Shakespeare and Childhood

A 2007 collection of essays on the subject of the relationship between Shakespeare, children and childhood.

Kate Chedgzoy (Edited by), Susanne Greenhalgh (Edited by), Robert Shaughnessy (Edited by)

9780521871259, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 13 September 2007

298 pages
23.4 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.606 kg

Review of the hardback: 'This richly detailed volume is a welcome addition to a growing recognition of the significant relations between children's literature and canonical writing for adults. … a salient feature of Shakespeare and Childhood is the raising of questions and suggestions for further research. The editors have prepared the way with two appendices: Mark Lawhorn's 'Children in Shakespeare's plays: an annotated checklist' and 'Bibliography of Shakespeare and childhood in English,' prepared by Kate Chedgzoy and Susanne Greenhalgh with Edel Lamb. Anyone who wants to pursue the topic would find these an enormously helpful starting point, as is the case with the articles. I will certainly refer to this book frequently and appreciatively.' Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen

This 2007 collection offered the first definitive study of a surprisingly underdeveloped area of scholarly investigation, namely the relationship between Shakespeare, children and childhood from Shakespeare's time to the present. It offers a thorough mapping of the domain in which Shakespearean childhoods need to be studied, in order to show how studying Shakespearean childhoods makes significant contributions both to Shakespearean scholarship, and to the history of childhood and its representations. The book is divided into two sections, each with a substantial introduction outlining relevant critical debates and contextualizing the rich combination of fresh research and readings of familiar Shakespearean texts that characterize the individual essays. The first part of the book examines the significance of the figure of the child in the Shakespearean canon. The second part traces the rich histories of negotiation, exchange and appropriation that have characterised Shakespeare's subsequent relations to the cultures of childhood in literary realms.

1. Introduction Robert Shaughnessy
Part I. Shakespeare's Children: 2. Introduction: 'What, are they children?' Kate Chedgzoy
3. Little princes: Shakespeare's royal children in context Catherine Belsey
4. Father-child identification, loss, and gender in Shakespeare's plays Hattie Fletcher and Marianne Novy
5. Character building: Shakespeare's children in context A. J. Piesse
6. Coriolanus and the Little Eyases: the boyhood of Shakespeare's hero Lucy Munro
7. Procreation, child-loss, and the gendering of the sonnet Patricia Phillippy
Part II. Children's Shakespeares: 8. Introduction: reinventing Shakespearean childhoods Susanne Greenhalgh
9. Play's the thing: agency in children's Shakespeares Naomi J. Miller
10. Shakespeare in the Victorian children's periodicals Kathryn Prince
11. Growing up with Shakespeare: the memoirs of the Terry family Pascale Aebischer
12. Shakespeare in the company of boys Kate Chedgzoy
13. Dream children: staging and screening childhood in A Midsummer Night's Dream Susanne Greenhalgh
14. Shakespeare (')tween media and markets in the 1990s and beyond Richard Burt
15. Appendix I. Shakespeare's child characters Mark Lawhorn
16. Appendix II: bibliography of Shakespeare and childhood.

Subject Areas: Regional studies [GTB]