“A Marvelous Proper Man”: Shakespearean Ableism, Modern Transphobia, and Pronouns
by Bridget M. Bartlett
In January 2023, conservative social media figure and former Congressional candidate Lavern Spicer tweeted:
The tweet went viral partly because of the absurdity of its phrasing (of course Shakespeare used pronouns), but its virality also showcases an ongoing inclination among many in Anglophone society to believe that the language of Shakespeare and “classics’’ provides a reliable model for how we ought to treat people.
They/them pronouns have become a flashpoint in the ongoing “debate” about whether trans people (including nonbinary people) deserve respect or should even exist. The usual arguments for and against using the singular “they” are familiar: resisters claim that we must not change the age-old laws of English grammar, and proponents point out that the most celebrated authors in the English canon — writers like Chaucer and Shakespeare — did, in fact, use the singular “they.”
Both of these arguments, however, skirt the question of whether a trans person deserves to be referred to by their designated pronouns because their identity deserves to be respected. Additionally, both arguments rely on unfounded assumptions about the stability of the English language over time and — more importantly — remind us why the appeal to tradition is a logical fallacy.
Pronouns have long been political in English, and we only need to look at one of the biggest differences between premodern and contemporary English to see how the conventions governing its pronouns have historically been used to police bodies and delegitimize identities. In premodern English, it was second-person pronouns that carried significant political weight. Today we tend to think of “thou” as interchangeable with “you”, but writers such as William Shakespeare had to be very intentional when they chose to use one pronoun over the other. “You” was more respectful; it was used in formal circumstances and when addressing a social superior. “Thou” was more informal; it was used to address intimates or inferiors.
To address someone as “thou”, then, was to make a pronouncement about that person’s place in society and the dynamics of your relationship with them. Consider Shakespeare’s history play Richard III — specifically, the attack Lady Anne directs at Richard in the famous “wooing scene,” addressing him with thou/thee/thy pronouns (Act 1, Scene 2). Richard, a newly-minted duke who murdered Lady Anne’s husband in helping to take the English throne for the House of York, accosts Anne while she mourns her late father-in-law, the previous king. Now politically dispossessed as a member of the overthrown House of Lancaster and lacking the protection of male relatives, Anne is in no reasonable position to deny this man obeisance. And yet, she does. As Richard tries to win her affection, she rebuffs him with lines like “In thy foul throat thou liest” and “Out of my sight! Thou dost infect my eyes.”
The outright insults in these words are already striking, given the power dynamics between Anne and Richard, but with thou/thee/thy Anne rejects those dynamics entirely. She refuses to acknowledge his rank or the formalities that it demands. This is understandable, seeing as Richard and his family just violently overthrew Anne’s family. But aristocratic hierarchy really isn’t the point. What is important here is the emphasis Anne places on Richard’s deformed body when she uses these pronouns.
Shakespeare’s drama about the ‘crook-backed’ king infamously elides the character’s ‘twisted’ body and moral character. The play presumes that Richard’s atypical body is a sign that he is wicked and too base to be king, and Lady Anne’s use of thou/thee/thy pronouns for Richard gives voice to this very view almost from the moment the play begins. According to Anne, Richard’s lies come out of his “foul throat,” and his words are “poison” that “Never … hung on a fouler toad.” It is the disdainful uses of thou/thee/thy that tie the wickedness and the bodily differences together and identify them with despicableness: “thou” signals that Richard’s body is undeniable evidence that he is, inherently, a “devilish slave.”
When Richard woos Anne, he seeks to exploit his sociopolitical status as a war hero and the king’s brother; Anne views Richard’s claims to societal worthiness as part of his overall pattern of shameless self-serving and dishonesty. Disgusted, she demands “Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity” because Richard’s atypical and unacceptable body is physical proof in her eyes that his pursuit of respect is really nothing more than outrageous presumption.
Richard eventually wins Anne’s hand after calling her bluff when she claims to be willing to kill him. The end of Anne’s resistance in this moment is signaled by her sudden switch to you/your pronouns when addressing Richard. Anne recognizes that she is giving in to Richard’s unreasonable vision for himself before she exits the stage, saying that a “farewell” is “more than you deserve; / But since you teach me how to flatter you, / Imagine I have said farewell already.” And Richard then continues on with flattery and imagination, claiming that “I am crept in favor with myself” now that Lady Anne “finds … / Myself to be a marvelous proper man.”
