Were odd in the English Renaissance. That is all. Oh wait. Also, Shakespeare is awesome, but I do not want to write my essay.

Oooh do go on. :3 I want to know what you learned about this period.

This thread makes me think of As You Like It. Dante

definitely, dante. the women characters were usually played by young boys

Chelsea- It's called the single-sex model. Gender was thought of as a continuum, rather than a binary. Women were 'cold' and 'wet', associated with the water and earth elements, while men were 'hot' and 'dry', and associated with air and fire. It was believed that male and female reproductive organs were essentially the the same, but women never got 'hot' enough so their bits never dropped out. Which in practical terms meant that a lot of people were afraid that if women ever did get hot enough they would turn into men, which in turn meant a lot of gender restrictions were put in place because men and women had to be kept very obviously differentiated from each other on the outside to make sure they stayed different biologically. Dante- aye, As you Like It is one of the plays we were studying. Is a good one, lots of interesting things in it. Matt- Yes, originally all the female parts were played by boys, which gets particularly interesting in plays like As You Like It where we have a boy pretending to be a girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be a girl.

[b]larry229 wrote:[/b] [quote] Matt- Yes, originally all the female parts were played by boys, which gets particularly interesting in plays like As You Like It where we have a boy pretending to be a girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be a girl.[/quote] *mind blown.