SOURCE: “Travesty and Transgression: Transvestism in Shakespeare, Brecht, and Churchill,” in Theatre Journal, Vol. 41, No. 2, May, 1989, pp. 133-54.

In the following essay, Herrmann examines the role of transvestism in As You Like It, Bertolt Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan, and Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill.

The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment; for all that do so are an abomination unto the Lord thy God. 

—Deuteronomy (22:5)

                                             This earth that beareth and nourisheth us, hath been turned into a Stage, and women have come forth acting the parts of men. 

—Francis Rous (1624)

We’re all born stark naked; To dress is bizarre. And that's the reason why Everybody's in drag. 

—“You Are What You Wear,” Lynn Lavner (1988)

In Marguerite Duras's The Lover (1984), the first person narrator recalls her image at fifteen and a half crossing...