Notably, the male characters in Richard III consistently address Richard respectfully as “you” make no mention of his sins or his deformed body and acquiesce to his overall demands. Those who use “thou” to address Richard are all embattled women who bravely speak out against Richard’s hypermasculine aggression. Aside from Anne — who speaks of hypothetical future children — the women authorize their resistance to Richard by invoking their motherhood and an interest in protecting children. These characters recognize that the very organization of their society relies on their centrality as women and mothers, and they use this fact to position themselves as arbiters of identity and its relationship to bodies. The mothers in the play thus use “thou” to perform authoritative readings of Richard’s body and thereby pronounce him illegitimate: as a king, a member of the House of York, and even a human being or “proper man” who deserves basic courtesy.
The rhetorical work these women do, then, is remarkably similar to that which occurs when someone intentionally uses the wrong pronouns for a trans person. At the root of it all is a belief that the meanings of bodies are inherent rather than socially produced and subject to change. Three things happen when someone mispronouns a trans person intentionally:
- the speaker implies that the body naturally determines what kind of person someone is;
- the speaker indicates that they (should I say ‘he or she’?) know the “truth” about the trans person’s body and, therefore, their identity;
- the speaker positions themself as having the moral high ground while everyone else either deludes themselves or deliberately lies about the nature of things.
This process is precisely what happens in Richard III when characters pointedly challenge the legitimacy of Richard’s authority through the use of thou/thee/thy pronouns. Shakespeare’s Richard is, undeniably, an evil, dangerous tyrant who more than deserves the tongue-lashings he receives from the relatively powerless women he antagonizes. But the underlying logic — the play’s ableist notions that Richard’s nonstandard body is bad and that this means that he is bad, too — rests on an essentialist view of bodies that we see recycled in modern transphobia.
Pronouns are only one way in which Shakespeare’s ableist essentialism and modern anti-trans essentialism find parallel expression. The women in Richard III believe that Richard’s body means that he is not entitled to privileged identities and relationships. His pursuit of those things in spite of his body’s social meaning is, therefore, a threat to the way society is structured. We have seen that the play’s female characters identify themselves, through maternity, as the crux of society. It is no wonder, then, that Shakespeare presents Richard as a particular threat to women and children when he defies the essentialist views of what and his body must be. This is the same story transphobes now tell about trans people — especially trans women.
These ableist and transphobic stories are based on the same ideas that are encapsulated so tightly in pronouns. Spicer may be right that another great Shakespearean tyrant, Macbeth, never identifies himself with nonbinary pronouns. But the suggestion that Shakespeare is tacitly anti-trans might have been better supported by that fact that he underscores the monstrosity of Lady Macbeth’s villainy by having her call upon spirits to “unsex me here” (Act 1, Scene 5). The horror Shakespeare attaches to Lady Macbeth’s nonreproductive body is another example of how his works reveal a prehistory of modern transphobia in early modern ableism.
It doesn’t actually matter whether certain pronouns were or were not used by English-speakers of the past. Spicer’s real argument is that Shakespeare’s plays are “classics” and therefore unimpeachable. It is absolutely true that the works of Shakespeare are some of the most prominent texts of the English canon. It is equally true that we can learn about the history of English pronouns by studying these works. “Thou” and “you” both were used in the past to enforce essentialist views of social roles, to disrespect people and restrict the ways they live their lives.
It is easy to hold up Shakespeare as an avatar of apolitical, objective good. And we all agree that Shakespeare’s fictional Richard III is an evil and undeserving person who deserves much of the criticism he receives from other characters. But we can also recognize that it is ableist to suppose that these traits are fundamentally connected to the character’s deformities. We can recognize, further, that Richard’s challengers naturalize this essentialist connection of body and character by weaponizing pronouns. When we actually examine how Shakespeare uses pronouns, what we find is that these little words have a substantial history as extraordinarily powerful indicators of social meaning.
Bridget M. Bartlett is a doctoral candidate in English at the University of Mississippi, where they teach literature. Their research focuses on early modern neurodiversity and the role of neurodivergence in how writers of the period constructed racial and national differences.
