'Some exquisitely-dressed stage favourite': Shakespeare and the suffragettes

In this talk, Sophie Duncan examines suffragists' interactions with Shakespeare and his works, as performers, directors, consumers and critics. Suffragist readings of Shakespeare variously cite Shakespeare's feminism as a source of authority, justifying their right to vote, and attack Shakespeare's patriarchal impulses in a manner that anticipates second-wave feminist, cultural materialist readings of the plays by half a century.