Men in Women's Clothing

Anti-Theatricality and Effeminization, 1579 1642
Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-0-521-46627-1
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 5, 195 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 293 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture

In 1579 a leading dramatic critic made the curious remark that theatre 'effeminated' the mind. Four years later another insisted that male actors who wore women's clothing could literally 'adulterate' male gender. In a tract which may have hastened the closing of the theatres in the mid-seventeenth century, William Prynne described a warrior whom women's clothing had caused to 'degenerate' into a woman. How can we account for these persistent anxieties and their effect on the work of Renaissance playwrights, simultaneously haunted by such fears and obsessively intent on coming to terms with them?

Autoren/Hrsg.

Levine, Laura

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Men in women's clothing; 2. Troilus and Cressida and the politics of rage; 3. 'Strange flesh': Antony and Cleopatra and the story of the dissolving warrior; 4. Theatre as other: Jonson's Epicoene; 5. The 'nothing' under the puppet's clothing: Jonson's suppression of Marlowe in Bartholomew Fair; 6. Magic as theatre, theatre as magic: daemonologie and the problem of 'entresse'; 7. Magic as theatre, theatre as magic: the case of Newes from Scotland; Epilogue.