COMEDY

GENDER AND SEXUALITY 63So happy is Orlando to accept Ganymede as Rosalind that he pleadswith Celia to marry them and allow the boy to displace the woman inthe marriage rite. That this was not entirely acceptable in its day isevinced by the early modern opponents of the stage who condemned theerotic lure of theatre practice and considered the presence of the boyplayer to encourage homosexuality. John Rainolds, in Th’overthrow ofStage-Playes (1599), warned that the kisses of boy actors could so turna man that he could be moved to infidelity: ‘If they do but touch men onlywith their mouth, they put them to wonderful pain and make them mad,so beautiful boys by kissing does sting and pour secretly in a kind ofpoison’ (quoted in Orgel, 1997:28). Philip Stubbes’s Anatomy of Abuses(1583) held that public performances, with their ‘wanton gestures’ and‘bawdy speeches’, were a place for men to meet for the purpose offinding a sexual partner. After the play was done, ‘everyone bringsanother homeward of their very friendly, and in their secret conclaves,covertly, they play the sodomites, or worse’ (quoted in Orgel, 1997:29).For Orgel, these anti-theatrical attacks offer three very importantinsights into the connection between sexuality and the early modernstage. Although he emphasizes the ideological extremity of opponentsto theatre, he concludes that their arguments indicate, first, that ‘thebasic form of response to theatre is erotic; second, that erotically,theatre is uncontrollably exciting; and third, that the basic, essentialform of erotic excitement in men is homosexual—that, indeed, womenare only a cover for men’ (Orgel, 1989:17).Billy Wilder’s 1959 film, voted the best comedy of all time by theAmerican Film Institute, brings the cross-dressing theme into thetwentieth century. Some Like It Hot shares many similarities with AsYou Like It, not least the indeterminate and enticing ‘it’ of the title. Thefilm restates the idea that men can adequately replace women, both aswomen and as sexual partners for men, and that femininity does notreside in biological gender or ontological identity, but in ‘feminine’,material supplements to the body such as high heels, make-up, andbrassieres. The film tells the story of two Depression-era musicians, Joeand Jerry, played by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, who witness a mobkilling and are forced to go into hiding. They dress as women, renamethemselves Josephine and Daphne, and join ‘Sweet Sue’s SocietySyncopators’, an allgirl jazz band travelling on an engagement toFlorida. Joe falls in love with the band’s singer, Sugar, played byMarilyn Monroe, which necessitates the adoption of a further identity as‘Shell Jr’, in a ploy conceived in answer to Sugar’s fantasy of a richman in glasses. Joe and Jerry, motivated by the threat of death, come to