Article: The sartorial hermaphrodite.

In the opening scene of William Wycherley's The Country Wife (1674/75). Quack declares that when women hear that Homer is impotent, he will become to them as loathsome "as aniseed Robin of filthy and contemptible memory" (Wycherley 1981, 1.1.23-24). Modern editors follow the gloss provided by Montague Summers in the 1924 edition of Wycherley's works: "A famous hermaphrodite (temp. James I--Charles I), the hero of various indecent adventures" (287).(1) Summers concentrates upon the peculiar sexual abilities and inabilities attributed to the hermaphrodite; he cites an epitaph for aniseed Robin by Charles Cotton, which claims that Robin wedded and impregnated himself twice, ...

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