Three Seventeenth-Century Plays on Women and Performance

by Hero Chalmers (Editor), Sophie Tomlinson (Editor), Julie Sanders (Editor)

This is a groundbreaking edition of three seventeenth-century plays that all engage in diverse and exciting ways with questions of gender and performance. The collection makes the texts of three much-discussed plays--John Fletcher's "The Wild-Goose Chase," James Shirley's "The Bird in a Cage," and Margaret Cavendish's "The Convent of Pleasure"--available together in a full scholarly edition for the first time.

Genres: Plays

352 pages, Hardcover

First published September 19, 2006

Reviews

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read ‘The Bird in a Cage’ from this for a university course and found it somewhat...boring? It lacks the wit and hilarity of Behn, and was totally without the convoluted intricacies of Shakespeare. Granted, it is only about 70 pages long, but I expected more.

[Rachel Brand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read "The Bird in the Cage" and "The Convent of Pleasure" for EN4341: Renaissance Sexualities: Rhetoric and the Body 1580-1660.

Mildly amusing plays that provide some interesting discussion on gender and performance in the Renaissance period, but I can't say that I'd find them that enjoyable if I'd chosen to read them for pleasure. 3*