Table of Contents

Introduction
1: A Usable History
2: The Place(s) of Women in Shakespeare's World: Historical Fact and Feminist Interpretation
3: Our Canon, Ourselves
4: Boys will be Girls
5: The Lady's Reeking Breath
6: Shakespeare's Timeless Women
Suggestions for Further Reading

About the Author

Professor Phyllis Rackin has taught Shakespeare at the University of Pennsylvania for forty years. A former President of the Shakespeare Association of America, she has published three books on Shakespeare as well as numerous scholarly articles on Shakespeare and related subjects in anthologies and in such journals as PMLA, Shakespeare Quarterly, and Shakespeare-Jahrbuch. Her awards include an ACLS fellowship and a Lindback award for
distinguished teaching.

Reviews

Phyllis Rackin has provide us with a deftly defined casebook for the reconsideration of feminist criticism in the twenty-first century that looks to the future through a clear articulation of that criticism's past ... In each chapter, Rackin provides an alternative to the limiting assumptions she describes and thus offers brave new ways of seeing ... In focusing on the question of Shakespeare and women in the twenty-first century, Phyllis Rackin has renewed a sense of the feminist agenda within the field of Shakespeare studies. Rebecca Laroche, Shakespeare Quarterly Believing that historical research can provide rich resources to revitalize feminist criticism (if one looks for them), Rackin ably and amply points the way. She examines the place(s) of women in Shakespeare's world; the tendency to shape the canon in the reader's own image; the powerful truths Shakespeare offers about women (notably in Cleopatra) and life, truths evident despite or sometimes because of the use of boy actors; Shakespeare's 'complicated negotiation with the Petrachan tradition' in the sonnets, which succeed, while addressing both sexes, in enabling women to think and feel honestly about themselves; and the continuous contemporaneousness of Shakespeare's women. The 'Further Reading' section is a vein of rich ore. Essential. Choice