Book contents
- Staging Female Characters in Shakespeare’s English History Plays
- Staging Female Characters in Shakespeare’s English History Plays
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Facts Disfigured
- Chapter 2 From the Margins
- Chapter 3 History as Exclusion
- Chapter 4 Blurring the Boundaries
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 3 - History as Exclusion
Shakespeare’s Feminine Historiography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2023
- Staging Female Characters in Shakespeare’s English History Plays
- Staging Female Characters in Shakespeare’s English History Plays
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the Text
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Facts Disfigured
- Chapter 2 From the Margins
- Chapter 3 History as Exclusion
- Chapter 4 Blurring the Boundaries
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The third chapter explores how female characters narrate history within the plays themselves, particularly when they appear to transgress the boundaries of historical possibility through curses, prophecy, or describing events they have not seen – extra-historical powers enabled by their marginalisation from political power. It proposes the concept at the heart of Shakespeare’s historical dramaturgy: that marginalisation from political power gives way to other types of insight enabled by the medium of the theatre, a specifically feminine relationship to historical narrative that I call Shakespeare’s feminine historiography. Beginning with an analysis of the connection between mourning and cursing, the chapter explores the ‘genealogies of loss’ that permit female characters to articulate their own versions of dynastic history. I then turn to other ways that female characters are marginalised from the centres of historical power, and the clarity of historical vision that their outsider position grants them, rendering them simultaneously suppressed and empowered by their exclusion. Finally, this chapter considers how genre itself operates as a force for this exclusion, exploring scenes which seem to defy the tonal and generic boundaries of their plays, suggesting Shakespeare’s awareness of the limitations of the history play genre for containing certain types of female stories.
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- Staging Female Characters in Shakespeare's English History Plays , pp. 101 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023