Students warned that Shakespeare's Twelfth Night has cross-dressing scenes

[IwantToRetire]

University of Liverpool cautions that the play - which features cross-dressing characters and has been enjoyed by audiences for more than four centuries - contains depictions of gender which are 'significantly different to views held today'.

Historian Jeremy Black, author of England In The Age Of Shakespeare, added:

'As the University of Liverpool so aptly but unintentionally notes, the views of some 'on equality, diversity and inclusivity' are unhelpful to an appreciation of national culture.

'Unfortunately, the 'some' include the English Literature department of that university.

The university said:

'Students need to understand the historical context of the texts. This workshop is an opportunity to explore attitudes to, and beliefs about, sex and gender in the late 16th and early 17th centuries - which are in many ways significantly different to views and beliefs held today.

'This is helpful context for understanding a wide range of literary texts from that time. The workshop note on content lets students know that different views on gender and sexual difference will be explored.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15416797/Students-warned-Shakespeare-Twelfth-Night-cross-dressing-scenes.html

Sorry for DM link!

I am no Shakespeare scholar but surely the plot line has nothing to do with "trans"?

Its about being in disguise .

Or underneath all the being kind intentions of the University, does this mean they think those who say they are trans are just talking about being in disguise. ie saying they are a woman, whilst know they are a man.

It seems that way. I don’t really understand it. Cross dressers exist out of the trans movement anyway so what’s the big deal.

A University has been told it risks being labelled idiotic

Well said.

Women were not allowed to appear on stage in the Elizabeth and Jacobean times, and the same was true of both Roman and Greek classics.

Boys often played female roles.

So the joke was cross, cross dressing if you see what i mean in twelfth night.

it is commonly understood that pantomime dames and drag has its origins in the fact women were not permitted to act.

makes me laugh my arse of that the LGBTQ+++++ get very confused about this.

Oh ffs. Surely they realise that when they were first performed all the Shakespeare plays had ‘cross dressing characters’ because all the women’s parts were played by boys, so the joke in 12th night, and others, was the ‘double cross’ .

Cross cross cross-dressing posts, hedgie!

Yeo Errol we are so fucking well informed tiresome smug feminists

(AKA WITS)

😁

If i roll my eyes any harder, they may actually come loose.

Part of me did wonder if someone had spread this as a false story.

It is just too absurd to be real.

Something you are trying to say strangle?
Or are you here for the Malvolio audition?

I don't think it is absurd unfortunately. I know a professor who was "investigated" because a student said his course led to him questioning his gender. The course was about drama - which included some cross-dressing of the times - and had nothing to do with gender identity issues.

Drag certainly was, that's where we get the name from. Actors playing women had to 'drag' their clothes / costumes.

If you have got to university and don't know the context re males dressing as females in Shakespearean theatre then you shouldn't be on the course. You are told about this at school

FFS. How depressingly pathetic.

A gender-critical understanding of Twelfth Night should be required for all our young people.

Viola did not dress in male clothes due to an inne sense of being male. She did so from an inner sense of being fully human and with full human rights and knowing that she would only receive that level of respect from others if she emulated masculinity, because culturally only males get afforded full levels of human rights, respect, dignity and autonomy and this is still true today.

Which is, I now understand, what was going on in my head when I thought I must be "really" not actually female when I was in my teens and 20s.

'Students need to understand the historical context of the texts. This workshop is an opportunity to explore attitudes to, and beliefs about, sex and gender in the late 16th and early 17th centuries - which are in many ways significantly different to views and beliefs held today.

Um, does the university routinely give context and warn their students that attitudes and beliefs have changed over the last 400 years?

The DM story is very thin on facts so I can’t make out if this is a workshop specifically to explore attitudes to sex and gender as demonstrated by Shakespearean cross dressing (would have gone with As You Like It myself) or whether this is a workshop on a specific play with trigger warnings. Bet they didn’t also warn about the depiction of bullying and humiliation of Malvolio as an acceptable way to cure him of being a pompous arse.

I can certainly see how it might be taken as offensive by the pro-trans lot. A fundamental driving force of the play is that a person dressing up as the opposite sex is funny. It's a very small step from laughing at Twelfth Night to laughing at real-life transvestites, and the very last thing the real-life transvestites want is people laughing at them.

GOD MAKE IT STOP!!!!!!

It’s true that some attitudes and mores have changed over 400 years, but the cross-dressing in 12th night is not an unfamiliar concept in the modern world at all. People dressing as the opposite sex as a disguise while knowing they have not really changed sex is a trope in modern culture, eg Mrs Doubtfire and similar. People dressing up in opposite-sex clothes to play parts while everyone knows what sex they really are is common in panto and TV comedy. Everyone who has any engagement with everyday modern British culture knows this.

It’s yet more of the deep confusion and panic around anything “gender” where people jostle to show how woke they are and end up looking totally clueless. What are they trying to say, “in ye olden days, people dressed as the opposite sex without actually being the opposite sex shock horror trigger warning!” Do they think the students might realise this is possible and question trans dogma? Oh noooooooo!

They're very vague about whether this is part of an undergraduate course or what exactly it is. Stupid but the report is a bit sketchy.

One of the central themes in Shakespeare comedies is characters cross dressing in order to fool others or to disguise oneself. The comdey element lay in the subterfuge.

My daughter is something of a Shakespeare afficionado having done her English Lit degree, and then MA, at Liverpool University, but only just as this absolute batshittery started to infiltrate the curriculum. She says that it then started to become about never directly engaging with the text at all, and only reading texts through the lens of DEI readings.

I actually saw an all male production of twelfth night at the globe about 20 years ago. It was more amusing in places because of the cross-cross dressing. Also U o L are clearly idiotic

I can't read the DM article without accepting cookies or subscribing, so I'm posting without having read it, which is A Bad Thing, I know..

I think a lot rides on whether the Uni was 'informing' or 'warning' . This is where I really need to have read the original..

Was it 'If you sign up for this module, bring along a support animal because it is literally full of transphobic violence'

or was it 'Hey look at this! It's Shakespeare! It's Twelfth Night! It has cross dressing! Gender fluidity! Different attitudes to sex and gender! Sign up right now for this lit module!'
😁

I wonder what the students actually think of these warnings. Are they grateful for them, or do they feel patronised and treated like idiots?