Selected Publications in Shakespeare Studies
Selected Publications in Shakespeare Studies Continisio, Tommaso and Del Villano, Bianca, eds, Queens on Stage: Female Sovereignty, Power and Sexuality in Early Modern English Theatre, Canterano, Aracne, 2018, 201 pp. One of the many strengths of this volume can be found in its very title. Rather than using the category of “queenship”, or an Elizabeth I-centred “Staging the Queen”, the editors opt for the plural “Queens”, thus signalling the collection’s praiseworthy emphasis on the multiple intricacies and complex variety of its subject matter. The contributors’ essays themselves live up to both the title and subtitle, exploring from diverse perspectives the shifting, often ambiguous, and sometimes contradictory dynamics of power and sexuality involving early modern English theatrical queens both real and fictional. While they reach a general consensus that the gender politics of a male-privileging patriarchal society placed extraordinary pressures and limitations on female sovereigns, the authors convincingly demonstrate that the staging of charismatic, eloquent, and self-assertive queens could follow a wide range of paths, disallowing any single, dominant cultural or aesthetic interpretation, and opening up instead multiple possibilities for future research and analysis. In keeping with this same laudable favouring of plurality, the collection does not – as is too often the case – give precedence to Shakespeare, but places studies of his plays amidst ones focusing on Marlowe, Middleton, Jonson, and others. The title also aptly evokes the well-known statement of Queen Elizabeth I that “we princes, I tell you, are set on stages in the sight and view of all the world duly observed” (p.
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