Cross-dressing

Much has been written about theatrical cross-dressing in early modern England, particularly in the last decade or so. Some of this work is excerpted in the Signet edition of Twelfth Night, to which the subject is so obviously relevant.

For contemporary (seventeenth-century) writing about cross-dressing, onstage and off, you might want to take a look at the Hic Mulier/Haec Vir pamphlets--keep in mind, though, that these weren't printed until roughly two decades after Twelfth Night was first performed. (The Wikipedia entry on Haec Vir provides a good introduction to both pamphlets.) A much earlier example is the antitheatricalist (and ex-playwright) Stephen Gosson's late sixteenth-century harangue, a page of which I've pulled from Early English Books Online (EEBO) and will paste below.

And finally, here is a link to a New York Times theater review of a relatively recent Twelfth Night with an all-male cast.