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This thesis examines the influence of rough trade, a gay male subculture stock type, in mainstream British and American drama of the twentieth century. Traditionally, rough trade is a sexual encounter between two men in which one man is upper-class, older, and presumed homosexual while the other, rough man, is working-class, younger, and presumed heterosexual. In these encounters, the performance of working-class masculinity is both eroticized and commodified, as is the potential for violence implicit in the unstable balance of power between the two men. The influence of the rough trade tradition is visible in drama through the prominence of class difference, age difference, and transaction between two male characters, and these plays often feature an act of violence as either a direct or indirect result of the rough-trade- influenced encounter.

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Sarah Crockarell is a graduate student in Theatre at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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