Cross-dressing, gender, and absolutism in the Beaumont and Fletcher plays.(Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher)(Critical Essay)

The most anxious and confrontational political statement in the 1647 folio of the plays of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher is a blank space. In one of many prefatory poems by many authors, Thomas Peyton expresses his fear that his praise of Fletcher will "raise a discontent / Between the Muses and the ____________." (1) The rhyme, of course, makes clear the missing word is "Parliament"; the royalist affiliations of the folio are an open secret. But as Philip J. Finkelpearl shows, the folio's royalism is in fact at odds with the more complex politics of the plays themselves--plays that Finkelpearl argues are more aligned with the "country" than the "court." (2) Anxiety does not forestall praise, and some of the praise is strongly but curiously gendered. The royalist propagandist John Berkenhead seems to have trouble deciding whether he admires these writers for their masculine or for their feminine qualities. Berkenhead concludes his poem.

 
   What strange Production is at last displaid, 
   (Got by Two Fathers, without Female aide) 
   Behold, two Masculines espous'd each other, 
   Wit and the World were born without a Mother. 
   (sig. E2v) 

Berkenhead praises the two authors for a creative power analogous to that of the Deity: Beaumont and Fletcher create "Wit" as God created "the World." Their creative act, ostensibly male gendered and "without a Mother," nonetheless calls for an espousal of the two fathers. It is not clear what "Masculines" means. Moreover, the decorum Berkenhead admires is gendered female:

 
   All's safe, and wise, no stiffe-affected Scene, 
   Nor swoln, nor flat, a True Full Naturall veyne; 
   Thy sense (like well-drest Ladies) cloath'd as skinn'd, 
   Nor all unlac'd, nor City-startcht and pinn'd. 
   (sig. E2v) 

But even this "female" decorum slides into androgyny:

 
   No savage Metaphors (things rudely Great) 
   Thou dost display, not butcher a Conceit; 
   Thy Nerves have Beauty, which Invades and Charms; 
   Lookes like a Princesse harness'd in bright Armes. 
   (sig. E2v) 

For Berkenhead, the beauty of the Beaumont and Fletcher plays is like the beauty of a cross-dressed heroine.