Looking for Sex in Shakespeare

Stanley Wells is one of the best-known and most versatile of Shakespeare scholars. This book, written with characteristic verve and accessibility, considers how far sexual meaning in Shakespeare's writing is a matter of interpretation by actors, directors and critics. Tracing interpretations of Shakespearean bawdy and innuendo from eighteenth-century editors to recent scholars and critics, Wells pays special attention to recent sexually orientated studies of A Midsummer Night's Dream, once regarded as the most innocent of its author's plays. He considers the Sonnets, some of which are addressed to a man, and asks whether they imply same-sex desire in the author, or are quasi-dramatic projections of the writer's imagination. Finally, he looks at how male-to-male relationships in the plays have been interpreted as sexual in both criticism and performance. Stanley Wells's lively, provocative, and open-minded book will appeal to a broad readership of students, theatregoers and Shakespeare lovers.

Reviews & endorsements

'Looking for Sex in Shakespeare finds one of the most distinguished Shakespearean scholars in top form, witty, erudite and wonderfully sane. Illuminating the deep erotic riddles of the Sonnets, the rich performed life of the plays and the lascivious byways of post-modern criticism with equal insight, this collection is at once sufficiently amusing, serious and sexy to stand alongside the Shakespearean poetry that is its subject.' Michael Dobson

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Product details

• Date Published: April 2004
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521540391
• length: 124 pages

• dimensions: 216 x 148 x 10 mm
• weight: 0.186kg
• contains: 14 b/w illus.
• availability: Available