Some writers object to examining cross-dressing dramas from a homoerotic viewpoint, noting that the act of changing clothes does not change orientation. But Walen emphasizes that the female homoeroticism in cross-dressing plays is situated, not necessarily within the sexual orientation of the characters, but in the dramatic tropes enabled by the cross-dressing motif. It is the audience, more than the characters, who experience the female-female desire.
A Christian Turn’d Turke (Robert Daborne)
17th century English play with orientalist themes in which a woman disguised as a boy attracts a woman’s erotic desire.
