Early Modern Tragedy, Gender and Performance, 1984-2000

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction: The Destined Livery? Tragedy, Performance, Subject and Spectator

   1. Introduction: The Destined Livery? Tragedy, Performance, Subject and Spectator

      • Roberta Barker

      Pages 1-26

3. Realism and Reinscription

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 27-27

      PDF

   2. What We Are, But Not What We May Be: The Feminist Ophelia and the (Re)production of Gender

      • Roberta Barker

      Pages 29-54

   3. An Actor in the Main of All: Individual and Relational Selves in The Duchess of Malfi

      • Roberta Barker

      Pages 55-82

   4. The Natural Father and the Imaginary Daughter: Patriarchy as Realism and Representation in Titus

      • Roberta Barker

      Pages 83-108

4. Performance and Performativity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 109-109

      PDF

   2. ‘Let Me Forget Myself’: What a Queen is Good For in Edward II

      • Roberta Barker

      Pages 111-135

   3. Death and the Married Maiden: Gender Reproduction as Destruction in The Broken Heart

      • Roberta Barker

      Pages 136-162

   4. Tricked Like a Bride: A New Traffic in A Woman Killed with Kindness

      • Roberta Barker

      Pages 163-190

5. Conclusion: Cultural Drag; or, Hamlet and Ophelia Redux

   1. Conclusion: Cultural Drag; or, Hamlet and Ophelia Redux

      • Roberta Barker

      Pages 191-200

6. Back Matter

   Pages 201-237

   PDF

Using nine recent theatrical and cinematic productions as case studies, it considers the productive contradictions and tensions that occur when contemporary actors perform the gender norms of previous cultures. It will be of interest to theatre practitioners as well as to students of early modern drama, of performance, and of gender studies.

• cinema
• gender
• gender studies
• Hamlet
• realism
• Research in English and American Literature
• theatre
• tragedy
• British and Irish Literature

'This sophisticated yet very readable study explores the impact of debates about gender on recent interpretations of early modern tragedy, on stage and celluloid. Roberta Barker uses her specialist knowledge of Renaissance culture and expertise in feminist theory to analyse how challenges to conventional gender roles have shaped a diverse range of key productions, from RSC stagings of The Duchess of Malfi and other Jacobean tragedies to Derek Jarman's Edward II . In the process, she presents a compelling new perspective on the demands of late twentieth-century theatre- or film-going that charts the different ways in which such productions appeal to the politically engaged spectator. Barker also demonstrates how these dramatic reengagements with early modern culture allude repeatedly to the disturbing fluidity of identity concealed behind the superficial destiny that is imposed by gender.' - Philippa Berry, Department of English, University of Bristol, UK

ROBERTA BARKER is Associate Professor of Theatre and Early Modern Studies at Dalhousie University/The University of King's College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. She has published articles on the drama of Ford, Middleton, Shakespeare, Webster and Stoppard in performance, and has edited Common Conditions (1576) for the Malone Society.

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