From Gentleman Jack to Orlando, the queer costume drama has been pushing debates around gender and sexuality into the mainstream in the disguise of rollicking good fun. Ruby Thomas has unearthed an altogether sadder story from early 18th-century Prussia, of a married couple who were tried for sodomy after it was discovered that the husband had been born female.
Anastasius Linck, an orphaned army deserter, was sentenced to death; their wife got off with a three-year jail term, after pleading ignorance of her husband’s sex at the time of their marriage. What the truth of their union might have been is the subject of a giddily anachronistic five-act play from Ruby Thomas, which explores the headiness of personal freedom, and the price that is still being paid for it by those who don’t conform to societal norms.
