Shakespeare's Women and the Fin de Siecle

Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-0-19-879084-6
Verlag: Oxford University Press, USA

Buch, Englisch, 304 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 612 g

Reihe: Oxford English Monographs

Shakespeare's Women and the Fin de Siècle illuminates the most iconoclastic performances of Shakespeare's heroines in late Victorian theatre, through the celebrity, commentary, and wider careers of the actresses who played them. By bringing together fin-de-siècle performances of Shakespeare and contemporary Victorian drama for the first time, this book illuminates the vital ways in which fin-de-siècle Shakespeare and

contemporary Victorian theatre culture conditioned each other.

Actresses' movements between Shakespeare and fin-de-siècle roles reveal the collisions and unexpected consonances between apparently independent areas of the fin-de-siècle repertory. Performances including Ellen Terry's Lady Macbeth, Madge Kendal's Rosalind, and Lillie Langtry's Cleopatra illuminate fin-de-siècle Shakespeare's lively intersections with cultural phenomena including the 'Jack the Ripper' killings, Aestheticism, the suicide craze, and the

rise of metropolitan department stores. If, as previous studies have shown, Shakespeare was everywhere in Victorian culture, Sophie Duncan explores the surprising ways in which late-Victorian culture, from Dracula to pornography, and from Ruskin to the suffragettes, inflected Shakespeare.

Via a wealth of unpublished archival material, Duncan reveals women's creative networks at the fin de siècle, and how Shakespearean performance traditions moved between actresses via little-studied performance genealogies. At the same time, controversial new stage business made fin-de-siècle Shakespeare as much a crucible for debates over gender roles and sexuality as plays by Ibsen and Shaw. Increasingly, actresses' creative networks encompassed suffragist

activists, who took personal inspiration from star Shakespearean actresses. From a Salome-esque Juliet to a feminist Paulina, fin-de-siècle actresses created cultural legacies which Shakespeare-in-performance still negotiates today.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Duncan, Sophie

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft

Über Autor(innen)

Sophie Duncan is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. Her principal research interests are in Early Modern and nineteenth-century drama, theatre history, cognitive approaches to literature, and cultural memory. She has published on fin-de-siècle Gothic culture, Shakespeare, and celebrity. Beyond academia, she works regularly as a historical advisor and dramaturg for theatre, radio, and television.