The question is not whether Shakespeare studies needs feminism, but whether feminism needs Shakespeare. This is the explicitly political approach taken in the dynamic and newly updated edition of A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare.

Notes on Contributors x Preface to the Second Edition xvii Introduction 1Dympna Callaghan Part I The History of Feminist Shakespeare Criticism 19 1 The Ladies’ Shakespeare 21Juliet Fleming 2 Margaret Cavendish, Shakespeare Critic 39Katherine M. Romack 3 Misogyny Is Everywhere 60Phyllis Rackin Part II Text and Language 75 4 Feminist Editing and the Body of the Text 77Laurie E. Maguire 5 “Made to write ‘whore’ upon?”: Male and Female Use of the Word “Whore” in Shakespeare’s Canon 98Kay Stanton 6 “A word, sweet Lucrece”: Confession, Feminism, and The Rape of Lucrece 121Margo Hendricks Part III Social Economies 137 7 Gender, Class, and the Ideology of Comic Form: Much Ado about Nothing and Twelfth Night 139Mihoko Suzuki 8 Gendered “Gifts” in Shakespeare’s Belmont: The Economies of Exchange in Early Modern England 162Jyotsna G. Singh Part IV Race and Colonialism 179 9 The Great Indian Vanishing Trick – Colonialism, Property, and the Family in A Midsummer Night’s Dream 181Ania Loomba 10 Black Ram, White Ewe: Shakespeare, Race, and Women 206Joyce Green MacDonald 11 Sycorax in Algiers: Cultural Politics and Gynecology in Early Modern England 226Rachana Sachdev 12 Black and White, and Dread All Over: The Shakespeare Theatre’s “Photonegative” Othello and the Body of Desdemona 244Denise Albanese Part V Performing Sexuality 267 13 Women and Boys Playing Shakespeare 269Juliet Dusinberre 14 Mutant Scenes and “Minor” Conflicts in Richard II 281Molly Smith 15 Lovesickness, Gender, and Subjectivity: Twelfth Night and As You Like It 294Carol Thomas Neely 16 … in the Lesbian Void: Woman–Woman Eroticism in Shakespeare’s Plays 318Theodora A. Jankowski 17 Duncan’s Corpse 339Susan Zimmerman Part VI Religion 359 18 Others and Lovers in The Merchant of Venice 361M. Lindsay Kaplan 19 Between Idolatry and Astrology: Modes of Temporal Repetition in Romeo and Juliet 378Philippa Berry Part VII Character, Genre, History 393 20 Putting on the Destined Livery: Isabella, Cressida, and our Virgin/Whore Obsession 395Anna Kamaralli 21 The Virginity Dialogue in All’s Well That Ends Well: Feminism, Editing, and Adaptation 411Rory Loughnane 22 Competitive Mourning and Female Agency in Richard III 428Mario DiGangi 23 Bearing Death in The Winter’s Tale 440Amy K. Burnette 24 Monarchs Who Cry: The Gendered Politics of Weeping in the English History Play 457Jean E. Howard 25 Shakespeare’s Women and the Crisis of Beauty 467Farah Karim]Cooper Part VIII Appropriating Women, Appropriating Shakespeare 481 26 Women and Land: Henry VIII 483Lisa Hopkins 27 Desdemona: Toni Morrison’s Response to Othello 494Ayanna Thompson 28 Woman]Crafted Shakespeares: Appropriation, Intermediality, and Womanist Aesthetics 507Sujata Iyengar 29 A Thousand Voices: Performing Ariel 520Amanda Eubanks Winkler Index 539

The question is not whether Shakespeare studies needs feminism, but whether feminism needs Shakespeare. This is the explicitly political approach taken by the contributors to A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare. In the new edition of this award-winning book,contributors come from across the feminist generations and from various stages in their careers to address what is new in the field in terms of historical and textual discovery, and especially in analyses of recent performances and appropriationsof Shakespeare. Essays offer fresh insights into Shakespeare's plays and poems as well as the early modern world in which they were written. In addition, they acknowledge and confront the historical facts around dynamics of the gender hierarchy in early modern England, examining the restrictions imposed uponwomen as a group no matter what degree of latitude they were able to achieve in the exercise of personal or political agency. Throughout the volume, essays cover the history of feminist Shakespeare criticism, text and language, social economies, raceand colonialism, performing sexuality, religion, character genre and history. The new edition also covers issues that bring it right up to the present day by exploring some of the newest theatrical and creative engagements with Shakespeare.

"With the second edition of A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare, we have the opportunity to revisit some of the most important interventions in a political and intellectual project that has remade Shakespeare studies. Ten freshly commissioned essays take the project forward with news of historical and textual discoveries and attention to Shakespeare in public culture. Once again our guide is Dympna Callaghan. Among the most clear-sighted and sure-footed of feminist scholars, Callaghan astutely engages with two decades of Shakespeare work and four hundred years of women’s experience." Lena Cowen Orlin, Georgetown University