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Series:   Elements in Shakespeare Performance

Shakespeare's Visionary Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2023

Laura Jayne Wright
Laura Jayne Wright
Affiliation:
Newcastle University

Summary

Shakespeare's visionary women, usually confined to the periphery, claim centre stage to voice their sleeping and waking dreams. These women recount their visions through acts of rhetoric, designed to persuade and, crucially, to directly intervene in political action. The visions discussed in this Element are therefore not simply moments of inspiration but of political intercession. The vision performed or recounted on stage offers a proleptic moment of female speech that forces audiences to confront questions of narrative truth and women's testimony. This Element interrogates the scepticism that Shakespeare's visionary women face and considers the ways in which they perform the truth of their experiences to a hostile onstage audience. It concludes that prophecy gives women a brief moment of access to political conversations in which they are not welcome as they wrest narrative control from male speakers and speak their truth aloud.
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Keywords

Shakespearevisionswomensightfuture
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in Shakespeare Performance
Online ISBN: 9781009057394
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 21 December 2023

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