Shakespeare and Identity in a Divided World

Kristin M.S. Bezio is Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond. Her background is in theatre and early modern drama, and her publications include Staging Power in Tudor and Stuart History Plays (2015), The Eye of the Crown (2023), “‘Munday I Sweare Shalbee a Hollidaye’: The Politics of Anthony Munday, from Anti-Catholic Spy to Civic Pageanteer (1579–1630),” in Études Anglaises (2018), and the edited volumes William Shakespeare & 21st Century Culture, Politics, and Leadership: Bard Bites with Anthony Presti Russell (2021), and Religion and the Medieval and Early Modern Global Marketplace (2021), and Religion and the Early Modern British Marketplace (2021), both co-edited with Scott Oldenburg.

• Introduction: “I’ll Drown My Book”: Reading (and Watching) Shakespeare in the Twenty-First CenturyChapter 1: Who Was William Shakespeare?: How The Bard Came to Be (or Not to Be)Chapter 2: Leading “Ladies”: Shakespeare’s Women and Problems of Gender InequalityChapter 3: Real Men Show Their Scars: Toxic Masculinity in Shakespeare’s Violent TragediesChapter 4: Cesario and Ganymede: Finding Transness in Shakespeare’s “Genderbenders”Chapter 5: Slaves and Generals: Race and Displacement in ShakespeareChapter 6: My Wits Begin to Turn: Causes, Cures, and Care for Mental Illness in Shakespeare’s PlaysChapter 7: Not Shaped for Sportive Tricks: Physical Disability and Fatness in ShakespeareEpilogue: Shakespeare’s Culture Wars from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First