The Sexual Identities of Moll Cutpurse in Dekker and Middleton’s The Roaring Girl and in London

Moll Cutpurse dramatically demonstrates the insufficiency of gender categories both in The Roaring Girl and in her life. The fictional Moll’s sex/gender ambiguity is explored through three distinct sexual identities (prostitute, hermaphrodite, bisexual ideal) and is further complicated through her heroic personation. Ultimately, the playwrights replace negative social readings of Moll’s sexuality with a positive ideal, albeit an incomplete one. When the real Moll appeared on stage, she not only usurped the male actor’s prerogative, she also rejected her fictional rehabilitation. Through her overtly sexual language, her cross-gendered performance, and her transvestite costume, she recuperated transgression as social signifier