Shakesqueer

Madhavi Menon is Associate Professor of Literature at American University. She is the author of Unhistorical Shakespeare: Queer Theory in Shakespearean Literature and Film and Wanton Words: Rhetoric and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama.

• Acknowledgments ixIntroduction. Queer Shakes / Madhavi Menon 1All is True (Henry VIII)The Unbearable Sex of Henry VIII / Steven Bruhm 28All's Well That Ends WellIs Marriage Always Already Heterosexual? / Julie Crawford 39Antony and CleopatraAught an Eunuch Has / Ellis Hanson 48As You Like ItFortune's Turn / Valerie Rohy 55Cardenio"Absonant Desire": The Question of Cardenio / Philip Lorenz 62The Comedy of ErrorsIn Praise of Error / Lynne Huffer 72Coriolanus"Tell Me Not Wherein I Seem Unnatural": Queer Meditations on Coriolanus in the Time of War / Jason Edwards 80Cymbelinedesire vomit emptiness: Cymbeline's Marriage Time / Amanda Berry 89HamletHamlet's Wounded Name / Lee Edelman 97Henry IV, Part 1When Harry Met Harry / Matt Bell 106Henry IV, Part 2The Deep Structure of Sexuality: War and Masochism in Henry IV, Part 2 / Daniel Juan Gil 114King Henry VScrambling Harry and Sampling Hal / Drew Daniel 121Henry VI, Part 1"Wounded Alpha Bad Boy Soldier" / Mario Digangi 130Henry VI, Part 2The Gayest Play Ever / Stephen Guy-Bray 139Henry VI, Part 3Stay / Cary Howie 146Julius CaeserThus, Always: Julius Caesar and Abraham Lincoln / Bethany Schneider 152King JohnQueer Futility: Or, The Life and Death of King John / Kathryn Schwarz 163King LearLear's Queer Cosmos / Laurie Shannon 171A Lover's ComplaintLearning How to Love (Again) / Ashley T. Shelden 179Love's Labour's LostThe L Words / Madhavi Menon 187Love's Labour's WonDoctorin' the Bard: A Contemporary Appropriation of Love's Labour's Won / Hector Kollias 194MacbethMilk / Heather Love 201Measure for MeasureSame-Saint Desire / Paul Morrison 209The Merchant of VeniceThe Rites of Queer Marriage in The Merchant of Venice / Arthur L. Little Jr. 216The Merry Wives of WindsorWhat Do Women Want? / Jonathan Goldberg 225A Midsummer Night's DreamShakespeare's Ass Play / Richard Rambuss 234Much Ado About NothingClosing Ranks, Keeping Company: Marriage Plots and the Will to be Single in Much Ado About Nothing / Ann Pellegrini 245OthelloOthello's Penis: Or, Islam in the Closet / Daniel Boyarin 254Pericles"Curious Pleasures": Pericles beyond the Civility of Union / Patrick O'Malley 263The Phoenix and the TurtleNumber There in Love Was Slain / Karl Steel 271The Rape of LucreeDesire My Pilot Is / Peter Coviello 278Richard IIPretty Richard / Judith Brown 286Richard IIIFuck the Disabled: The Prequel / Robert McRuer 294Romeo and JulietRomeo and Juliet Love Death / Carla Freccero 302Sir Thomas MoreMore or Less Queer / Jeffrey Masten 309The SonnetsMomma's Boy / Aranye Fradenburg 319Speech Therapy / Barbara Johnson 328More Life: Shakespeare's Sonnet Machines / Julian Yates 333The Taming of the ShrewLatin Lovers in The Taming of the Shrew / Bruce Smith 343The TempestForgetting The Tempest / Kevin Ohi 351Timon of AthensSkepticism, Sovereignty, Sodomy / James Kuzner 361Titus AndronicusA Child's Garden of Atrocities / Michael Moon 369Troilus and CressidaThe Leather Men and the Lovely Boy: Reading Positions in Troilus and Cressida / Alan Sinfeild 376Twelfth NightIs There an Audience for My Play? / Sharon Holland 385The Two Gentlemen of VeronaPageboy, or The Two Gentlemen of Verona: The Movie / Amy Villajero 394The Two Noble KinsmenPhiladelphia, or War / Jody Greene 404Venus and Adonis421Venus and Adonis Freeze / Andrew Nicholls 414The Winter's TaleLost, or "Exit, Pursued by a Bear": Causing Queer Children on Shakespeare's TV / Kathryn Bond Stockton 421References 429Further Reading 449Contributors 467Index 477

