دانلود کتاب A Feminist Perspective on Renaissance Drama

We know that women made up a significant part of Renaissance theater audiences but how might they have read the plays presented there?

'Feminism's impulse is often, not surprisingly, co make a celebratory
identification with a rush of women onto the historical stage,' writes Denise
Riley. L like other feminist critics working on the Renaissance, I am aware
of the dangers of eliminating cultural differences between women of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and ourselves, yet the desire to uncover
a 'rush of women onto the historical stage' is still a pressing one. The
histories we write of the Renaissance shape the way we think now, what is
possible, what is important co know, and how knowledge about the past is
constructed. In the case of English Renaissance drama, though, identification
with char 'rush of women' onto the commercial stage is nor possible. In
professional theater companies the actors were all male, nor by law but by
a custom which was peculiar co the British Isles.2 Playwrights for these
companies were also male: Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Marlowe,
Webster, Ford, to name the most famous. Women dramatizes and performers
did find ocher arenas in which to stage themselves; some even
inherited shares in commercial theaters. 3 Nevertheless, the names of
professional companies like the Admiral's Men or the lord Chamberlain's
Men indicate all too clearly that drama was written and presented by men,
or by boys in the case of the children's companies.