This essay explores the first appearance of actresses on the public stage in England
and the Dutch Republic. It considers the cultural climate, the theaters, and the plays
selected for these early performances, particularly from the perspective of public
femininity. In both countries antitheatricalists denounced female acting as a form…[Read more]

This essay examines early modern friendship poetry by women writers from England and the Dutch Republic, including Katherine Philips, Cornelia van der Veer, Catharina Questiers, and Katharina Lescailje. It argues that women used this genre to comment on the shifting definitions of public and private and especially to how these shifts affected them…[Read more]

This essay reexamines the mixtures of genres in The Comedy of Errors to argue that Shakespeare’s play encourages reflection on genre as a mode of representation. In particular, the genres of romance and farce each offer specific approaches to subjectivity, which would have been especially meaningful to early modern urban playgoers grappling with…[Read more]