Impersonations
The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England

A provocative exploration of gender in the Renaissance, from theatrical cross-dressing to cultural subversion.

Stephen Orgel (Author)

9780521568425, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 February 1996

196 pages, 19 b/w illus.
21.6 x 13.9 x 1.2 cm, 0.25 kg

'Orgel's strength is in the sharp local perception - the scholarly insistence, for example, that despite the fantasies of critics and directors the text of Edward II does not call for an on-stage poker. Such rigour is a useful corrective to critical orthodoxies which abjure the unfashionably empirical.' New Theatre Quarterly

Why was England the only country in Europe to maintain an all-male public theatre in the Renaissance? Stephen Orgel uses this question as the starting point of a fresh and stimulating exploration of the representation of gender in Elizabethan drama and society. Why were boys used to play female roles in drama, and how did such cross-dressing impact on the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries? What was the place of women in the Renaissance theatre, either on the stage or in the audience? And what did society make of those women who significantly and successfully violated accepted gender boundaries? At once provocative and witty, lucid and stylish, Impersonations will reshape our understanding of the Renaissance theatre, and make us rethink our own inadequate categories of gender, power and sexuality.

1. Introduction
2. The performance of desire
3. The eye of the beholder
4. Call me Ganymede
5. Masculine apparel
6. Mankind witches
7. Visible figures.

Subject Areas: Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS]