“You are Equipt I see a la Mode D'Espagne”: Transnational Cross-Dressing and the Performance of National Identity in Mary Pix’s The Adventures in Madrid (1706).

Abstract

This article examines how Mary Pix’s The Adventures in Madrid (1706) uses transnational cross-dressing to critique national identity and gender norms. Written against the backdrop of the War of Spanish Succession, the play relocates English characters to a caricatured Spain, where English men don Spanish clothing. This theatrical cross-dressing contributes to contemporary debates about emerging national identities, both Englishness and Spanishness and highlights their performative nature. This article argues that national identity is constructed through a series of markers that can be imitated, ridiculed, and ultimately rejected and draws attention to sartorial identities. Spanish fashion—especially the golilla—becomes a symbol of decline, rigidity, and emasculation, while English masculinity is framed as pragmatic and modern. The play’s farcical tone masks a deeper ideological critique: England’s apparent superiority is affirmed through direct (if somewhat timid) praise and through contrast with a decaying Spanish other. Pix demonstrates how Anglo-Iberian relations and emerging nationalism affected women’s lives while she subtly questions whether English liberty, especially for women, is a genuine condition—or merely another seductive performance.