Performing Widowhood on the Early Modern English Stage / / Asuka Kimura.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2023 Part 1
• VerfasserIn: Kimura, Asuka,
• Place / Publishing House: Kalamazoo, MI : : Medieval Institute Publications, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Late Tudor and Stuart Drama : Gender, Performance, and Material Culture
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XVI, 284 p.)

The deaths of husbands radically changed women’s lives in the early modern period. While losing male protection, widows acquired rare opportunities for social and economic independence. Placed between death and life, female submissiveness and male audacity, chastity and sexual awareness, or tragedy and comedy, widows were highly problematic in early modern patriarchal society. They were also popular figures in the theatre, arousing both male desire and anxiety. Now how did Shakespeare and his contemporaries represent them on the stage? What kind of costume, props, and gestures were employed? What influence did actors, spectators, and play-space have? This book offers a fresh and incisive examination of the theatrical representation of widows by discussing the material conditions of the early modern stage. It is also the only comprehensive study of this topic covering all three phases of Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Caroline drama.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- List of Illustrations -- A Note on the Text -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Chapter 1 Widows’ Costumes and Accessories on the Early Modern Stage -- Chapter 2 Lamentation and Gestures of Mourning in Tamburlaine the Great, Richard III, and King John -- Chapter 3 Staging the Dead Husband in Elizabethan Tragedies and Jacobean Satirical Comedies -- Chapter 4 Actors and Casting in The Duchess of Malfi and More Dissemblers Besides Women -- Chapter 5 “Shall I not be master of my own house?”: Widows as Powerful Mistresses in Caroline Drama -- Conclusion -- Appendix: List of Plays with Widow Characters, 1538–1642 -- Bibliography -- Index