SOURCE: Behling, Laura L. “‘S/he Scandles Our Proceedings’: The Anxiety of Alternative Sexualities in The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi.” English Language Notes 33, no. 4 (June 1996): 24-43.

In this essay, Behling examines how the transgression of gender boundaries is conflated with transgressive sexuality in Webster's plays. The masculinity of his heroines in their political actions, she notes, makes any sexual activity or desire centered on them appear unnatural.

Historians and literary critics, upon studying the popular and court rhetoric of the Jacobean period conclude that, with the exception of anti-theatrical literature, English Renaissance culture did not display a “morbid fear of homosexuality.”¹ They acknowledge, however, that Renaissance society was intensely concerned with sex and gender roles, representation and desire, and political authority. Moreover, when the rules of Renaissance theater mandated men to play women's stage parts, and medical treatises failed to define two separate and unique...