Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity

List of contents

Introduction; 1. Youth: Beardless boys; 2. Liminal masculinity; 3. Maturity: Lovers and bearded manhood; 4. Old age: Greybeards and the decline of manliness; Afterword: The nest of beards

About the author

Eleanor Rycroft is a lecturer in Theatre and Performance at the University of Bristol. A theatre historian of early English and Scottish drama, her research often involves practical explorations of plays. Recent publications include a co-edited special edition of The Shakespeare Bulletin, as well as book chapters for Oxford University Press, Palgrave, and Ashgate. She has written on material cultures of the early modern stage, theatre at the court of Henry VIII, practice-as-research, and the historical performance of witchcraft.

Summary

Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity is the first full-length critical study to analyse the importance of beards in terms of the theatrical performance of masculinity.

Additional text

A magisterial study of the importance of beards and tonsure to the representation of masculinities of all kinds on the Renaissance stage, and in wider early-modern society. In this copious, nuanced account of the ways in which often subtle variations and combinations of smoothness and hairiness, trimness and shagginess marked, yet simultaneously problematized prevailing early-modern conceptions of boyhood, youth, and manhood, Eleanor Rycroft makes a timely, compelling intervention in the fields of early-modern gender and theatre studies.

-- Greg Walker, Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh

Product details

• Authors: Eleanor Rycroft
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.07.2019
• EAN: 9781138578203
• ISBN: 978-1-138-57820-3
• No. of pages: 184
• Series: Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama > Drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; England, English, DRAMA / Shakespeare, DRAMA / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / General, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism, Theatre Studies, Literary studies: plays & playwrights, 16th century, c 1500 to c 1599, c 1500 to c 1600, Literary studies: plays and playwrights