, using them, as H a m l e t says, "to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own i m a g e " (3.2). This d o e s n o t m e a n , o f course, that the h o m o e r o t i c never, or rarely, surfaced on the Renaissance stage, only that the convention itself seldom constituted o n e of those m o m e n t s . Martin a n d Pesta p o i n t out how those few theatrical literalists, then a n d now,

refilse to accept the convention of boys cross-dressing as women; most p e o p l e susp e n d as a m a t t e r of course their disbelief in o r d e r to e n g a g e imaginatively with the drama. T h e i r c o m m e n t s r e m i n d e d m e of Cleopatra's histrionic l a m e n t of h e r subsequent stage representation: "the quick c o m e d i a n s [actors] / E x t e m p o r a l l y will stage u s . . . a n d I shall see / Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness / I' the posture o f a whore" (5.2). Four h u n d r e d years in advance of m o d e r n vanguard critics, Shakespeare exposed for his contemp o r a r i e s their willingness to a c c e p t the convention of a p r e p u b e s c e n t boy actor r e p r e s e n t i n g the s u m p t u o u s Cleopatra. But even as h e exposes it, S h a k e s p e a r e reinforced the convention by having the boy actor in the person of Cleopatra decry the practice. Shakespeare was n o t h i n g if n o t clever. Sean Benson Assistant Professor of English Malone College Canton, O H

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