Men in Women's Clothing by Laura Levine
In 1597 anti-theatricalist Stephen Gosson made the curious remark that theatre 'effeminized' the mind. Four years later Phillip Stubbes claimed that male actors who wore women's clothing could literally 'adulterate' male gender and fifty years after this in a tract which may have hastened the closing of the theatres, William Prynne described a man whom women's clothing had literally caused to 'degenerate' into a women. How can we account for such fears of effeminization and what did Renaissance playwrights do with such a legacy? Laura Levine examines the ways in which Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson addressed a generation's anxieties about gender and the stage and identifies the way the same 'magical thinking' informed documents we much more readily associate with extreme forms of cultural paranoia: documents dedicated to the extermination of witches.
'… cleverly brings together three areas of Renaissance anxiety: the longing for truth, a suspicious attitude to representation, and an identification of masculinity as performance' The Times Literary Supplement
'… a work of critical brilliance.' New Theatre Quarterly
'… a work of critical brilliance.' New Theatre Quarterly
The Bob Newhart Show, Laverne & Shirley, The Love Boat, The Jeffersons, Three's Company, and Mary Hartman, Mary Martman are just a few of Laura Levine's television credits. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. She is now working on the next Jaine Austen mystery in Los Angeles. Her email address is Jaineausten@aol.com, and her website address is www.JaineAustenMysteries.com.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780521466271 |
| ISBN 10 | 052146627X |
| Title | Men in Women's Clothing |
| Author | Laura Levine |
| Series | Cambridge Studies In Renaissance Literature And Culture |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| Year published | 1994-10-13 |
| Number of pages | 196 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |