Staging Masculinities

'This will be a useful text for undergraduates studying the relation of gender to performance: it should also prove useful to anyone interested in the social context of performance.' - David Pattie, New Theatre Quarterly

"Staging Masculinities" is a critical history of the ways in which changing concepts of masculinity have been represented, explored and critiqued on mainstream Western and particularly English stages. The study analyses a wide variety of plays.One man in his time plays many parts/His acts being seven ages', asserts Shakespeare's Jacques, in a speech which foreshadows what has become a commonplace of contemporary gender theory: that masculinity, far from being a secure, unproblematic gender identity, is a site of crisis and contradictions.

Staging Masculinities engages with the complex and paradoxical history of masculinities by exploring the ways in which changing concepts of what it means 'to be a man' have been represented, celebrated, examined and critiqued on mainstream Western - and particularly English - stages. Mapping a history of masculinities onto a history of theatre, Michael Mangan analyses a wide range of plays and performances, from Henry V to Peter Pan, and from medieval liturgical drama to contemporary West-End hits. In the process Mangan offers new and gendered readings of several familiar plays, and traces an intricate relationship between theatrical performance and gender performance.