Shakespeare took great delight in confusing the audience about gender, and I’m gonna give you just two examples because I’m waiting for take-out. 1/3

The famous best example is Twelfth Night, in which a male actor dresses up as Viola, a young woman who dresses up as a young man who falls in love with another man and who is loved by another woman (who is played by a man). 2/3

But my personal favorite is Othello, when Desdemona’s maid explains women behave badly because they learned all that shit from men, and then you remember both women are being played by men, so the whole scene is really men holding up a mirror and saying “take a long ass look”.3/3

Shakespeare used the singular “they” centuries before it became the target of a cultural war, and it’s funny the OP should cite Macbeth because that’s where Shakespeare wrote “Unsex me here” ffs (take out is late). /4

I could do a whole class lecture on Beatrice’s “O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.” scene and lemme tell you, you would not be sorry. But my pot pie is here so Imma let you go. /5

Mar: This bird of dawning singeth all night long

(which is to say)

OMG hit tweet

Y’all are a delightful gift, thank you so much. Yes, I got my take out, and in the tradition of Titus Andronicus it was a delicious pie stuffed with vengeance. Muting this thread for my poor menchies!