One man in his time plays many parts/His acts being seven ages', asserts Shakespeare's Jacques, in a speech which foreshadows what has become a commonplace of contemporary gender theory: that masculinity, far from being a secure, unproblematic gender identity, is a site of crisis and contradictions.
Staging Masculinities engages with the complex and paradoxical history of masculinities by exploring the ways in which changing concepts of what it means 'to be a man' have been represented, celebrated, examined and critiqued on mainstream Western - and particularly English - stages. Mapping a history of masculinities onto a history of theatre, Michael Mangan analyses a wide range of plays and performances, from Henry V to Peter Pan, and from medieval liturgical drama to contemporary West-End hits. In the process Mangan offers new and gendered readings of several familiar plays, and traces an intricate relationship between theatrical performance and gender performance.
Preface and Acknowledgements
Staging Masculinities: Introduction and Orientation
Staging Medieval Masculinities
Sighing Like a Furnace and Full of Strange Oaths: Lovers and Soldiers in Shakespeare
The Spectacle of Masculinity in the Restoration Theatre
Outlaws and Sentiment: Masculinities in the Eighteenth-Century Theatre
Doll's Houses and Wendy Houses: Masculinities on Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Stages
Contemporary Masculinities
Bibliography
Index.
