La Calandra: The Trauma behind Cross-Dressing

Abstract

rauma and loss lie at the beginning of most comedy, from which, by the law of the genre, resilience is born. This, at least, is the theory, but what t is the practice? And what does it mean to bring the version of comedy that is at the center of this cluster—that of early modern Europe—into the currents of today? Does doing so threaten to deform it, to subvert it? Does it mean failing to listen to its place in time and hence to be oblivious to what Michel de Certeau once called the resistance of a work to hypotheses and theories imposed from the outside? As sensitive as one must be to such resistance, it is also the case, as Stephen Orgel notes, that “however responsible we undertake to be to our texts and their contexts, we can look only with our own eyes, and interpret only with our own minds, which have been formed by our own history. All historical claims, even the most tactful and unpoliticized, are ultimately concerned to make the past comprehensible, usable and relevant to our own interests—to make it, that is, present. . . . The Renaissance changes with every generation.” It is banal to add that a theatrical work must make itself present with each performance— and so, it too changes with every generation. As Orgel was writing Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Early Modern England, a generation was reeling from the AIDS crisis. Orgel’s book is dedicated to five friends who died of HIV, and among other things, his study probes