Berto_Tony_201307_PhD .pdf - University of Guelph

27
system by disturbing the ability to intermarry between families and again, to consolidate
inheritance. Both these themes recur in drama into the twenties to convey and infer
instances of gayness onstage (Sinfield, Wilde 36). These themes are exemplified in
Somerset Maugham’s The Circle, and Our Betters.
World War I and its aftermath brought other gay presences to the stage, with plays
depicting male troops kept in close quarters. Such plays displayed the affections allowed
under the extremes of garrison and wartime conditions. Lines between homosocial and
homosexual behaviours are occasionally blurred in a number of these works, such as
Ackerley’s Prisoners of War, and Sherriff’s Journey’s End. This blurring created openings
where audiences could discern gay presences (Clum, Acting 284; Sinfield, Out 87).
In the 1920s, bohemian and little theatre movements further evoked the Wildean
model by portraying persons of the leisure class, and their aesthetic interests (Sinfield, Out
59-60; 85-89). Many of the plays of the era depict male effeminacy contextualised by
men’s artistic and aesthetic pursuits. Appearing marginally, such characters are often
comedic, campy figures, and maintain a stage presence from the twenties until present day.
These characters form the basis for numerous dramas investigating both the causes and
outcome of such effeminacy, such as in Shairp’s The Green Bay Tree. The source of such
character’s alterity is also offered as a contagion in some of these works.
After the Second World War, both British and American theatre became more
liberal in portraying homosexual characters, although the Wildean model was still
predominantly used to code for gay. However, as staged depictions of homosexual men
became presented in less disguised ways than they had in previous decades, value systems
of the day still required that such depictions be marginalised. Their presences became coded