What does it mean to come in for someone? Cross-dressed bodies have unique stage directions when it comes to printed materials from the seventeenth century and those nuances have been lost or hidden in our modern-day anthologies. This project lies at the intersection between book history, gender studies, and transnational studies in order to observe the presentation of stage direction on the page and how that space reflects contemporary attitudes towards female crossdressing. Although there are

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... similarities on the surface between Shakespearean comedies and Siglo de Oro comedias, it is only in comparing them transnationally that one can see the radical differences between the two national stages. By reading the page visually, the superficial, plot driven similarities pales in comparison to the disparities in the stage direction expressed on the physical page. I will be examining these plays within three visual paradigms: Place & Space / Fluidity, Presence / Non-Presence, and Duality / Hybridity. Through these paradigms, I have observed that Shakespearean comedies tend to restrict moments of cross-dress within explicit stage directions and depend heavily off of implicit stage directions located within the dialogue, while Spanish comedies allow not only for more moments of cross-dress, but also for detailed descriptions of the cross-dressed body. I have come to the conclusion that by limiting the explicit stage direction and using male alter-egos in moments of cross-dress, the stage direction is an expression of English anxieties over the cross-dressed body and the transgression of gender boundaries. The Spanish stage directions, on the other hand, do not shy away from multiple moments of cross-dress and this in turn reveals a less anxious society and expresses positive attitudes towards freedom, rather than restriction, over the female body.