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Author Shapiro, Michael, 1938-

Title Gender in play on the Shakespearean stage : boy heroines and female pages / Michael Shapiro.

Publication Info. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 1996.
©1994

Item Status

Location Call No. Status OPAC Message Public Note Gift Note
 Moore Stacks  PR3095 .S524 1996    Available  ---
Edition 1st pbk. ed.
Description viii, 282 pages ; 24 cm
Women language
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-275) and index.
Contents 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.
Summary Cross-dressing, sexual identity, and the performance of gender are among the most hotly discussed topics in contemporary cultural studies. A vital addition to the growing body of literature, this book is the most in-depth and historically contextual study to date of Shakespeare's uses of the heroine in male disguise--man-playing-woman-playing-man--in all its theatrical and social complexity. Shapiro's study centers on the five plays in which Shakespeare employed the figure of the "female page": The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Cymbeline. Combining theater and social history, Shapiro locates Shakespeare's work in relation to controversies over gender roles and cross-dressing in Elizabethan England. 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 found their way into Shakespearean drama, Shapiro considers such cases as cross-dressing women in London being punished as prostitutes and the alleged homoerotic practices of the apprentices who played female roles in adult companies. Shapiro also traces other Elizabethan dramatists' varied uses of the cross-dressing motif, especially as they were influenced by Shakespeare's innovations--Publisher description.
Subject Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Stage history -- To 1625.
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.
Chronological Term To 1625
Subject Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Dramatic production.
Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Characters -- Women.
Theater -- Casting -- England -- History -- 16th century.
Theater -- Casting.
England.
History.
Chronological Term 16th century
Subject Theater -- Casting -- England -- History -- 17th century.
Chronological Term 17th century
Subject Child actors -- England -- History.
Child actors.
Gender identity in literature.
Gender identity in literature.
Sex role in literature.
Sex role in literature.
Disguise in literature.
Disguise in literature.
Women in literature.
Women in literature.
Other Form: Online version: Shapiro, Michael, 1938- Gender in play on the Shakespearean stage. 1st pbk. ed. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 1996, c1994 (OCoLC)605201443
ISBN 0472084054 paperback
9780472084050 paperback
0472105671
9780472105670