McMullan Gordon - Women Making Shakespeare : Text, Reception, Performance

Women Making
Shakespeare

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Women Making
Shakespeare

Text, Reception,
Performance

Edited by Gordon McMullan,
Lena Cowen Orlin and
Virginia Mason Vaughan

Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

www.bloomsbury.com

Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Editorial matter and selection Gordon McMullan, Lena Cowen Orlin and Virginia Mason Vaughan 2014

All other matter Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The Editors and contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4725-3937-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Women Making Shakespeare : Text, Reception, Performance / edited by Gordon McMullan, Lena Cowen Orlin and Virginia Mason Vaughan.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-4081-8533-9 -- ISBN 978-1-4081-8523-0 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-4725-3937-3 (epub) 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Characters--Women. 2. Women in literature. 3. Feminist literary criticism. I. McMullan, Gordon, 1962- editor of compilation. II. Orlin, Lena Cowen, editor of compilation. III. Vaughan, Virginia Mason, editor of compilation.

PR2991.W64 2014

822.33--dc23

2013029971

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

CONTENTS

Joseph Cornell: A poem by John Thompson
for Ann Thompson

This volume was compiled in tribute to Ann Thompson. It continues the process she began, with Sasha Roberts, in the 1997 anthology Women Reading Shakespeare. Thanks to Ann and Sasha and others who sought to rehabilitate writers such as Henrietta Bowdler and actors such as Helena Faucit, we have become very aware both of the extent to which women have made Shakespeare and also of the considerable amount of material yet to be uncovered and understood about the ways in which that making came about. With Women Making Shakespeare, we aim to take the project forward.

Women Making Shakespeare offers a series of short readings, histories and interviews that demonstrate the power of womens engagement with Shakespeare from the sixteenth century to the present. Contributors were invited to write about any aspect of the agency of women in the field known as Shakespeare anything, that is, from Shakespeares characterization of women to the history of womens involvement in Shakespeare criticism, textual studies, performance or reception history.

Thus these case studies address the difference women have made to our understanding of Shakespeare across a range of achievement: Shakespeare writing about, and for, women; women printers and booksellers in Shakespeares day; women as pioneering Shakespearean critics; women as editors of Shakespeare; women painting Shakespeare; women teaching Shakespeare; womens use of Shakespeare for memorialization; women as Shakespearean anthologists; womens literary groups and Shakespeare Clubs; the role of Shakespeare in the womens suffrage movement; Shakespearean performance as womens war work; womens theatrical management; women writing Shakespeare-inspired fiction; women in the contemporary publishing industry; women directing and acting Shakespeare in anglophone and non-anglophone contexts; women playing Shakespeare as a form of dissent; women as understudies; women as voice coaches; women in the Royal Shakespeare Company and at the reconstructed Globe; women on the operatic stage; women as film directors and film editors; womens engagement with postcolonial Shakespeares; and women in cross-gendered roles. Throughout, the contributors celebrate an astonishing range of women Shakespeareans, well known and less so, from Mary Cowden Clarke to Sarah Siddons, from Anne Radcliffe to Mary Dunbar, from Charlotte Stopes to Virginia Woolf, from Peggy Ashcroft to Ann Thompson herself.

Ann is the connecting factor between the contributors, as friend, colleague, mentor, exemplar, and as someone whose breadth of interests is intimated here. She studied at Kings College London, taught at the University of Liverpool, and moved to a chair at the then Roehampton Institute (now University of Roehampton). In 1999 she returned to Kings as Professor of English, becoming Head of Department and then Head of the School of Arts and Humanities (that is, in general parlance, Dean). She is the founding director of the London Shakespeare Centre, based at Kings, and co-organizer of the London Shakespeare Seminar. Ann is, as we hardly need to tell the readers of this collection, a general editor of the Arden Shakespeare; she is also on the advisory boards of Shakespeare Survey and Shakespeare, and is a general editor of the Arden State of Play series. Lecture engagements have taken her to the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and elsewhere. She has written on Shakespeare and Chaucer, on Shakespeare and language, on editing Shakespeare, and on the difference women have made to the phenomenon known as Shakespeare. As an Arden general editor, Ann has not only been instrumental in bringing an unprecedented number of women into the editorial field but has also, with Neil Taylor, produced a landmark three-text edition of Hamlet .

It was only as the idea of this collection developed that the full reach of Anns professional acquaintance and influence became clear to us. Our authors represent some of the many who are grateful to Ann for friendship, intellectual stimulation, advice, mentorship and, occasionally, productive disagreement. To a person, they responded enthusiastically to our invitation just try and stop me, said one and we are grateful for the good will, energy and learning each brought to the undertaking. Ann has provided the impetus for a wide-ranging set of essays by a formidable group of scholars, and for that we again have reason to remark our admiration for her and our appreciation, in personal as well as professional terms.

Gordon McMullan, Lena Cowen Orlin and Virg inia Mason Vaughan

The editors wish to thank the contributors for their instant enthusiasm for the project and their extraordinary willingness to produce chapters to an unyielding ceiling of 3,000 words (including title and endnotes) a limitation we imposed for three reasons: for speed of production, for maximum focus, and because everyone we contacted initially said an immediate yes, thereby giving us (highly welcome) space issues. This eager participation can be attributed, it goes without saying, to the contributors considerable regard, and genuine fondness, for Ann Thompson.