Simone de Beauvoir famously stated that one was not born a woman but became one. In privileging the importance of social and cultural influences over biological ones, de Beauvoir highlights issues which are pertinent to the stage representation of gender. One might argue, and Judith Butler is one of the most notable proponents of this idea, that any performance by women is merely the portrayal of a set of learned gestures: a fictitious act. In other words, women are never present upon the stage, instead the spectator views a representation of womanhood. Other contemporary feminist theory has complicated the study of female performance further. Sue-Ellen Case, drawing on Ann Kaplan's film theories, utilises the notion of ‘the male gaze’ in which fictional women are constructed in order to be viewed by men. In this way, Case suggests, ‘women appear in order to be looked upon rather than do the looking’. Case draws attention to the portrayal of women as ‘cultural courtesans’, invented by men, to serve the purpose of being looked at. Drawing upon the work of Butler and Case it is possible to conclude that there are no women present upon the stage, but merely a cultural construction: the sign of woman is present but never woman herself.

The absence of women from the medieval stage complicates the issues of gender representation still further. As has been shown in the previous chapter, women rarely performed upon the stage and were more probably represented by male actors. This playing of gender, or gender mimicking, offers a new set of problems that must be overcome in order to ‘read’ the performance act. When men play women the distance between ‘real’ women and the culturally created imitations is increased.