This presentation by Meg Lota Brown examines the social and historical contexts of women’s roles in Shakespeare's England and how the playwright both generates and subverts his culture’s assumptions about gender. Given the extraordinary vitality of Shakespeare’s female characters, it is important to consider their equivocal relation to the state, the family, the church, political economy, and desire. In short, what was their relation to order and disorder?

Meg Lota Brown is an English professor who has authored numerous books and articles on Shakespeare, Reformation politics, and Renaissance literature.

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