Shakespeare’s Women: Performance and Conception

David Mann examines the influence of the Elizabethan cross-dressed tradition on the performance and conception of Shakespeare’s female roles through an analysis of all 205 extant plays written for the adult theatre. The study provides both an historical context, showing how performance practice developed in the era before Shakespeare, and a comparative one, in revealing how dramatists in general treated their female characters and the influence their characterisation had upon Shakespeare’s writing. The book challenges current views of the sexual ethos of Elizabethan theatre, offering instead a picture of Shakespeare which pays less attention to his supposed gender politics and more to his ability to exploit the cross-dressed convention as a dramatic medium. By challenging the gay and polemical feminist accounts that currently dominate the treatment of Elizabethan cross-dressing, the book restores its importance as a mainstream performance topic for academics and students.

• Comprehensive historical overview of the cross-dressed performance tradition, placing the plays of Shakespeare into a more complex perspective • Includes an appendix containing a statistical analysis of female roles in all 205 extant plays in the adult repertoire • Unique selection of illustrations provide insights into the use of costume and prosthetics in the creation of female roles

Preliminary: The persistence of all-male theatre; Introduction: The significance of the performer; 1. Age and status; 2. Erotic ambience; 3. Stage costume and performer ethos; 4. Male didacticism and female stereotyping; 5. Dramatic empathy and moral ambiguity; 6. Sexual violence; 7. Positive representations of young women; Appendix: Female characters in the adult repertory 1500–1614.