This article revisits contemporary critical debates surrounding the presence of cross-dressed boys as women on the early modern stage – in particular the question of whether or to what extent boy-actors could or should be said to represent ‘women’ or ‘femininity’ – through the Shakespearian emblem of the bloody rag or handkercher. In all but one instance, these soiled napkins appear alongside what the plays call ‘passion’ of various kinds. I examine bloody rags on Shakespeare’s stage in the light of early modern anti-theatrical polemics, medical disputes about sex-difference and the conflicted cultural status of printed paper in order to argue that these besmirched tokens bring together early modern ‘passions’ in multiple senses: strong or overpowering, embodied feeling; the fluid dynamics of early modern bodies; the Passion of Christ; erotic suffering; and, crucially, the performance on stage of all of the above
