Shakespeare Inside goes behind the scenes to reveal Shakespeare at work in the most decisive institutional context of our time - in prisons. Based upon the author's experience of watching prison yard rehearsals and performances, and interviewing inmates, program directors, and wardens, Shakespeare Inside is not an objective, dispassionate account of how Shakespeare is bastardized by repressive institutions but offers a record of fiercely personal experiences. We hear ex-offender Mike Smith detail how playing Desdemona was vital to his rehabilitation; we sit in the audience of women inmates as they respond to the all-male Shakespeare Behind Bars touring production of Julius Caesar; and we listen to a chorus of unnamed voices explain how rewriting Hamlet helps them to survive solitary confinement. Shakespeare Inside probes any assumptions we might have about Shakespeare's performative function and asks what - if anything - is the proper place of Shakespeare in today's society.
Shakespeare Inside goes behind the scenes to reveal Shakespeare at work in the most decisive institutional context of our time - in prisons. Based upon the author's experience of watching prison yard rehearsals and performances, and interviewing inmates, program directors, and wardens, Shakespeare Inside is not an objective, dispassionate account of how Shakespeare is bastardized by repressive institutions but offers a record of fiercely personal experiences. We hear ex-offender Mike Smith detail how playing Desdemona was vital to his rehabilitation; we sit in the audience of women inmates as they respond to the all-male Shakespeare Behind Bars touring production of Julius Caesar; and we listen to a chorus of unnamed voices explain how rewriting Hamlet helps them to survive solitary confinement. Shakespeare Inside probes any assumptions we might have about Shakespeare's performative function and asks what - if anything - is the proper place of Shakespeare in today's society.
Contending that early modern fictional portrayals of sexual violence identify the position of the author with that of the chaste woman threatened with rape, Amy Greenstadt challenges the prevalent scholarly view that this period's concept of 'The Author' was inherently masculine. Instead, she argues, the analogy between rape and writing centrally informed ideas of literary intention that emerged during the English Renaissance. Analyzing works by Milton, Sidney, Shakespeare and Cavendish, Greenstadt shows how the figure of 'The Author' - and by extension ideas of the modern individual--derived from a paradigm of female virtue and vulnerability. This volume supplements the growing body of studies that address the relationship between early modern textual representation and notions of gender and sexuality; it also adds a new dimension in considering the wider origins of modern concepts of selfhood and individual rights.
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