Introduction1. Other Worldly Desires: The Jailer's Daughter and Emilia in Fletcher and Shakespeare's The Two Noble Kinsmen and Davenant's The Rivals -- 2. No Woman Is an Island: Female Roles in Dryden and Davenant's The Tempest, Or The Enchanted Island and Shakespeare's The Tempest -- 3. Silence and Sorcery, Sexuality and Stone: Absent Parts to Understanding Hermione and Paulina in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and Garrick's Florizel and Perdita -- 4. Transformation, Transvestism, and Lost Text: Violante's Rape and Cross-Dressing in Lewis Theobald's Double Falsehood and Fletcher and Shakespeare's CardenioConclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.
Summary:
"Shakespeare and the Embodied Heroine is a dynamic cross-period investigation of Shakespeare's notable female characters from the late plays. Using the Restoration and eighteenth century adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, this book explores female characters from a theatrical point-of-view that includes a close-reading and imagining of the text with a 'directorial eye', performance history, and practical staging experiments. Leigh reveals evidence to question certain conventional interpretations of Shakespeare's heroines and also documents a paradoxical reduction of sexuality and independent agency for Shakespeare's female roles as they started to be played by actresses rather than boy players. Highlighting the manner in which Shakespeare's female characters have the power to question, subvert, and reposition gender boundaries, and illuminating the complexity and multiplicity of the ways the women in Shakespeare's plays express their agency and desire, this book provides fascinating new readings on the staging and reception of Shakespeare's heroines"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.