Shakespeare and Gender guides students, educators, practitioners and researchers through the complexities of the representation of gender and sexuality in Shakespeare's work. Informed by contemporary and early modern debates and insights into gender and sexuality, including intersectionality, feminist geography, queer and performance studies and fourth-wave feminism, this book provides a lucid and lively discussion of how gender and sexual identity are debated, contested and displayed in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Using close textual analysis hand-in- hand with diverse contextual materials, the book offers an accessible and intelligent introduction to how gender debates are integral to the plays and poems, and why we continue to read and perform them with this in mind.Topics and themes discussed include gendering madness, paternity and the patriarchy, sexuality, anxious masculinity, maternal bodies, gender transgression, and kingship and the male body politic.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter oneThe Woman's Voice Key Text: Much Ado About Nothing, with The Winter's Tale Chapter twoKingship and the Male Body politic Key Text: Richard II, with Henry IV part I, Henry V, Richard III Interlude: Interview with Adjoa Andoh Chapter threeTesting the Marriage Plot: Form, Violence and Gender Key Texts: The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, All's Well that ends WellChapter fourCross-dressing and Gender Transgression(s)Key Texts: Twelfth Night and As You Like It Interlude: Interview with Lucy Phelps Chapter fiveGendering Madness Key Text: Hamlet, with Two Noble Kinsmen Chapter sixPaternity and Patriarchy Key Text: King Lear, with The TempestChapter sevenSexual Excess: Space, Sex and Gender Key Texts: Comedy of Errors, Measure for Measure, Antony and Cleopatra, Pericles Chapter eightAnxious Masculinity Key Texts: Love's Labour's Lost, Othello, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, Chapter nineMaternal Bodies: Female Powers Key Texts: Henry VI, All's Well That Ends Well, The Winter's Tale References Index