Time and Gender on the Shakespearean Stage

This book analyses the cultural and theatrical intersections of early modern temporal concepts and gendered identities. Through close readings of the works of Shakespeare, Middleton, Dekker, Heywood and others, across the genres of domestic comedy, city comedy and revenge tragedy, Sarah Lewis shows how temporal tropes are used to delineate masculinity and femininity on the early modern stage, and vice versa. She sets out the ways in which the temporal constructs of patience, prodigality and revenge, as well as the dramatic identities that are built from those constructs, and the experience of playgoing itself, negotiate a fraught opposition between action in the moment and delay in the duration. This book argues that looking at time through the lens of gender, and gender through the lens of time, is crucial if we are to develop our understanding of the early modern cultural construction of both.

• Sheds new light on Shakespeare by reading his works alongside less well-known plays
• Explores how culturally constructed ideas of time and gender are connected in early modern drama and society
• Focuses on the performance of gender and of temporality through the framework of three key concepts: patience, prodigality, and revenge