COMEDY

66 GENDER AND SEXUALITYplaying Rosalind comes out of character, addressing the audience withconventional pleas for leniency before saying to the men:If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as hadbeards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, andbreaths that I defied not. And I am sure as many ashave good beards, or good faces, or sweet breaths willfor my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.(Shakespeare, 1989: Epilogue, 16–21)At the end of Some Like It Hot, Jerry, still disguised as Daphne, offers aseries of reasons why he cannot marry Osgood Fielding III, themillionaire who has fervently pursued him, finally admitting ‘Damn it,I’m a man’. Osgood’s reply is the pragmatic ‘Nobody’s perfect’. Such awonderfully reasonable response intimates that heterosexuality is notnecessary for a perfectly good marriage. Rosalind, revealed finally as aboy actor offering to kiss the men, suggests that the sexuality of As YouLike It is not contained entirely by the parameters of the fiction, but is‘diffuse, nonlocalized, and inclusive, extending to the audience aninvitation to “come play”’ (Traub, 1992:142). Both endings suggest thepossibility of the homoeroticism of the cross-dressed period continuingin the world after the issues that forced characters into disguise havebeen resolved. Indeed, Ed Sikov emphatically says of Jerry’s situation,‘Osgood’s final declaration is openly gay, there’s no question aboutthat. The line is meaningless otherwise’ (Sikov, 1994:146). Sikov,chiding critics who claim that “‘Nobody’s perfect” is not specificallyabout gay sexuality’, points out their wish to ‘steal what precious littlemainstream cultural participation gay men and lesbians can claim forourselves. Somehow it doesn’t seem fair’ (Sikov, 1994:148).DRAG AND TRANSVESTISMThe reluctantly cross-dressed protagonist of a progress narrative is asubstantially different prospect from the female impersonator, or dragact, that has been a successful comic franchise since the mid-1800s.Here, drag is not donned as a means to achieve an end in theconventionally dressed world, but is the focus of the entireperformance. The female impersonator derived in part from nineteenthcenturycircus acts that tricked their audiences into believing that daringacrobats and gymnasts were in fact dainty girls to enhance their boxofficeappeal, as well as the tradition of men playing women’s roles in