Overview

This book charts the broad cultural impact of the medieval and early modern female performer: how she engages with her historical origins in classical drama, works within contemporary cultural and professional networks, and sets the terms for female performance in subsequent historical periods. Moving beyond the archival evidence that establishes that medieval and early modern women and girls performed, it explores how their performances resonated across national boundaries and historical periods, revealing wide patterns of influence and inspiration. This collection of original essays brings together well-established authorities with new and emerging scholars, offering innovative and ground-breaking discussions of medieval dramatic cultures, the Shakespearean stage, professional actresses in Spain and Italy, the performance of music and dance, artistic representations of the female performer, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century adaptations. Ranging from tenth-century Germany to twenty-first-century London, the chapters in this volume offer a new set of paradigms for understanding and interpreting women and girls on stage.

Full Product Details

Author:   Deanne Williams
Publisher:   Amsterdam University Press
Imprint:   Amsterdam University Press
ISBN:  

9789048562558

ISBN 10:   9048562554
Pages:   340
Publication Date:   26 June 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Cover Blurb Cover Image List of Images Abstracts, Keywords, Biographies, Contacts Introduction - Deanne Williams What is Female Performance? 1. “A young wild airy girle”: Dancing in the Early English Archives - Bernice Mittertreiner Neal 2. Virgin Martyrs and the Girl Actor - Deanne Williams 3. Performing beauty: The Concealed Fancies and the lady at her toilet in early modern England - Erin Griffey 4. Dating Jane Lumley - Tom Bishop Shakespeare and the Female Performer 5. “Go To: You Are a Woman” - Stephen Orgel 6. Performing Shakespeare and Lope’s Heroines in Romeo and Juliet and Castelvines y Monteses - Ariane M. Balizet 7. Women and Circuits of Tourism in Stratford-upon-Avon - Katherine Scheil 8. Maria Andreeva’s Lady Macbeth and Desdemona: Advocating for Shakespeare through Performance in Post-Revolutionary Russia - Natalia Khomenko Building on Female Performance 9. You Know We’re No Good: Moll Cutpurse, Ophelia, and Her Musically Unruly Sisters - Eric Nicholson 10. Pioneer Players: The Woman Antiquarian and the First Actresses of Hrotswitha’s Plays in English, 1914–57 - Stacie Vos 11. Mrs. Browne’s Mystery Plays: The Dramatic and Domestic Circuits of Henzie Raeburn - Eleanor Bloomfield 12. Then and Now: Alice Egerton in Milton’s Comus, 1634/2016 - Amanda Eubanks Winkler Afterword - Sophie Tomlinson Bibliography Index

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Author Information

Deanne Williams is Professor of English and Theater Studies at York University. She is the author of The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Cambridge, 2004), Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood (Palgrave, 2014), and Girl Culture in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Bloomsbury, 2023).

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