Abstract
The periods of Classical Athens and Renaissance London are renowned landmarks in stage history for their productions and performances of considerable works of drama. It is remarkable also that this emergence of theatre as both a prominent and preferred art form should be accompanied by a marked interest in the representation of women. Women characters populate the comedies and tragedies in these periods on an unprecedented level. In that tragedy as a genre is more likely than comedy to explore the tensions and anxieties relevant to its time, it is, perhaps, more revealing of the concerns voiced regarding gender identity and the nature of women.
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See: Doane, Mary Ann: Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis, Routledge, New York and London 1991 (in particular, Introduction, pages 1–16).
See: Woodbridge, Linda: Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540–1620, The Harvester Press, Brighton, 1984 (in particular, pages 49–113).
All references to and quotations from the Agamemnon are taken from: Aeschylus, Agamemnon (translated by Richmond Lattimore) in The Complete Greek Tragedies, edited by David Grene and Richmond Lattimore, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1953.
Quotations from Macbeth are taken from: Shakespeare, William: Macbeth (from the The Arden edition of the works of William Shakespeare, edited by Kenneth Muir, Methuen and Co. Ltd., London, 1972.
This is debatable. See, for example, Taplin, Oliver: The Stagecraft of Aeschylus: The Dramatic Use of Exits and Entrances in Greek Tragedy, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1977 (in particular chapter 1 and 6)
For discussion of witchcraft, and the identification of „Self“ as defined against „the other“, see Garber, Marjorie: Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce: Estranging the Renaissance, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1987.
Maus, Katherine Eisaman: Inwardness and theater in the English Renaissance; The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1995 (in particular chapters 3 and 5).
For discussions of aspects relating to „metatheatre“ (the dramatisation of the theatricality of theatre) see: Easterling, P[atricia] E. et al (eds): The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997, esp. Burian, Peter, „Myth into muthos: the shaping of tragic plot“, pp. 178–208, at pp. 193–8.
For attitudes towards theatre see Barish, Jonas: The Antitheatrical Prejudice; University of California Press, Berkeley and London, 1981.
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© 1999 Springer-Verlag GmbH Deutschland
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Shaffi, S.B. (1999). The Performance of Women Performing: Representations of Deception and Disguise in the Agamemnon and Macbeth. In: Zimmermann, B. (eds) Griechisch — römische Komödie and Tragödie III. J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04320-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-04320-7_2
Publisher Name: J.B. Metzler, Stuttgart
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