Book contents
- Shakespeare and Virtue
- Shakespeare and Virtue
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Shakespeare and Virtue Ethics
- Part II Shakespeare’s Virtues
- Part III Shakespeare and Global Virtue Traditions
- Part IV Virtuous Performances
- Chapter 35 Dramaturgy
- Chapter 36 Performing Chastity
- Chapter 37 Villains in Prison, Villains on Stage
- Chapter 38 Teaching Shakespeare and Moral Agency
- Works Cited
- Index
Chapter 36 - Performing Chastity
The Marina Project
from Part IV - Virtuous Performances
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2023
- Shakespeare and Virtue
- Shakespeare and Virtue
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Shakespeare and Virtue Ethics
- Part II Shakespeare’s Virtues
- Part III Shakespeare and Global Virtue Traditions
- Part IV Virtuous Performances
- Chapter 35 Dramaturgy
- Chapter 36 Performing Chastity
- Chapter 37 Villains in Prison, Villains on Stage
- Chapter 38 Teaching Shakespeare and Moral Agency
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
If chastity has for generations served the needs and desires of men, can it still be taken seriously as a virtue? Dismissed in the west as a medieval superstition, or, at best, as a means of escape from an intolerable situation, chastity seems a worn-out version of goodness which belongs in the past. Putting forward a new reading of Pericles (1609), this chapter opens up chastity as forgotten version of agency which, in the most surprising ways, enables new kinds of assertion and affirmation. It offers an account of the Marina Project, an ongoing creative-critical collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company, which has resulted in the creation of a new play entitled Marina. Both the project and the play prioritize the perspective of the protagonist’s daughter, Marina, who powerfully and triumphantly refuses to play the game where women are sold to men. Chastity emerges as a specifically female and remarkably direct kind of action which overturns the withdrawal implied by obedience to a patriarchal frame. Marina’s "radical chastity" disrupts our sense of the way things have to be, opening up a constellation of important issues today.
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- Shakespeare and VirtueA Handbook, pp. 360 - 368Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023