Abstract
These chapters discuss the power conveyed by clothes and assumed identities and analyze how in As You Like It and Twelfth Night Rosalind and Viola differ in their feelings for and use of this power. Specifically, and to varying degrees, the women use their power to remark on socially-accepted male and female behavior, revealing the foolish wooing habits of the men in the process. They also utilize their power to “rewrite” their respective scripts, and in doing so reveal that the power created through their gender-based disguises works only because of the women they were before the disguise. Regardless of what came before the disguise, however, in the worlds of Arden and Illyria, Rosalind and Viola need the power of male attire to achieve their goals, because it empowers their individual situations. However, these gender-based disguises only convey power because Rosalind and Viola are capable of wielding it.