A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare

The question is not whether Shakespeare studies needs feminism, but whether feminism needs Shakespeare. This is the explicitly political approach taken by the contributors to A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare. In the new edition of this award–winning book,contributors come from across the feminist generations and from various stages in their careers to address what is new in the field in terms of historical and textual discovery, and especially in analyses of recent performances and appropriationsof Shakespeare. Essays offer fresh insights into Shakespeare s plays and poems as well as the early modern world in which they were written. In addition, they acknowledge and confront the historical facts around dynamics of the gender hierarchy in early modern England, examining the restrictions imposed uponwomen as a group no matter what degree of latitude they were able to achieve in the exercise of personal or political agency. Throughout the volume, essays cover the history of feminist Shakespeare criticism, text and language, social economies, raceand colonialism, performing sexuality, religion, character genre and history. The new edition also covers issues that bring it right up to the present day by exploring some of the newest theatrical and creative engagements with Shakespeare. 

Notes on Contributors

Preface

Introduction
Dympna Callaghan

Part I: The history of feminist Shakespeare criticism

1. The Ladies′ Shakespeare
Juliet Fleming

2. Margaret Cavendish, Shakespeare Critic
Katherine M. Romack

3. Misogyny is Everywhere
Phyllis Rackin

Part II: Text and Language

4. Feminist Editing and the Body of the Text
Laurie E Maguire

5. Made to write ′whore′ Upon?: Male and Female Use of the Word "Whore" in Shakespeare′s Canon
Kay Stanton

6. A word, Sweet Lucrece: Confession, Feminism and The Rape of Lucrece
Margo Hendricks

Part III: Social Economies

7. Gender, Class, and the Ideology of Comic Form, Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night
Mihoko Suzuki

8. Gendered ′Gifts′ in Shakespeare′s Belmont: The Economies of Exchange in Early Modern England
Jyotsna G. Singh

Part IV: Race and Colonialism

9. The Great Indian Vanishing Trick–Colonialism, Property and the Family in A Midsummer Night′s Dream
Ania Loomba

10. Black Ram, White Ewe: Shakespeare, Race, and Women
Joyce Green MacDonald

11. Sycorax in Algiers: Cultural Politics and Gynecology in Early Modern England
Rachana Sachdev

12. Black and White and Dread All Over: The Shakespeare Theater′s "Photonegative" Othello and the body of Desdemona
Denise Albanese

Part V: Performing Sexuality

13. Women and Boys Playing Shakespeare
Juliet Dusinberre

14. Mutant Scenes and ′Minor′ Conflicts in Richard II
Molly Smith

15. Lovesickness, Gender, and Subjectivity: Twelfth Night and As You Like It
Carol Thomas Neely

16. in the Lesbian Void: Woman–Woman Eroticism in Shakespeare′s Plays
Theodora Jankowski

17. Duncan′s Corpse
Susan Zimmerman

Part VI: Religion

18. Others and Lovers in The Merchant of Venice
M. Lindsay Kaplan

19. Between Idolatry and Astrology: Modes of Temporal Repetition in Romeo and Juliet
Philippa Berry

Part VII: Character, Genre, and History

20. Putting on the Destin d Livery: Isabella, Cressida, and Our Virgin/Whore Obsession
Anna Kamaralli

21. The Virginity Dialogue in All′s Well that Ends Well: Feminism, Editing, and Adaptation
Rory Loughnane

22. Gender, Affect, and Agency in Shakespeare s English History Plays
Mario DiGangi

23. Bearing Death in The Winter s Tale
Amy Burnette

24. Monarchs Who Cry: The Gendered Politics of Weeping in the English History Play
Jean Howard

25. Shakespeare s Women and the Crisis of Beauty
Farah Karim–Cooper

Part VIII: Appropriating Women, Appropriating Shakespeare

26. Women and Land: Henry VIII
Lisa Hopkins

27. Desdemona: Toni Morrison s Response to Othello
Ayanna Thompson

28. Woman–Crafted Shakespeares: Appropriation, Intermediality, and Womanist Aesthetics
Sujata Iyengar

29. A Thousand Voices: Performing Ariel
Amanda Eubanks Winkler

Dympna Callaghan is William L. Safire Professor of Modern Letters at Syracuse University, New York. Shakespeare Without Women (2000), The Impact of Feminism in English Renaissance Culture (2006), Shakespeare s Sonnets (2007), Who Was William Shakespeare (Wiley Blackwell, 2013), and Hamlet: Language and Writing (2015). She is a Past President of Shakespeare Association of America.