Women in Shakespeare: A Dictionary

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This is a comprehensive reference guide examining the language employed by Shakespeare to represent women in the full range of his poetry and plays. Including over 350 entries, Alison Findlay shows the role of women within Shakespearean drama, their representations on the Shakespearean stage, and their place in Shakespeares personal and professional lives.

Reviews

This encyclopaedic and critically sophisticated survey of women and womanhood in Shakespeare offers a uniquely invaluable resource for students and scholars alike. -- Professor Stanley Wells, CBE, Chairman, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK
One of the strengths of Findlay's lexicon is that it includes gendered role types and their attributes... The result is a richly studded picture both of individual women and of societal and linguistic mores. -- The Times Literary Supplement
The impressive range and intricate detail make Women in Shakespeare: A Dictionary immensely valuable to both seasoned Shakespeareans and students alike; the dictionary format enables quick reference while still retaining critical integrity. -- Routledge ABES
This is a rich and inventive book, offering much more than the dictionary function suggested by its title. It is astonishingly thorough and some of its entries are in effect mini essays an impressive achievement and a very rewarding read. -- Lisa Hopkins * Shakespeare Quarterly *
Alison Findlays treatment of Shakespeares female characters offers much to digest, largely because of her brilliant decision to treat these figures not only under the named part but also through extensive cross-references to titles of rank, occupation, social status names for prostitutes, female anatomy female icons female experiences pivotal moments that shaped or changed womens subject positions female apparel, and the material representation of women on Shakespeares stage As they consult Findlay, students, scholars, and actors will find a rich layering in their efforts to reconstruct the identities of Shakespeares female parts from an array of fragments, the end result being characters who come alive on both page and stage the Arden Dictionaries have made an enormous contribution. While each volume impresses the reader with Shakespeares grasp of a particular topicwide, deep, and, as experts in various fields have noted, accurateit is impossible to view all of the dictionaries together and not come away with renewed awe at his commodious erudition. -- Deborah T. Curren-Aquino * Shakespeare Quarterly *
Women in Shakespeare: A Dictionary inventively surveys not only the proper names of female characters but also many sorts of female and feminized ideas and associations in the corpus. The entry on woman demonstrates how much is to be learned from such an approach to a reference book. -- Roland Greene, Stanford University * Recent Studies in Tudor and Stuart Drama *

Author Bio

Alison Findlay is Professor of Renaissance Drama and Director of the Shakespeare Programme in the Department of English and Creative Writing, Lancaster University, UK.