Fatal Desire

Informed by film theory and a broad historical approach, Fatal Desire examines the theatrical representation of women in England, from the Restoration to the early eighteenth century—a period when for the first time female actors could perform in...

Jean I. Marsden is Professor of English at the University of Connecticut; author of The Re-Imagined Text: Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Eighteenth-Century Literary Theory; and editor of The Appropriation of Shakespeare: Post-Renaissance Reconstructions of the Works and the Myth.

This book provides an accessible and useful introduction to a body of dramatic texts often overlooked by modern criticism.

Michael Caines:

A fascinating account of how 'women representing women' changed English theatre during the later seventeenth century.

Peter Holland, University of Notre Dame:

Women acting, women writing, women watching—Jean I. Marsden's book is a wonderful guide to the presence of women everywhere in the theater after 1660. From heroines to the stars who played them, from the playwrights to the political implications of production, Marsden's analysis is always fresh, assured and engaging, making us think anew about the place of women in theater then—and now.

Lisa Freeman, University of Illinois at Chicago:

Fatal Desire takes on the question of how female actresses' physical presence had an effect on generic developments and practices on both the stage and the page. Through readings that are subtle, thorough, and finely wrought from both a critical and theoretical point of view, Marsden adroitly and consistently elucidates how the female figure at the center of tragedy provides a useful gauge of such significant social, political, and cultural concerns as the management of female sexuality and desire, the status of masculine authority, and the articulation of national character.