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To 'know', or 'studie', oneself was a dominant concern of the Early Modern period. Scepticism and self-doubt pervaded the Jacobean conscience. Montaigne’s statements that ‘to philosophise is to doubt’ (251) and that ‘knowing much gives occasion for doubting more’ (376) are reflected in much literature and art of the period. Change was tailed by a shadow of cultural anxiety, hidden in plain sight. This anxiety surfaces in the 1533 portrait The Ambassadors. Objects crowd this painting: globes, sheets of music, textiles and sundials stand proudly at the centre of the picture. These objects reflect advancements of science, culture and thinking. Yet, at the feet of the subjects, tellingly, looms an anamorphic skull, reflecting anxiety lurking below the surface of material culture and change. Clothing was likewise a site of negotiation for these concerns. With textiles imported from mainland Europe, and material production in England booming, clothing became more accessible and subject to fashion. With tighter sumptuary laws, and an increasing number of punishments for those who dressed against regulation, it is clear that change within habits of dress was seen as threatening. In many sumptuary laws, and polemical pamphlets, social anxieties about class, gender and status manifest materially. This is true, too, within the theatre. Plays such as Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice and Gallathea explored cross-dressing, and reflected contemporary anxieties about what it meant for social order. As Jonathon Dollimore states, to dress was to be ‘metaphysically identified’ (54): it outwardly signified one’s class and status, and was seen as a sign of social order. Productions which explored cross-dressing were attacked by anti-theatricalists, who feared that theatre caused the male players to become effeminate. As such, any play which explored cross-dressing, was participating in a cultural conversation about identity and status, and, in doing so, undermined the metaphysical identifiers which Jacobean society wished to promulgate. Few texts, however, dared disrupt the metaphysical order of social hierarchies in such an inventive way as Dekker and Middleton's The Roaring Girl. Based upon the real-life cross-dresser, Mary (Moll) Frith, the play features a character who goes beyond the idea of ‘self-knowledge’ and makes strides towards self-invention. The identity which she creates is radically unique, comfortable dwelling within blurred areas of doubt and enigma. Much recent feminist and historicist criticism has sought to place Moll within a wider feminist context. The RSC’s 2014 production, for instance, framed her as an originator of the ‘Girl Power!’ brand of feminism1 . Whilst her agency in cross-dressing and disruption of gender roles is, to some extent, proto-feminist, I argue this view places too much emphasis on a feminine gender, and assimilates her with a movement, when she is remarkably individual. Moll only seeks to be herself, and, through her dress, to have the freedom to elect who that might be
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