Shakespeare and Feminist Theory

Are Shakespeare's plays dramatizations of patriarchy or representations of strong women? Or are they sometimes both? And is it relevant that his women were first played by boys? This book shows how many kinds of feminist theory help analyze the dynamics of Shakespeare's plays. Both feminist theory and the plays deal with issues such as equality and difference between the sexes, how women can have power and articulate their desire, whether they can remake marriage, how they can expand their culture's ideas of women's work, what roles literal and figurative sisterhood and motherhood play in their lives, and how their lives can be affected by class, race, and religious difference, violence, and objectification. This lively exploration of all these ideas is an ideal introduction to the field of feminist readings of Shakespeare.

Marianne Novy is a Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, USA and has been teaching Shakespeare from a feminist perspective there since 1971.