Shakespeare and Women

Shakespeare and Women situates Shakespeare''s female characters in multiple historical contexts, ranging from the early modern England in which they originated to the contemporary Western world in which our own encounters with them are staged. In so doing, this book seeks to challenge currently prevalent views of Shakespeare''s women-both the women he depicted in his plays and the women he encountered in the world he inhabited.Chapter 1, ''A Usable History'', analyses the implications and consequences of the emphasis on patriarchal power, male misogyny, and women''s oppression that has dominated recent feminist Shakespeare scholarship, while subsequent chapters propose alternative models for feminist analysis. Chapter 2, ''The Place(s) of Women in Shakespeare''s World'', emphasizes the frequently overlooked kinds of social, political, and economic agency exercised by the women Shakespeare would have known in both Stratfordand London. Chapter 3, ''Our Canon, Ourselves'', addresses the i