Synopses & Reviews
Shakespeare and the Embodied Heroine is a dynamic cross-period investigation of Shakespeare's notable female characters from the late plays. Using the Restoration and eighteenth century adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, this book explores female characters from a theatrical point-of-view that includes a close-reading and imagining of the text with a 'directorial eye', performance history, and practical staging experiments. Leigh reveals evidence to question certain conventional interpretations of Shakespeare's heroines and also documents a paradoxical reduction of sexuality and independent agency for Shakespeare's female roles as they started to be played by actresses rather than boy players. Highlighting the manner in which Shakespeare's female characters have the power to question, subvert, and reposition gender boundaries, and illuminating the complexity and multiplicity of the ways the women in Shakespeare's plays express their agency and desire, this book provides fascinating new readings on the staging and reception of Shakespeare's heroines.
Synopsis
Shakespeare and the Embodied Heroine is a bold new investigation of Shakespeare's female characters using the late plays and the early adaptations written and staged during the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
About the Author
Lori Leigh is a Lecturer of Theatre at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She has published in The Quest for Cardenio (2012), The Creation and Re-Creation of Cardenio (2013), and the journal Shakespeare. She is an award-winning director and has worked on numerous productions of Shakespeare's plays.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1.Other Worldly Desires: The Jailer's Daughter and Emilia in Fletcher and Shakespeare's The Two Noble Kinsmen and Davenant's The Rivals
2.No Woman Is an Island: Female Roles in Dryden and Davenant's The Tempest, Or The Enchanted Island and Shakespeare's The Tempest
3.Silence and Sorcery, Sexuality and Stone: Absent Parts to Understanding Hermione and Paulina in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and Garrick's Florizel and Perdita
4.Transformation, Transvestism, and Lost Text: Violante's Rape and Cross-Dressing in Lewis Theobald's Double Falsehood and Fletcher and Shakespeare's Cardenio
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index