This text adopts a feminist analysis to examine the place of gender in contesting representations of nationhood in early modern England. Taking the Shakespearean history play as their point fo departure, the authors argue that the change from dynastic kingdom to modern nation was integrally connected to shifts in cultural understandings of gender, and in the social roles available to men and women. The cultural centrality of the Elizabethan theatre made it an important arena for staging the diverse and contradictory elements of this transition. Plays featured include: King John; Henry VI,...

Shakespeare and Women situates Shakespeare's female characters in multiple historical contexts, ranging from the early modern England in which they originated to the contemporary Western world in which our own encounters with them are staged. In so doing, this book seeks to challenge currently prevalent views of Shakespeare's women-both the women he depicted in his plays and the women he encountered in the world he inhabited.
Chapter 1, "A Usable History," analyses the implications and consequences of the emphasis on patriarchal power, male misogyny, and women's oppression that has...

The Merry Wives of Windsor is a much neglected comedy by Shakespeare. Initially popular, it was subsequently dismissed and marginalised as one of his weakest plays. However, recent developments in feminist, ecocritical and new historicist criticism have led to a revival of interest, and this collection of 17 essays by top Shakespeare scholars sheds new light on the play. The detailed introduction by Evelyn Gajowski and Phyllis Rackin provides a historical survey of the play's reception and ties into an evolving critical and cultural context. The book's sections look in turn at Female...