Performing Shakespeare's women : playing dead / Paige Martin Reynolds.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reynolds, Paige, author.

Contributor:

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.

Women in literature.

Death in literature.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Characters--Women.

Shakespeare, William.

Physical Description:

xiii, 190 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York, NY : The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2019.

Summary:

"Shakespeare's women rarely reach the end of the play alive. Whether by murder or by suicide, onstage or off, female actors in Shakespeare's works often find themselves 'playing dead.' But what does it mean to 'play dead', particularly for women actors, whose bodies become scrutinized and anatomized by audiences and fellow actors who 'grossly gape on'? In what ways does playing Shakespeare's women when they are dead emblematize the difficulties of playing them while they are still alive? Ultimately, what is at stake for the female actor who embodies Shakespeare's women today, dead or alive? Situated at the intersection of the creative and the critical, Performing Shakespeare's Women: Playing Dead engages performance history, current scholarship and the practical problems facing the female actor of Shakespeare's plays when it comes to 'playing dead' on the contemporary stage and in a post-feminist world. This book explores the consequences of corpsing Shakespeare's women, considering important ethical questions that matter to practitioners, students and critics of Shakespeare today"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: hunger artists

Performing death and desire in Othello

Playing parts in King Lear

Being the female body in Macbeth

Making love in Hamlet

Falling and rising in Richard III

Dying in Romeo and Juliet.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Horace Howard Furness Memorial Fund.

Other Format:

Online version: Reynolds, Paige, author. Performing Shakespeare's women

ISBN:

9781350002593

1350002593

OCLC:

1078955227