There are as many as 80 early modern dramatic works that feature cross-dressed heroines, with overt motivations ranging from following a (male) lover, avoiding rape, scandal, or death, traveling freely, or as a deliberate expression of gender non-conformity. In roughly 30 of these plays (written between 1580 and 1660), the cross-dressing also precipitates female homoerotic desire in some fashion. This raises the question of how and why this motif was employed.
No Wit No Help Like a Woman’s (Thomas Middleton)
17th century English play in which a woman cross-dresses and woos a woman who had cheated her to take revenge. Both m/m and f/f desire is implied and there is a derisory reference to women marrying women.
