Elizabethan Times: Attitudes to Sexuality and Gender Roles?

Answer 1

Sexuality wasn't discussed. It was expected. It was acknowledged but it wasn't to be spoken about. At this time men were men and women were women. Women were not expected to get an education, they were to make babies. With royalty women had socials and played games to occupy their time but poor women had it hard. They were expected to make babies, cook, clean, take care of children and even work some of the time. Men had the basic philosophy. They were the breadmakers and they could have their women whenever they wanted and fidelity was not largely discussed because it was expected of most men.

Answer 2

Elizabethan Sexuality

Answer 3

In those times in a play all of the men played womens roles. Usually someone who played a woman was a boy before puberty so he didn't have a beard and you couldn't tell he was a man. Everybody in those times thought of actors as lower class. They did not get respect. There was even a group called penny stinkers who paid a penny to get in and had to sit on the ground in front of the stage. They usually got drunk and if they didn't like they play would yell and throw beer bottles at them.

Answer 4

My apologies, but this question seems quite unclear to me.

That said, might one suggest the terms of reference, in particular 'gender roles', is quite out of keeping with the period. If one is seeking to understand the mores of an era, attempting to map one's current understanding on top of it will only result in a variation in terminology, not an extension of understanding. (The concepts of 'emic' and 'etic' might be referenced in this regard).

Before the 1700's things in general were executed from a more practical and natural level than obtained thereafter. For example, the 'marriage contract' was only legally formalised during the 1700's, and then as a way of keeping track of who was associated with whom rather than as a legal confirmation of what was until then a social celebration. The 'nuclear family' is an outcome of the industrial revolution, and the need for the 'Dark Satanic Mill' owners to be able to transfer workers to builded sites, the 'village community' having obtained before then as primary cultural identity.

'Necessity is the Father of Dissension' might be one way of approaching the idea of 'gender roles'(sic) in said times. The simple fact that a Queen ruled England and determined destinies for all says much of what was and was not acceptable then. Recall also that males would play the female roles on stage and one wonders how much the 'gender benders' were at work - knowing as they did that 'gender' and 'sex'(ie. biological identity) were distinct concepts, something that tends to be mystified in the latter-20th/early-21st Century.

Again, my apologies for not being more useful in this regard: I can but recommend a light study of history in the preceeding few centuries at least, and biographical reading, with an eye to modern paradigmatic overlays thereupon.