Items related to Shakespeare Without Women (Accents on Shakespeare)
Synopsis
Shakespeare Without Women is a controversial study of female impersonation, and the connections between dramatic and political representation in Shakespeare's plays. In this original and challenging book, Callaghan argues that Shakespeare did not include women, and that his transvestite actors did not represent women, and were not, furthermore, meant to do so. All Shakespeare's actors were, of historical necessity, (white) males which meant that the portrayal of women and racial others posed unique problems for his theatre. What is important, Shakespeare Without Women claims, is not to bemoan the absence of women, Africans, or the Irish, but to determine what such absences meant in their historical context and why they matter today. Callaghan focuses in the implications of absence and exclusion in several of Shakespeare's works: * the exclusion of the female body fromTwelfth Night * the impersonation of the female voice in the original performances of the plays * racial impersonation in Othello * echoes of removal of the Gaelic Irish in The Tempest * the absence of women on stage and in public life as shown in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
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Review
"I have personally purchased and studied every one of the new Accents on Shakespeare volumes in the new series edited by Terence Hawkes and repeatedly turn to them as resources for my own research and teaching. My students - graduate and undergraduate alike - find them invaluable, as I do. They are remarkably comprehensive, timely, and informative, and essential way to keep current with the fundamental ideas in Shakespearean criticism." -Arthur F. Kinney, Thomas W. Copeland Professor of Literary History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst "Accents on Shakespeare is shaping up as everything a streetwise series of books on the Bard should be: engaged, imaginative, heretical and occasionally outrageous. No one who aims to have their finger on the pulse of Shakespeare studies can afford to ignore it." -Kiernan Ryan Professor of English, Royal Holloway, University of London and Fellow of New Hall, University of Cambridge "I found it exhilarating and provocative as wellas instructive in matters as diverse as the role of race in the formation of national ideology. . . . it is also challenging. It makes you think. . . . it is exactly the sort of volume that a series like "Accents on "Shakespeare should be looking for." -Terence Hawkes, Series Editor of "Accents on Shakespeare ...no reader of this bookwill say that he or she has not been mentally challenged by its direct approach to the subject matter. Highly recom, July 2000
Synopsis
Shakespeare Without Women is a controversial study of female impersonation, and the connections between dramatic and political representation in Shakespeare's plays. In this original and challenging book, Callaghan argues that Shakespeare did not include women, and that his transvestite actors did not represent women, and were not, furthermore, meant to do so. All Shakespeare's actors were, of historical necessity, (white) males which meant that the portrayal of women and racial others posed unique problems for his theatre. What is important, Shakespeare Without Women claims, is not to bemoan the absence of women, Africans, or the Irish, but to determine what such absences meant in their historical context and why they matter today. Callaghan focuses in the implications of absence and exclusion in several of Shakespeare's works: the exclusion of the female body from Twelfth Night the impersonation of the female voice in the original performances of the plays racial impersonation in Othello echoes of removal of the Gaelic Irish in The Tempest the absence of women on stage and in public life as shown in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
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