My thesis aims to examine the comparisons between Shakespearean text and performance and Modern drag culture. The main texts I will be engaging with will be Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Cymbeline, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Merchant of Venice. I will utilize sources such as an interview with a drag artist and Shakespearean performer, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, feminist and queer readings of Shakespeare, written works and interviews by drag performers, and media such as Paris is Burning and Rupaul's Drag Race. I aim to critically examine the relationship between both the works themselves, and public perceptions of both drag and Shakespeare.
My thesis will begin with an introduction, including a personal anecdote which first motivated me to pursue this topic. I will begin a literature review and methodology where I list previous scholarship on the topic and how I will engage with them, as well as map out the lens in which I will examine the texts, including queer theory, feminist theory, and gender theory. I will give an introduction that provides a social, political, and cultural background of Elizabethan and Jacobean England that frames the atmosphere around theater and gender in which Shakespeare wrote his works. I will then give a brief, holistic overview of the history of drag, from ancient practices to modern drag culture. In my second chapter, I will examine elements of drag as they appear in Shakespearean text, including passing, self-sufficiency, self-expression, and camp. I will then explore performance history of Shakespearean works that incorporate drag elements, such as historical cross-gendered casting or use of queer aesthetics. I will conclude by questioning the implications of "drag panic," transphobia, and a promotion of traditional gender roles in the current political climate on works of theater, particularly Shakespeare, which express the notion of gender fluidity.