Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature Before Heterosexuality Hardback

Shakespeare has been misread for centuries as having modern ideas about sex and gender. This book shows how in the Restoration and Eighteenth century, Shakespeare's plays and other Renaissance texts were adapted to make them conform to these modern ideas. Through readings of Shakespearean texts, including King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and Othello, and other Renaissance drama, the book reveals a sexual world before heterosexuality.

Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature Before Heterosexuality shows how revisions and criticism of Renaissance drama contributed to the emergence of heterosexuality. It also shows how changing ideas about status, adultery, friendship, and race were factors in that emergence. This book shows how in the Restoration and Eighteenth century, Shakespeare's plays and other Renaissance texts were adapted to make them conform to contemporary ideas.

Review: This provocative and interesting book will draw readers' attention to a wide range of Restoration and eighteenth-century texts with which many will be unfamiliar. The book successfully estranges the Renaissance and helps us to see heterosexual attachments as distrusted, branded as sinful, pursued as criminal.

Bach also shows us, in detail, the process by which the Restoration and eighteenth century rewrote the Renaissance. This is a rich, thought-provoking, valuable book. --Frances E. Dolan, University of California, Davis