A01=Charles O'Malley
A01=Scott W. Stern
Author_Charles O'Malley
Author_Scott W. Stern
Category=ATD
Category=DSG
Category=JBSF1
depiction of women
early shakespeare
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
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eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
female characters
feminist shakespeare
gender descrimination
gender roles
interpretation
portrayal of women
shakespeare analysis
women in drama
women in theater
Product details
- ISBN 9781324076551
- Weight: 518g
- Dimensions: 160 x 236mm
- Publication Date: 02 Jun 2026
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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She is more violent than Lady Macbeth, more complex than Ophelia, more strategic than Lear’s daughters. She is the only Shakespearean character, male or female, whose entire life–from youth to old age–appears on stage. She has allowed the likes of Peggy Ashcroft, Helen Mirren and Sophie Okonedo full range for their stunning talents. Yet who was Margaret of Anjou? In the fifteenth century, she was a fourteen-year-old French princess married to an English king, soon thrust into command amid a bloody civil war. A hundred and fifty years later, she is resurrected on the Elizabethan stage in four of Shakespeare’s earliest plays. Since then, every era has recast their own Margaret—highlighted or diminished depending on popular sensibilities around gender. Her story, as it has changed over the centuries across the page and on the stage, shows that Shakespeare’s plays have always been living collaborations among actors, directors, writers, critics and history itself, still unfolding.
Charles O’Malley holds a doctorate in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism from the Yale School of Drama and has worked at theatres across the United States. He is the editor of Toward a Just Pedagogy of Performance. Scott W. Stern is a scholar and critic. He is the author of The Trials of Nina McCall, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, and There Is a Deep Brooding in Arkansas, which the Times called “powerful new history.”
