Women of Will ― Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays

From one of the country's foremost experts on Shakespeare and theatre arts, a fierce, funny exploration--part master class, part brilliant analysis--of the women of Shakespeare's plays that illuminates for us his changing understanding of the feminine and reveals some of his deepest insights.

Beginning with Shakespeare's early work, including the early comedies (The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona, andLove's Labour's Lost) and early histories (Henry VI: Parts 1, 2, 3 andRichard III), Tina Packer writes of his journey becoming a playwright and actor, and the role of the theatre in Elizabethan England. She exploresRomeo and Juliet as a foundation for Shakespeare's deeper understanding of the relationship between men and women as well as the continuation of the sexual/spiritual story ofA Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing andTroilus and Cressida, and which has its supreme manifestation inAntony and Cleopatra. She wrestles with Shakespeare's middle period: with Isabella inMeasure for Measure, with Twelfth Night, Hamlet, As You Like It, andOthello, giving us a clear picture of the constraints put upon the women of these plays as they articulate the truth about what they see and feel . . . She asks--and answers--what happens when women want the same power as men, and examinesMacbeth, Coriolanus, and King Lear.

TINA PACKER is the founding artistic director of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts. She has directed most of Shakespeare's plays (some of them several times), acted in seven of them, and taught the whole canon in various guises at thirty colleges, among them Harvard, MIT, and Columbia. Packer was an Associate Artist with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England, working at The Royal Court and the Aldwych Theatre in London, at Leicester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and other regional theatres, as well as in television for the BBC and ITV, including David Copperfield with Ian McKellen. She lives in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.