Ziegler, Dolan, and Roberts' "attention is directed specifically to the representations of Shakespeare's women in the Victorian era, rather than on the Elizabethan stage ... [They have] culled from the [Folger] Library's vast holdings a remarkably varied and illuminating array of books, manuscripts, and illustrations which provide a new understanding of how Shakespeare's heroines came to embody, reflect, and refract the values and assumptions of nineteenth-century English society."--Foreword, p.7.

The first sustained study of girls and girlhood in early modern literature and culture. Jennifer Higginbotham makes a persuasive case for a paradigm shift in our current conceptions of the early modern sex-gender system. She challenges the widespread assumption that the category of the 'girl' played little or no role in the construction of gender in early modern English culture. And she demonstrates that girl characters appeared in a variety of texts, from female infants in Shakespeare's late romances to little children in Tudor interludes to adult 'roaring girls' in city comedies. This monograph provides the first book-length study of the way the literature and drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constructed the category of the 'girl'.

The question is not whether Shakespeare studies needs feminism, but whether feminism needs Shakespeare. This is the explicitly political approach taken in the dynamic and newly updated edition of A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare. Provides the definitive feminist statement on Shakespeare for the 21st century Updates address some of the newest theatrical andcreative engagements with Shakespeare, offering fresh insights into Shakespeare’s plays and poems, and gender dynamics in early modern England Contributors come from across the feminist generations and from various stages in their careers to address what is new in the field in terms of historical and textual discovery Explores issues vital to feminist inquiry, including race, sexuality, the body, queer politics, social economies, religion, and capitalism In addition to highlighting changes, it draws attention to the strong continuities of scholarship in this field over the course of the history of feminist criticism of Shakespeare The previous edition was a recipient of a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award; this second edition maintains its coverage and range, and bringsthe scholarship right up to the present day

As She Likes It is the first attempt to tackle head on the enduring question of how to perform those unruly women at the centre of Shakespeare's comedies. Unique amongst both Shakespearian and feminist studies, As She Likes It asks how gender politics affects the production to the comedies, and how gender is represented, both in the text and on the stage. Penny Gay takes a fascinating look at the way Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Measure for Measure have been staged over the last half a century, when perceptions of gender roles have undergone massive changes. She also interrogates, rigorously but thoughtfully, the relationship between a male theatrical establishment and a burgeoning feminist approach to performance. As illuminating for practitioners as it will be enjoyable and useful for students, As She Likes It will be critical reading for anyone interested in women's experience of theatre.

This study removes some of the critical puzzles that Shakespeare's comedies of love have posed in the past. The author shows that what distinguishes the comedies is not their similarity but their variety.

Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.

Shakespeare and the Nature of Women was the first full-length feminist analysis of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, ushering in a new era in research and criticism. Its arguments for the feminism both of the drama and the early modern period caused instant controversy, which still engrosses scholars. Dusinberre argues that Puritan teaching on sexuality and spiritual equality raises questions about women which feed into the drama, where the role of women in relation to authority structures is constantly renegotiated. Using a critical language which predates Foucault and other major theorists, Shakespeare and the Nature of Women argues that Renaissance drama highlights ways in which the feminine and the masculine are socially constructed. The presence of the boy actor on stage created an awareness of gender as performance, now crucial to contemporary feminist thought. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women claimed for women a right to speak about the literary text from their own place in history and culture. The author's Preface to the second edition traces contemporary developments in feminist scholarship, which still wrestles with the book's main thesis: Renaissance feminism, feminist Shakespeare.