Primary Text: "Gallathea" (also known as "Galatea") by John Lyly

Wixson, Christopher. "Cross-Dressing and John Lyly's 'Gallathea'." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 41.2 (Spring 2001): 241-256.

In the end, the two female lovers are seemingly rewarded for their desire that does not transgress class boundaries. Although the potential destabilization does not offer liberation from social constraint because the two female lovers are magically "made" heterosexual subsequent to the end of the play, their presence highlights the discursive prescriptions of gender and "compulsory" heterosexuality. More importantly, a lesbian alternative is glimpsed within the forest among Diana's nymphs (and perhaps by extension in Elizabeth's female court) and the two daughters, even if only pointed to in its "not" form (IV.ii.21-65). For critics exploring early modern notions of lesbian identity and behavior, what emerges from the cross-dressing between Gallathea and Phyllida is what Diana Fuss identifies as the "tension . . . between a view of identity as that which is always there (but has been buried under layers of cultural repression) and that which has never been socially permitted (but remains to be formed, created, or achieved)." This self-consciousness in the test is potentially quite subversive, at odds with the patriarchal social structure of the play but not with its ideology of essentialized, immobile class position.