Shakespeare

Between high school English and having spent half my life treading one set of boards or another, a large chunk of my brain is devoted to Shakespeare. For whom isn’t that the case, really? There’s the deep horror of Macbeth, the lovely gender mix-ups of Twelfth Night, the… no, I really didn’t like The Taming of the Shrew. But the thing is that Shakespeare’s plays are largely about the men. My having gone to drama school has to be good for something, so let me take you through the theatrical manipulations rendering so many Shakespearian women more silent than they could be (and, arguably, more silent than the stories could do with).

"Really? No! I mean, is this story for real?" This was my reaction to finding out that, after four centuries (yes, centuries), Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London will hold its first-ever play penned by a woman. Nell Leyshon's Bedlam will begin showing in September, and "it's about damned time" doesn't begin to cover it!

Photo credit: Claire McNamee