Twelfth Night: a Shakespeare transgender play - Softcover

Shakespeare, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0942208331 ISBN 13: 9780942208337

Publisher: Bandanna Books, 2011

Synopsis

A reader's edition, modernized language ("you" for "thee," etc.) and glossary for unfamiliar words. Twelfth Night is one in a series of Shakespeare plays featuring transgender characters. This play was probably written on request as an entertainment for the rollicking Christmas season, carries a simple plot device of crossdressing about as far as it can go, with plenty of tomfoolery spacing it out. The character names are Italian, the setting is Illyria, an imaginary country on the Adriatic. What are Shakespeare transgender plays? To his audience, seeing a character changing to a different gender’s clothing and manners was simply accepted as a plot device for a bit of fun. Keep in mind that all the actors in plays of this period were men, and some were already dressed as women characters. To then see one of these actors change back to men’s clothing required a sophisticated suspension of disbelief in the drama unfolding. Shakespeare never feels the need to explain cross-gender behavior; he relies on the audience to immediately understand from their own experience or expectations. No psychologist claimed that it must be a disease that can be cured, no religious zealot picketed the theater. Seven plays are in this category of explicit transgender behavior, including wellknown classics: The Merchant of Venice Twelfth Night As You Like It The Taming of the Shrew The Merry Wives of Windsor The Two Gentlemen of Verona Cymbeline

About this title

About the Author:

William Shakespeare is better known through his plays than from historical documents. Though a side controversy rages over the "real" identity of the author of the Shakespeare plays, that has little to do with the achievement of the plays themselves.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bandanna Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0942208331
• ISBN 13: 9780942208337
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 72
• Editor: Newborn Sasha