Gabriel Montoya

Gabriel Montoya, portrayed by Jim Howick, is a trained assassin from Spain.

Biography
As a master of disguise, Gabriel is hired by King Philip II of Spain to assist in his plan to kill Queen Elizabeth.

She travels into England with King Philip and her fellow assassins (Lope Lopez and Juan Domingo) early in the film.

After a mishap at the border control that leads to the security in London to be on high alert, the group is forced to become up with a new plan. Gabriel comes up with the idea to use the summit play within their plot.

Portrayal of Gender
Throughout the movie, Gabriel is shown to enjoy dressing in women's clothes, and uses every opportunity she can to ‘disguise’ herself as a woman - despite this being looked down upon by her associates.

This love is built upon by her enthusiasm at being given the female roles in Bill’s play, and she is shown to be overwhelmed with happiness once informed of this.

During the time that Gabriel spends with King Philip and the catholics, she is lumped together with the men - for example the border control agent calls her a “gentleman” while referring to the catholic group. (However, no pronouns are used directly for her in the film.)

Many times in the course of the movie, Gabriel is repeatedly looked at judgementally when her struggle with gender becomes obvious, and it seems that Gabriel’s love for ‘dressing as a woman’ is supposed to be seen as funny by the viewer.

This can lead to quite the distasteful viewing experience for transgender audiences in the first half of the movie, however it seems that the heart of the writers was in the right place as there is a happy ending.

Bill Shakespeare, our protagonist, is shown to understand Gabriel from the moment that he meets her. As mentioned earlier, he assigns her both of the female roles in his play. He is never seen to be judgemental of Gabriel, and accepts her without question.

During Bill’s final speech, he says:

“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players”

During this, he says “and women” as an add-on.

It is as though he was solely going to refer to them as men, but corrects himself as he looks to Gabriel - the camera cutting to show Gabriel smiling back at him.

This was a direct acknowledgment of Gabriel’s gender identity, and one that was done free of any negativity by the main character, who we are led to trust - Which further pushes the narrative that Gabriel is indeed a woman, and isn’t to be viewed any other way.

In the final scene of the film, Gabriel is shown with Bill behind stage of his new first show as a successful playwright. She has remained in England, and likely has disbanded from the catholic group.

She is shown to be wearing makeup with longer curly hair. This is shown while in a casual situation, informing us that she is now living openly as a woman now rather than using it as a “disguise”.