How do issues of gender identity and alternative sexualities register differently in your reading of Twelfth Night
than in your viewing of the Globe production described by James Bulman in “Bearding the Queen: Male CrossDressing at the New Globe” (Shakespearean Performance: New Studies. Ed. Frank Occhiogrosso. Madison
and Teaneck: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008: 74-91 – posted on CANVAS as “Bulman article”)?
According to Bulman, how does this all-male production differ from a “traditional” version, in which men play
men and women play women? Why do you agree or disagree with Bulman’s thesis? If you were producing a
version of this play, how would you cast it with regards to gender (traditional, all-male, all-female, cross-gender,
some mixture of the above)? What factors would impact this decision?
