This book offers a look at the lives of Elizabethan era women in the context of the great female characters in the works of William Shakespeare. Portia and Kate, Ophelia and Desdemona, Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth, the beautifully realized women in Shakespeare's plays continue to captivate us, relevant and revealing even today, centuries after their creation. They also offer us a window into the realities of daily life for women across the social spectrum during Shakespeare's own time. This volume shows the influence of the world William Shakespeare lived in on the worlds he created for the stage, this time by focusing on women in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras in general and in Shakespeare's works in particular. It explores the ancient and medieval ideas that Shakespeare drew upon in creating his great comedic and tragic heroines. It then looks at how these ideas intersected with the lived experiences of women of Shakespeare's time, followed by a close look at the major female characters in Shakespeare's plays and poems. Later chapters consider how these characters have been enacted on stage and in film, interpreted by critics and scholars, and reimagined by writers in our own time. It includes over 30 excerpts from letters and diaries, plays, poems, educational and religious treatises, and legal documents from the 16th and 17th centuries; Presents photos of actors playing female Shakespearean characters, including Emma Thompson, Claire Danes, Sarah Bernhardt, and Peggy Ashcroft; Compares and contrasts Shakespeare's female characters with real women of Shakespeare's time; Analyzes a number of excerpts from primary documents, not only from Shakespeare's plays but other dramas, sermons, female authored letters and diary entries, and other sources; Looks at how actors, directors, scholars, critics, and creative writers have interpreted Shakespeare's female characters over time. -- From publisher.

Women in classical antiquity and the Middle Ages -- Women in Shakespeare's world -- Women in Shakespeare's works -- Shakespearean women in performance -- Scholarship and criticism -- Primary documents.