A Feminist Perspective on Renaissance Drama

Description

We know that women made up a significant part of Renaissance theater audiences but how might they have read the plays presented there? 'Feminism's impulse is often, not surprisingly, co make a celebratory identification with a rush of women onto the historical stage,' writes Denise Riley. L like other feminist critics working on the Renaissance, I am aware of the dangers of eliminating cultural differences between women of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and ourselves, yet the desire to uncover a 'rush of women onto the historical stage' is still a pressing one. The histories we write of the Renaissance shape the way we think now, what is possible, what is important co know, and how knowledge about the past is constructed. In the case of English Renaissance drama, though, identification with char 'rush of women' onto the commercial stage is nor possible. In professional theater companies the actors were all male, nor by law but by a custom which was peculiar co the British Isles.2 Playwrights for these companies were also male: Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Marlowe, Webster, Ford, to name the most famous. Women dramatizes and performers did find ocher arenas in which to stage themselves; some even inherited shares in commercial theaters. 3 Nevertheless, the names of professional companies like the Admiral's Men or the lord Chamberlain's Men indicate all too clearly that drama was written and presented by men, or by boys in the case of the children's companies. Contents Introduction Heavenly matters of theology Revenge tragedy I please my self, Female self-fashioning Household tragedies Queens and subjects Index