Bloomsbury Shakespeare and Gender: Sex and Sexuality in Shakespeare’s Drama

Shakespeare and Gender guides students, educators, practitioners and researchers through the complexities of the representation of gender and sexuality in Shakespeare’s work. Informed by contemporary and early modern debates and insights into gender and sexuality, including intersectionality, feminist geography, queer and performance studies and fourth-wave feminism, this book provides a lucid and lively discussion of how gender and sexual identity are debated, contested and displayed in Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. Using close textual analysis hand-in- hand with diverse contextual materials, the book offers an accessible and intelligent introduction to how gender debates are integral to the plays and poems, and why we continue to read and perform them with this in mind.Topics and themes discussed include gendering madness, paternity and the patriarchy, sexuality, anxious masculinity, maternal bodies, gender transgression, and kingship and the male body politic. Review This volume provides a thoughtful approach to a wide range of relevant issues through a combination of close reading, contextual non-fiction materials, and attention to recent performance and film. It will give students the tools they need to engage with the plays and will encourage them to make their own connections across traditional genres and periods. --Ann Thompson, King's College London, UKThis book revitalizes Shakespeare for contemporary readers. Its case study format situates the plays in both early modern and current performance contexts, setting up an urgent, ongoing dialogue between ideas of sex and gender available to Shakespeare and to us. Teachers and students alike will find it indispensable. --Coppélia Kahn, Professor Emerita of English, Brown University, USAReading Shakespeare and Gender: Sex and Sexuality in Shakespeare's Drama constitutes a rewarding experience. Aughterson and Grant Ferguson write in a style that is both clear and didactic, which significantly contributes to engage readers from the very first page. --Sederi Yearbook About the Author Kate Aughterson is Academic Programme Leader for Literature at the University of Brighton, UK. Ailsa Grant Ferguson is Principal Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at the University of Brighton, UK.