Shakespeare and the Performance of Girlhood by Deanne Williams

Abstract

Deanne Williams. Shakespeare and Performance of Girlhood. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 296 pp. $105. In her new book Deanne Williams helps to amend traditional belief that medieval and early modern English families placed little value on girls. Indeed, while girls were certainly victimized within early modern patriarchal social structures, many enjoyed affectionate relationships with their kin. Girls were also productive, necessary members of domestic economies and, at times, at least minimally educated. More specifically, Williams corrects what seems to be an unbelievable omission: a total lack of lengthy academic studies on in William Shakespeare's plays. Although billed as a book on Shakespeare, half of Williams's work here draws connections to other early modern professional playwrights and, importantly, girls who wrote pieces for performance, placing Shakespeare's work within a broader early modern conversation. Although she insists on unique place of girls in early modern theatre culture, Williams provocatively suggests expanding the figure of and subject of girlhood in order to make both relevant beyond limits of gender as well as age, accessible to boys and men, all while preserving a sense of as a special identity for women, an identity that need not be considered temporary and that need not be forsaken as part of a healthy development into adulthood (14). Even as Williams marks out a space for as special and worthy of consideration, she productively suggests that flexible connotations of term allow for a range of readings in dramatic work. Importantly, Williams draws attention to sixteenth century as a period in which girl began to refer solely to a female child. During medieval period, girl could be used to describe a child of either sex. The term could imply expected qualities of sweetness and innocence in an early modern female child, but it also carried connotations of eroticization and sex work, a point confirmed by contemporary dictionaries and their inclusion of terms such as harlot and trull as synonyms for girl (5). Shakespeare's plays appeared at a moment gendered identity attached to girls was in flux, especially given early modern practice of having boy actors play girls' and women's roles. Working with plasticity in term girl encourages a more complicated understanding of Shakespeare's characters, however. Take Joan of Arc's position in Henry VI, Part 1, for example: Joan la Pucelle (pucelle another term that simultaneously carries connotations of innocence and experience) is given moniker girl at two points in play. One of references to character as a girl can be found as York and Warwick debate merits of Joan's pregnancy claim, a conversation that supports Williams's sense of term as both virginal and sexualized for early modern mind (24). A consideration of this sexual duality and gendered uncertainty inherent in word girl allows for a broader, more engaging reading of often androgynous Joan's relationship to men and to larger structures of authority. Shakespeare includes term approximately sixty-eight times across his various works, usually in moments when a character's relationship to authority is complicated or troubled, according to Williams, who sees playwright's use of girl shift within larger changes in his social milieu (3, 4). In her initial discussion of Shakespearean texts, Williams attaches keywords to specific characters, keywords also selected from each respective play. Silvia is perverse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, while The Taming of Shrews Kate is froward, and Romeo and Juliet's heroine is wayward (43). All three terms are associated with religious disruption and upheaval, a point that Williams opens up in somewhat limited ways. …