Shakespeare and Gender guides students and teachers through the complexities of the representation of gender and sexuality in Shakespeare's work. Informed by contemporary debates and insights into gender and sexuality, including intersectionality, feminist geography, queer and performance studies and fourth-wave feminism, this book provides a lucid and lively discussion of how gender and sexual identity are debated, contested and displayed in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Using close textual analysis hand-in-hand with verbal and visual contextual materials the book offers an accessible and intelligent introduction both to how gender debates are integral to the plays and poems, and why we continue to read and perform them with this in mind. Topics and themes discussed include gendering madness, paternity and the patriarchy, sexuality, anxious masculinity, maternal bodies, gender transgression, and kingship and the male body politic. Contemporary productions of key plays are examined and discussed in each chapter and are supplemented with production images to reveal how gender debates are presented on the stage. Alongside annotated bibliographies specific to the chapter topic, chapters are accompanied by a conclusion offering points of departure for further work and research.

Book Information
ISBN 9781474289979
Author Kate Aughterson
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint The Arden Shakespeare
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC