In which I realize how queer Queer Theory actually is

When analyzing early modern drama, my MO is to be as cynical as humanly possible. This is why I enjoy studying and writing about tragedies more than comedies. Both comedies and tragedies expose serious problems with society, culture, and other systems, but while tragic endings acknowledge these problems and their "un-solve-ability" through death and the decay of society, comedies pretend to solve these problems with happy endings full of marriage celebrations and jigs. You're not fooling anybody, Shakespeare.

Of course, my binary between comedies and tragedies is oversimplified. But I reference it to explain why I assumed my readings of Gallathea would end up pointing towards one general direction, and why I'm so surprised that they haven't. When I began analyzing Gallathea, I knew immediately that I wanted to focus on the relationship between Gallathea and Phillida, because their relationship is what has drawn so many queer theorists to the play. I figured it would be easy to debunk the popular interpretation of Gallathea as a seminal queer text for many reasons: Foucault's argument in The History of Sexuality that our current ideas of sexuality are modern constructs; New Historicism's claim that literature ought to be read within the culture it was produced in and that history ought not to be read backwards; and, of course, my previous assumption that comedies, as a genre, affirm and enforce problematic social practices through their "happy" endings. My reading of Armstrong's "Gender Must Be Defended" appeared to prove this point, using her interpretation of Foucault's concept of biopower to read the marriage arrangement and promised sex/gender transformation of Gallthea and Phillida as simply another method of  assimilating the two virgins into the larger culture of sexuality and power in Gallathea.

When Jess and I wrote about Greenblatt's "Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and Its Subversion," I at first assumed that Greenblatt would only affirm my argument that Gallathea was a sexually reactionary text. As the father of New Historicism, I thought that Greenblatt would present ideas that proved how the sexuality presented in Gallathea was not at all radical. On the contrary, reading Greenblatt's "Invisible Bullets" helped me understand how truly subversive and radical my text actually was. The following quote from Greenblatt elucidated why such a play could discuss such subversive concepts and still remain a comedy: “Thus the subversiveness which is genuine and radical—sufficiently disturbing so that to be suspected of such beliefs could lead to imprisonment and torture—is at the same time contained by the power it would appear to threaten.” My ideas that the relationship between Gallathea and Phillida was sexually reactionary, and that they couldn't be seen as queer characters because "queer" is a modern construct, were wrong. Although the play's comic ending may be reactionary, it is only because it is containing the "genuine and radical" subversion of this female/female relationship. My initial assumption about the text were incorrect because they dismissed the radical subversion in Gallathea.

Studying Gallathea this quarter has helped me realize why students of queer theory are drawn to this play. My discoveries about different ways of reading the play have motivated me to study Gallathea further, to better understand its subversive elements and how they function in the play.