The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.0439  Monday, 6 March 2000.

From:           Roy Flannagan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Thursday, 02 Mar 2000 12:14:05 -0500
Subject:        Gender-bending in the name Cesario

I was wondering, if "Cesario" is the equivalent in Twelfth Night of
"Ganymede" in As You Like It, and, if that is true, what tricks might
Shakespeare playing with Julius Caesar (as an occasionally gay male?),
caesarian sections or weird births in general (as with Richard III's
breech birth or Macduff's being "untimely ripped" from his mother's
womb)?

We are not in on one of those actors' in-jokes, are we, as when the
actor playing Polonius announces that he once played Julius Caesar and
was killed in the Capitol?  What's the Caesar joke, or the encoded gay
joke?

Roy Flannagan

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