Staging Masculinities: History, Gender, Performance

By Michael Mangan

Book Overview

One man in his time plays many parts/His acts being seven ages', asserts Shakespeare's Jacques, in a speech which foreshadows what has become a commonplace of contemporary gender theory: that masculinity, far from being a secure, unproblematic gender identity, is a site of crisis and contradictions.

Staging Masculinities engages with the complex and paradoxical history of masculinities by exploring the ways in which changing concepts of what it means 'to be a man' have been represented, celebrated, examined and critiqued on mainstream Western - and particularly English - stages. Mapping a history of masculinities onto a history of theatre, Michael Mangan analyses a wide range of plays and performances, from Henry V to Peter Pan, and from medieval liturgical drama to contemporary West-End hits. In the process Mangan offers new and gendered readings of several familiar plays, and traces an intricate relationship between theatrical performance and gender performance.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0333720199
• ISBN13: 9780333720196
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Red Globe Press
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.7"