Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage : Boy Heroines and Female Pages / / Michael Shapiro

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910735592903321
• Autore: Shapiro Michael <1938->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Ann Arbor : , : The University of Michigan Press, , 1996; ©1996
• ISBN: 0-472-90424-8
• Edizione: [First paperback edition.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource
• Soggetti: Theâtre - Angleterre (GB) - Identite sexuelle - Dans la litterature; Theâtre - Angleterre (GB) - 17e siecle; Theâtre - Angleterre (GB) - 16e siecle; Rôle selon le sexe - Dans la litterature; Women in the theater; Women in literature; Theater - Casting; Theater; Sex role in literature; Gender identity in the theater; Gender identity in literature; Disguise in literature; Cross-dressing in literature; Child actors; Travestisme dans la litterature; Femmes dans la litterature; Deguisement dans la litterature; Rôle selon le sexe dans la litterature; Identite de genre dans la litterature; Enfants acteurs - Angleterre - Histoire - 17e siecle; Enfants acteurs - Angleterre - Histoire - 16e siecle; Femmes au theâtre - Angleterre - Histoire - 17e siecle; Femmes au theâtre - Angleterre - Histoire - 16e siecle; Identite de genre au theâtre - Angleterre - Histoire - 17e siecle; Identite de genre au theâtre - Angleterre - Histoire - 16e siecle; Theâtre - Distribution artistique - Angleterre - Histoire - 17e siecle; Theâtre - Distribution artistique - Angleterre - Histoire - 16e siecle; Child actors - England - History - 17th century; Child actors - England - History - 16th century; Women in the theater - England - History - 17th century; Women in the theater - England - History - 16th century; Gender identity in the theater - England - History - 17th century; Gender identity in the theater - England - History - 16th century; Theater - Casting - England - History - 17th century; Theater - Casting - England - History - 16th century; History; England
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Nota di contenuto: A brief social history of female cross-dressing -- Male cross-dressing in playhouses and plays -- Cross-gender disguise plus cross-gender casting -- Bringing the page onstage: The two gentlemen of Verona -- Doubling of cross-gender disguise: The merchant of Venice -- Layers of disguise: As you like it -- Anxieties of intimacy: Twelfth night -- From center to periphery: Cymbeline.
• Sommario/riassunto: "Like other English Renaissance writers and dramatists, Shakespeare was attracted to the heroine in male disguise. Gender in Play on the Shakespearean Stage examines the use of this type of character--man playing woman playing man--by framing five plays by Shakespeare against readings of some of the other "female page" plays written by other playwrights of the period. The many variations Michael Shapiro traces are placed in the context of female cross-dressing as a social phenomenon and in the context of female impersonation as the standard way of representing women on the Shakespearean stage. Shakespeare's use of the female page spanned his entire career: The Two Gentlemen of Verona (an early comedy), The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night (mature romantic comedies), and Cymbeline (a late romance). Shapiro deploys several modes of literary criticism to establish the distinctiveness of each of Shakespeare's five disguised heroine plays and to trace the subtle and ingenious variations on the motif by such writers as Greene, Fletcher, Chapman, Middleton, Jonson, and Ford. The popularity of the "female page" is examined as a playful literary and theatrical way of confronting, avoiding, or merely exploiting issues such as the place of women in a patriarchal culture and the representation of women on stage. Looking beyond and behind the stage for the cultural anxieties that cross-dressing London women being punished as prostitutes and speculation that the apprentices who played female roles in adult companies engaged in homoerotic practices. [This book] will appeal not only to scholars of Renaissance drama but to any reader interested in the historical construction and analysis of gender and sexuality, both on- and offstage"-- Back cover.