Playing the Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism and Shakespearean Performance

Abstract

Feminist film theorists have revealed ways cinematic representation constructs female as object of male spectator's gaze.' Their analyses have raised parallel questions for theatrical and specifically Shakespearean representation: to what extent and through what strategies does Shakespearean performance also construct female characters for spectator's eye, and, since Shakespearean theatre is as verbal as it is visual, for auditor's ear? Kathleen McLuskie argues that representational strategies of playwright she calls the patriarchal bard, like cinematic cues, resist feminist manipulation by denying an autonomous position for female viewer of action. Shakespearean texts, bearing traces of their history in a theatrical enterprise which completely excluded women, construct gender from a relentlessly androcentric perspective. Yet, as McLuskie also remarks, the gap between textual meaning and social meaning can never be completely filled for meaning is constructed every time text is reproduced in changing ideological dynamic between text and audience.2