Masculinity, corporality and the English stage 1580–1635

Billing, Christian M.

Abstract

The significance of human anatomy to the most physical of art forms, the theatre, has hitherto been an under-explored topic. Filling this gap, Christian Billing questions conventional wisdom regarding the one-sex anatomical model and uses a range of medical treatises to delineate an emergent two-sex paradigm of human biology. The impact such a model had on the staging of the human form in English professional theatre is also explored in appraisals of: (i) the homo-erotic significance of a two-sex paradigm; (ii) social and theatrical cross-dressing; (iii) the uses of theatrical androgyny; (iv) masculine corporality and the representation of assertive women; and (v) the theatrical poetics of human dissection. Billing supports cultural and scientific study with close-readings of Lyly, Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Dekker, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ford. The book provides a sophisticated and original analysis of the early modern stage body as a discursive site in wider debates concerning sexuality and gender.

Citation

Billing, C. M. (2008). Masculinity, corporality and the English stage 1580–1635. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315594194

• Online Publication Date: Sep 17, 2016
• Publication Date: Nov 28, 2008
• Deposit Date: Dec 19, 2014
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 1-238
• Book Title: Masculinity, Corporality and the English Stage 1580-1635
• ISBN: 9780754656517; 9781138376021
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315594194
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/369998
• Publisher URL: https://www.routledge.com/Masculinity-Corporality-and-the-English-Stage-15801635/Billing/p/book/9780754656517
• Contract Date: Dec 19, 2014