And when I have required some Heav'nly Music, which ev'n now I do...

The quote, of course, is from Shakespeare: The Tempest, Prospero's farewell to his art, which has gone humming around in my head for some fifty years now; along with "Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it," from Marlowe's the Tragickal history of Dr. Faustus.  The straight on the one hand; the gay on the other.  How do you know that Ferdinand and Miranda are a heterosexual couple (even though Miranda's a boy in drag); while Faust and his "sweet Helen" are two queers?  Presumably, if you're straight, you don't--can't--know it (see blog 2/28/08, and: "There's no Gaydar for Heteros, but there are Straight Signals," by Tom Zoellner: http://www.blacktable.com/zoellner040715.htm). Maybe it's not important--until you get to Edward II (Marlowe); but then you must understand that Henry, Isabel, and Gaveston are three males--and it won't work if Isabel is played by a woman.  The intrusion of actresses into the performance of pre-Caroline theater, inappropriate enough in Shakespeare, is the utter ruination of Marlowe.  In English letters, Marlowe is the first, and still the most beautiful, instance of Gay (totally Male) Sensibility.  But oh how wearying the prospect of explaining this to those who have not already grasped it!--who are still sucking air at my disqualifying even the Honorable Mrs. Siddons--even Dame Judith Anderson (whom I have seen playing Lady MacBeth--She was superb!  Majestic!)--as interpretresses of the Bard!  Why, oh why, do I even think to call halt to the Feminist Juggernaut?  Oh well, why not?   I write, not for the present, but for all time:

When the Golden Age--whereof London in the 1590's, Paris in the 1780's, and San Francisco in the 1970's were Delicious Foretastes--returns to dwell in Earth forever, with Peace, and Joy, and Liberty for All, then will all the conventions of all the arts be understood and honored--at whatever cost or loss to any particular class, group or sex--; including that most basic of conventions of: the representation of female characters in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama by boy-actors.