IS GENDER SIMPLY PLAYING A ROLE?

IS GENDER SIMPLY PLAYING A ROLE? Colin McGinn extends the idea that for Shakespeare, “our personality (or many personalities) is analogous to the character an actor plays on the stage” to include gender. McGinn treats it as a matter of philosophy: “The philosophical question at issue is….What kind of fact is it to possess a specific psychological gender?” He looks at the facts that boy actors played women in Shakespeare’s plays and that Shakespeare’s female characters often disguise themselves as males. He concludes that “It is the fact that a female character in Shakespeare can play the part of a man so well that shows that we are always acting—that the adoption of a psychological gender is essentially theatrical.” The all-female performances I have seen, including RICHARD II at the Globe, are consistent with these propositions. I suppose it also follows that to play Cassius as a woman is not so big a leap as might first appear.