CRITICISM

Dusinberre, Juliet. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women. London: Macmillan, 1975, 329 p.

Studies Shakespeare's treatment of chastity, gender equality, idolatry, and issues of femininity and masculinity from a feminist perspective.

Jardine, Lisa. Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. Sussex: Harvester Press, 1983, 202 p.

Analyzes the treatment of Elizabethan women in society, drama, and literature from a feminist perspective.

Levine, Laura. “Rape, Repetition, and the Politics of Closure in A Midsummer Night's Dream.” In Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects, edited by Valerie Traub, M. Lindsay Kaplan, and Dympna Callaghan, pp. 210-28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Argues that Shakespeare's Theseus, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, uses theater as a means of transforming sexual violence in order to demonstrate that theater actually fails in such a transformation.

McEachern, Claire. “Fathering Herself: A Source Study of Shakespeare's Feminism.” Shakespeare Quarterly 39, No. 3 (Fall 1988): 269-90.

Attempts to better understand Shakespeare's attitude toward patriarchy by studying Shakespeare's sources and the relationships between fathers and daughters that Shakespeare portrays in King Lear and Much Ado About Nothing.

Richmond, Hugh M. “The Feminism of Shakespeare's Henry VIII.” Essays in Literature 6, No. 1 (Spring 1979): 11-20.

Maintains that Henry VIII offers a more positive portrait of strong women—with Anne, Katherine, and Elizabeth—than the earlier history plays do.

Waller, Marguerite. “Usurpation, Seduction, and the Problematics of the Proper: A ‘Deconstructive,’ ‘Feminist’ Rereading of the Seductions of Richard and Anne in Shakespeare's Richard III.” In Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, pp. 159-75. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Argues, using a deconstructive approach, that both the tradition of critical commentary on Richard III,and the history of its performance reproduce Richard III's silencing of female characters.

Wayne, Valerie, ed. The Matter of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, 277 p.

A collection of essays by materialist feminists that focus on such topics as gender issues, patriarchy, and misogyny in Shakespeare's plays and in English Renaissance culture.