“The adventurous essays in Shakesqueer demonstrate that queer theory does indeed need Shakespeare, if only to defy rumors of its own demise: the essays show what is vital about a queer studies that might have been thought by this point too domesticated or reified or ‘fixed’ to be intellectually vibrant.”-Carolyn Dinshaw, author of Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern “What happens when queer theory gets into bed with Shakespeare? A play in forty-eight acts, this spirited group production never ceases to entertain and surprise with its queer cast of characters: virgins, eunuchs, and lechers; queens, kings, and pageboys; tyrants, assassins, and killjoys; lions, tigers, and bears-oh my! Full of toil and trouble, wit and wisdom, Shakesqueer succeeds where few other edited collections do: it puts the play back in playwright, and the fun back in theory.”-Diana Fuss, Princeton University “In the end, this book is a big, glorious mess, full of playful juxtapositions and frightening possibilities. It is thrilling. Theatre scholars, queer theorists, actors, directors, and dramaturges will all find something useful and interesting.” - Michael Cramer (Sixteenth Century Journal) “When studying endless Shakespeare plays on English Literature courses, we always had a hunch there were some exceptionally queer goings on beyond some same sex sonnets and this collection of essays proves us right. Earl on earl analysis sits beside complex queer theories on the bard.” (Gay Times) “Few works of literary criticism deserve the descriptor ‘monumental,’ but this one does. . . . The book is both readable and witty. It is also important, for it drives the final nail into the coffin of 20th-century Shakespearean studies. . . . No hierarchies survive this book. Every play and poem receives a fresh new reading. . . . Essential. All readers.” - M. J. Emery (Choice) “If you're looking for clues to Romeo and Mercutio's secret romance in the new academic volume Shakesqueer : A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by Madhavi Menon (Duke), you're barking up the wrong yew tree. American University professor Menon and her queer-theorist contributors find queerness in Shakespeare in that term's most all-encompassing meaning of oddball, unusual, or non-normative. But when you come to think of it, fairy queen Titania falling in love with an ass named Bottom is pretty queer, in all senses of the word.” - Roberto Friedman (Bay Area Reporter) “It is rare to see a volume that does so much, and does it with such consistent wit, thoughtfulness, and creativity. . . . In putting together this volume, Menon has done scholars from all fields and periods an immense service. Shakesqueer gives us a very queer new reading ‘’companion’’ - friend, helpmeet, comrade-in-arms - that makes us exquisitely aware of the need for the perverse and disruptive critical practice its essays so pleasurably model.” - Melissa E. Sanchez (Renaissance Quarterly) “There’s something for every queer scholar and Bard-lover in the anthology; from bears in Henry VIII to eunuchs in Antony and Cleopatra, from the death drive in Hamlet to precariously heterosexual marriages in All’s Well that Ends Well, the contributing authors chart Shakespeare’s varied engagements with queerness, putting pressure on assumptions that Shakespeare has nothing to offer to contemporary queer theory. . . . The assorted essays assert that Shakespeare has as much to offer queer theory as queer theory can contribute to understanding and deconstructing the Bard’s texts. This book belongs on every bookish queer’s shelf, right where the leather-bound Complete Works of William Shakespeare butts up against Butler and Foucault.” - Kestryl Cael Lowrey (Lambda Literary Review) “This fascinating collection of essays explores the queer elements within all of Shakespeare’s works. With contributions from scholars of both queer studies and Shakespeare, the volume represents a joining of the two fields rarely attempted before.”- Charles Green (Gay & Lesbian Review) “[Shakesqueer] manages to put the fun back into academic research. Shakesqueer is a highly entertaining collection of essays, which all focus on the strange, the unusual, that is, the queer element in the Shakespearean oeuvre.” - Veronika Schandl (European Journal of English Studies) "For 'insider experts'-those who are Shakespeareans, queer theorists, or both (always, already, at once)-Shakesqueer provides a garden of delights between its covers. . . . Shakesqueer extends, enriches, and strengthens the vocabulary of Shakespeare criticism in concert with queer theory." - Stephen F. Evans (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching)