Shakespeare's Feminine Endings: Disfiguring Death in the Tragedies

Front Cover
Routledge, 1999 - Drama - 197 pages
Philippa Berry draws on feminist theory, postmodern thought and queer theory, to challenge existing critical notions of what is fundamental to Shakespearean tragedy. She shows how, through a network of images clustered around feminine or feminized characters, these plays 'disfigure' conventional ideas of death as a bodily end, as their figures of women are interwoven with provocative meditations upon matter, time, the soul, and the body. The scope of these tragic speculations was radical in Shakespeare's day; yet they also have a surprising relevance to contemporary debates about time and matter in science and philosophy.

Other editions - View all

About the author (1999)

Philippa Berry is a Fellow and Director of Studies in English at King's College, Cambridge.
Margaret Tudeau-Clayton teaches English at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Bibliographic information