I was also, in truth, trying to find a sneaky way to meet the objective standards of a dissertation and still use my voice creatively. To see how different, or not, a woman of the sixteenth century was from a woman of the twenty-first. I wanted to change the story arc of a long-established, inviolate yet violated Shakespearean character. I was interested in breaking the proverbial fourth wall of theater, but on paper. “Essay” comes from the French essayer, “to try.” I find that very moving. She entered, page left, and wouldn’t leave-and I didn’t want her to. I was staring at my knuckles above the keyboard, thinking how much hands say about a person, who she is and how she’s lived. But when she appeared twenty years later in my American Studies dissertation on in-betweenness and identity, it startled me. Over the next decade she kept cropping up-a Jeopardy clue, a Christopher Street drag show, a Halloween costume. As a simmering teen wreathed in menthol smoke, cobwebs, and Pink Panther insulation, Lavinia’s plight enraged and validated me. I first read Titus Andronicus as a seventeen-year-old, sneaking pilfered wine and Newports in the crawl space of my parents’ house.
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