Gender and Performance in Shakespeare's Problem Comedies

Drama and Performance Studies

by David McCandless

"This is exactly the kind of work, with its synthesis of theory, close reading, and deconstructive performance criticism that many of us in the profession have been looking for." --Joel B. Altman, University of California, Berkeley

"McCandless's book represents an inventive and illuminating account that not only produces a theoretically activated text but also explores a range of options for staging it, turning theoretical into theatrical meanings." --Barbara Hodgdon, Drake University

"The writing is clear, snappy, wonderfully informed with a vivid and experienced theatrical imagination... a book that taught me a good deal about the problem comedies, especially from the vantage point of performance, though the insights into performance are fully and incisively integrated with, and they richly illuminate, formal, thematic, and psychological vantage points on the play." --Richard P. Wheeler, University of Illinois

Composed at a critical moment in English history, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida--Shakespeare's problem plays--dramatize a crisis in the sex-gender system. They register a male dread of emasculation and engulfment, a fear of female authority and sexuality. In these plays males identify desire for a female as dangerous and unmanly, females contend and confound traditional femininity. David McCandless's book is a unique and invigorating example of performance criticism that illuminates these difficult, sometimes-overlooked tragicomedies. It is an original and timely contribution to Shakespearean theater scholarship.

216 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1997

About the author

McCandless is the founder of the visual blog Information Is Beautiful. Early explorations into the synergy between data visualisation and his work as a journalist led to the development of Information Is Beautiful and the subsequent publication of his book of the same name (titled A Visual Miscellaneum in the United States).

McCandless began his career writing for cult video game magazines such as Your Sinclair and PC Zone in the late 1980s and 1990s before moving on to work for The Guardian and Wired magazine. Since the publication of Information Is Beautiful in 2009, his information design work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian, Wired, and Die Zeit, and has also been showcased at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Wellcome Trust gallery in London, and at the Tate Britain. His second book, Knowledge Is Beautiful, was published in 2014.

source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

An analysis of three of my favorite Shakespeare plays: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure For Measure, and Troilus and Cressida. All three female leads are historically and for mainly sexist reasons considered unlikeable and as I am the captain of team Unlikeable Heroine I purchased an actual paper copy.

T and C is one of the least performed and written about of Shakespeare's plays and though I do have some quibbles about his take on Cressida, I am just gratified to see such a large section of the book devoted to it. Though it was legitimately within the scope of the book, the inclusion of McCandless's suggested directorial and staging ideas was less interesting and somewhat disconcerting. Perhaps I'm being contrary but one of the most fascinating aspects of Shakespeare's plays is their malleability, so while I would happily go see productions as envisioned by McCandless in this case the staging suggestions had the effect of fixing and limiting the scope of his analysis which was otherwise both insightful and sympathetic.

[Heather Ehlen · Rating 5 out of 5]

McCandless does a masterful job weaving literary theory into his analysis of these often overlooked plays, and acknowledges both of the key components in the study of Shakespeare: literary analysis and performance interpretation. This is an eloquent yet readable study for any Shakespeare enthusiast or scholar.