Harvard Square is not some out of the way piece of property set apart from the rest of Cambridge by some wall like a hidden garden, but is a vibrant and very public place with converging avenues, an MBTA Red Line stop, eateries of all kinds as well as stores especially those connected with reading and learning, and is freely occupied or traversed by the public of any age. It is a place for street performance, protest, and buying an out of town newspaper as you run to catch the subway.
I have been in the area, and with time to kill, wandered into the Square when it was just people going about their business and when I stumbled upon some activity that had drawn a crowd and filled the area.
Harvard’s Hasting Pudding Club has an annual parade there when presenting its award to the deserving person.
Founded in 1795 by some students dissatisfied with campus food whose members took turns providing hasty pudding for each get-together, it developed over time to become the performance counterpart to the printed Harvard Lampoon through its Theatricals that were based on college humor skits. Drag was introduced in 1837 with a performance by James Russell Lowell, the poet to be, and its first full Drag show titled Bombastes Furioso was performed in 1844.
Since then, members of the Hasty Pudding club have been, as described by an Oklahoma legislator who recently proposed a ban on public Drag performances, adopting “a flamboyant or parodic feminine persona with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup.”
From the beginning of the widening acceptance of Homosexuals in Boston in the `19th Century, the Hasty Pudding Club was the equivalent to the modern influencer when it came to the finer points of being a Gay male, and this was known to those who were members regardless of sexual orientation.
Here are some examples of those who thus engaged.
Phillips Brooks, class of 1855, who was Bishop of Massachusetts, rector of Trinity Church, and author of the Christmas carol, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, had played Princess Glumdalka, Queen of the Giants, in Tom Thumb.
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. played the “widow” in A Gentleman and Lady in a Peculiarly Perplexing Predicament in 1865.
Philosopher George Santayana played Lady Elfrida in Robin Hood who was recued by her love, Allan-a-Dale, from the cruel Sir Reginald.
Bay Staters might be interested to know that Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. played Imogene the Fair in Alonzo the Brave, who was madly in love with the male lead.
In Catnippers, 1903, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a chorus girl.
Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld played leading lady Vera Similitude in the 1966 Hasty Pudding production, Right Up Your Alley and enjoyed being part of the kick line in a number of productions.
And with all the men in Drag who are part of the Theatrical and award activities, the honorees such as Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Coolidge, Tom Cruise, Paul Newman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Robert DeNiro, are in the parade that goes through public Harvard Square as has been the tradition.
This Drag obsession the GOP is experiencing these days is not part of the American Heritage.
And just to throw it in, remember Rudy Giuliani dressed in drag and Trump thought it was great.
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