Shakespeare and Masculinity

by Bruce R. Smith

Richard III, Romeo, Prince Harry, Malvolio, Hamlet, Lear, Antony, Coriolanus, Shakespeare's roster of male protagonists is astonishingly various. Shakespeare and Masculinity juxtaposes these memorable characters with the medical beliefs, ethical ideals, and social realities that shaped masculine identity for Shakespeare, as for his fellow actors and their audiences. At the same time it explores the process of male self-definition against various sorts of "others"--women, foreigners, social inferiors, sodomites. Reflecting the truth that the plays' principal existence is in the live theater, the book finishes with a transhistorical, multicultural survey of how masculinity has been performed in productions of Shakespeare's plays--in France, Germany, Hungary, Iraq, Japan, and elsewhere--and with a challenge to imagine masculinity in fuller and more satisfying ways.

Genres: Shakespeare, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Bruce R. Smith is Dean's Professor of English and Theatre at the University of Southern California and has pursued multiple topics, including classics, sexuality, gender, sound studies, and historical phenomenology. He is the author of seven books on Shakespeare, including The Acoustic World of Early Modern England (1999), The Key of Green (2009), and Shakespeare / Cut (2016). His chapter on 'Renaissance Color across Media' appears in the Renaissance volume of A Cultural History of Color (Bloomsbury, 2019).

Reviews

[Bohemian Book Lover · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Smith's in-depth research
*And source
*Material I found impressive & made for quite a knowledgeable & informative read. My present & future reading/viewing of Shakespeare's plays (set in cultural/societal contexts & according to gender dynamics) has been/will be enriched and informed by this book. It also made me reflect on how I "portray" & experience my masculinity on the "world's stage". I do recommend you be fairly familiar with Shakespeare & his works before you benefit from the interpretations & assessments of this study.

[Deirdre Orourke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting assessment of masculinity in Shakespeare; fascinating use of humorology.