Women as Hamlet PDF Download

Author: Tony Howard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521864666
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
A study of actresses playing the role of Hamlet on stage and screen.

Author: Amani N. Liggett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
"This thesis titled "The Female Hamlet" aims to explore the role of the character Hamlet as played by several particular women on stage. The main critical purpose will be to explain how the perception of the character of Hamlet has changed over the centuries, how these female Hamlets were involved in the changing role, and finally the issues of gender raised by their performances. This thesis will focus on five actresses who performed as Hamlet, Sarah Siddons, Jane Powell, Charlotte Cushman, Sarah Bernhardt, and Asta Nielsen. Throughout this work, historical constructions of gender will always be at issue and it will be essential to continually make clear what the public's perception was of what women could and could not do during different time periods. These women's part in evolving the role of Hamlet will include such details as their rehearsals, performances, dress, critical reception, and how the role may have compromised their careers. The latter portion of this thesis will focus on implications of Hamlet's femininity in scholarship, how a travesti performance of Hamlet can speak to gender expectations, and lastly whether Hamlet is a universal character. Again, the main purpose will be to show that the character changed, describe how these women were involved, and explain how this constructs issues of gender expectations. I conclude the work declaring that Hamlet is every man, and every woman too. Thus, there should be nothing more natural than a woman taking up the role as well. As the writer and critic William Hazlitt proclaimed, "It is we who are Hamlet."

Author: Carolyn G. Heilbrun
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780345372086
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
In the three decades since her revolutionary and seminal article "The Character of Hamlet's Mother," Carolyn Heilbrun has been a prophet in the field of women and literature, gender and culture. This collection of graceful and uncompromising essays charts her development as a feminist writer and critic, which has culminated in such groundbreaking works as REINVENTING WOMANHOOD and WRITING A WOMAN'S LIFE. Shakespeare's Gertrude was first among many literary figures illuminated by Heilbrun's feminist sensibility. Others include Homer's Penelope -- an archetypal single parent, weaving herself a new life for which she was given no script; Jo in LITTLE WOMEN, a model of autonomy for generations of female readers; Elizabeth Bennet, remarkable for the promise of friendship in her marriage with Darcy; and Harrriet Vane, outrageously unique on many counts. The consistency and clarity of Heilbrun's vision in matched only by its heterogeneity, as she discusses Margaret Mead and Freud's daughters, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, resistance to feminist studies in academia, mothers and daughters, fiction and myth, tomboys and surrogate sons, and the detective story, of which Heibrun herself (as Amanda Cross) is one of the ablest practitioners. HAMLET'S MOTHER AND OTHER WOMEN will spark recognition, again and again, in readers on their own quest for female redefinition. "[A] witty, learned collection of essays . . . filled with delicate, sometimes startling gems of perception . . . . Provocative." -- New York Newsday

Author: Erin Dionne
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101155752
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
All Hamlet Kennedy wants is to be a normal eighth grader. But with parents like hers - Shakespearean scholars who actually dress in Elizabethan regalia . . . in public! - it's not that easy. As if they weren't strange enough, her genius seven-year-old sister will be attending her middle school, and is named the new math tutor. Then, when the Shakespeare Project is announced, Hamlet reveals herself to be an amazing actress. Even though she wants to be average, Hamlet can no longer hide from the fact that she- like her family - is anything but ordinary.

Author: William Missouri Downs Downs
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781680690026
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
Hamlet's a challenge for any actor, but when Jessica is cast as the titular character in a New York production, it sends her into an existential tailspin. It doesn't help that her acting coach is borderline abusive, or that every Starbucks barista with an MFA tells her she's too young for the role. Or that she's somehow managed to make Sir Patrick Stewart her nemesis. Not to mention the fact that she's a woman. How can Jessica figure out "to be or not to be," when she can't even figure out herself? Featuring an all-female cast performing multiple roles, Woman Playing Hamlet is rip-roaring fun for Shakespeare fans and haters alike.

Author: Theresa Rebeck
Publisher: Concord Theatricals
ISBN: 0573708096
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
Mark Twain wrote: “There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses – and then there is Sarah Bernhardt.” In 1899, the international stage celebrity set out to tackle her most ambitious role yet: Hamlet. Theresa Rebeck’s new play rollicks with high comedy and human drama, set against the lavish Shakespearean production that could make or break Bernhardt’s career.

Author: Elena Agathokleous
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3346395537
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 9

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Book Description
Essay from the year 2021 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: A, , language: English, abstract: The essay deals with Shakespeare’s female characters in “Hamlet” and “As you like it”, raised above society’s conceptions of the female gender. Shakespeare’s writings are highly observant and contain social and historical representations as well as observations about the human condition. His characters show depth and their personalities undergo changes and reach resolutions according to both societal norms of the time but also to the genre of the play. Gender relations were a significant aspect of his writing especially regarding to the time when Shakespeare was writing when women were the property, first of their father and then of their husband according to the law. Their marriages were business transactions with the woman being exchanged for a higher position in society by entering a family of high social status or even to secure survival if the woman’s family was poor. For the transaction to be successful the woman had to be a virgin, of proven chastity, otherwise she was considered to be unwanted for marriage. This related highly to matters of succession since it was the only that the fatherhood of the husband was certain. In this society, where men dominated every aspect of life women were not permitted to reveal their true self and potential instead they were constantly oppressed and obliged to obey men.

Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474273890
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 689

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Book Description
This Arden edition of Hamlet, arguably Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, presents an authoritative, modernized text based on the Second Quarto text with a new introductory essay covering key productions and criticism in the decade since its first publication. A timely up-date in the 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare's death which will ensure the Arden edition continues to offer students a comprehensive and current critical account of the play, alongside the most reliable and fully-annotated text available.

Author: Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252010163
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Author: M. Alison Kibler
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876054
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
A disrobing acrobat, a female Hamlet, and a tuba-playing labor activist--all these women come to life in Rank Ladies. In this comprehensive study of women in vaudeville, Alison Kibler reveals how female performers, patrons, and workers shaped the rise and fall of the most popular live entertainment at the turn of the century. Kibler focuses on the role of gender in struggles over whether high or low culture would reign in vaudeville, examining women's performances and careers in vaudeville, their status in the expanding vaudeville audience, and their activity in the vaudevillians' labor union. Respectable women were a key to vaudeville's success, she says, as entrepreneurs drew women into audiences that had previously been dominated by working-class men and recruited female artists as performers. But although theater managers publicly celebrated the cultural uplift of vaudeville and its popularity among women, in reality their houses were often hostile both to female performers and to female patrons and home to women who challenged conventional understandings of respectable behavior. Once a sign of vaudeville's refinement, Kibler says, women became associated with the decay of vaudeville and were implicated in broader attacks on mass culture as well.