Performing Widowhood on the Early Modern English Stage
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Asuka Kimura
About this book
The deaths of husbands radically changed women’s lives in the early modern period. While losing male protection, widows acquired rare opportunities for social and economic independence. Placed between death and life, female submissiveness and male audacity, chastity and sexual awareness, or tragedy and comedy, widows were highly problematic in early modern patriarchal society. They were also popular figures in the theatre, arousing both male desire and anxiety. Now how did Shakespeare and his contemporaries represent them on the stage? What kind of costume, props, and gestures were employed? What influence did actors, spectators, and play-space have? This book offers a fresh and incisive examination of the theatrical representation of widows by discussing the material conditions of the early modern stage. It is also the only comprehensive study of this topic covering all three phases of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline drama.
Author / Editor information
Dr. Asuka Kimura received her PhD in English Language and Literature from UCL in 2016. She is an assistant professor at Chuo University, Japan.
Reviews
"Detailed and extensively researched, Asuka Kimura’s Performing Widowhood on the Early Modern English Stage offers scholars interested in early modern performance studies a uniquely material perspective on the class and gender concerns navigated in English dramatic performance."
"…Performing Widowhood on the Early Modern English Stage is a carefully considered, inclusive, and accessible monograph. Clear in its focus and admirably unwilling to stray from it, the book should be considered a good resource for scholars of material and performance studies…"
(both excerpts from Renaissance and Reform 47.1)
Topics
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Frontmatter
I -
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Contents
V -
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Acknowledgements
VII -
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List of Illustrations
IX -
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A Note on the Text
XIII -
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List of Abbreviations
XV -
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Introduction
1 -
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Chapter 1 Widows’ Costumes and Accessories on the Early Modern Stage
15 -
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Chapter 2 Lamentation and Gestures of Mourning in Tamburlaine the Great, Richard III, and King John
68 -
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Chapter 3 Staging the Dead Husband in Elizabethan Tragedies and Jacobean Satirical Comedies
113 -
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Chapter 4 Actors and Casting in The Duchess of Malfi and More Dissemblers Besides Women
151 -
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Chapter 5 “Shall I not be master of my own house?”: Widows as Powerful Mistresses in Caroline Drama
193 -
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Conclusion
238 -
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Appendix: List of Plays with Widow Characters, 1538–1642
242 -
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Bibliography
257 -
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Index
278
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