Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood

Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood is the first scholarly study devoted entirely to Shakespeare's girl characters. Revealing the dramatic and cultural centrality of the young girl in early modern English culture, and highlighting the 'girl' as a distinctive category in Shakespeare, this book locates Shakespeare's girl characters and representations of girlhood at a pivotal moment in the history of girlhood as an identity and social condition. Illuminating Shakespeare's girl characters in their relationship to earlier historical discourses and representations, and charting the development of Shakespeare's construction of the girl as a dramatic and literary figure throughout his career, Deanne Williams demonstrates that Shakespeare's girl characters are consistently and self-consciously invested in performance, from playing dramatic and musical parts, to performing public and domestic roles. Calling attention to the influence of Shakespeare and his girl characters on girl performers, patrons, and playwrights, Williams makes an original contribution to the history and culture of the early modern girl.

Deanne Williams is Associate Professor of English at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her previous books include The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare (2004), Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures, edited with Ananya Jahanara Kabir (2005), and The Afterlife of Ophelia, edited with Kaara Peterson (2012).

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Girls Included!
1.Peevish and Perverse
2.Isabelle de France, Child Bride
3.Enter Ofelia playing on a lute
4.Lost Girls
5.A Dancing Princess
6.The Lady and Comus
7.My Lady Rachells book
8.Perpetual Girlhood in The Concealed Fancies
Conclusion: Girlhood After Shakespeare's Heroines