Women and Mobility on Shakespeare’s Stage: Migrant Mothers and Broken Homes

173 Pages·2017·1.22 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Mazzola

Women and Mobility
on Shakespeare’s Stage
Long before the economist Amartya Sen proposed that more than
one hundred million women were missing—lost to disease or neglect,
kidnapping or forced marriage, denied the economic and political se-
curity of wages or membership in a larger social order—Shakespeare
was interested in these women’s plight, how they were lost, and where
they might have gone. In Women and Mobility on Shakespeare’s Stage,
Elizabeth Mazzola investigates the way Shakespeare links female char-
acters’ agency with their mobility and thus represents women’s ties to the
household as less important than their connections to the larger world
outside. According to the playwright, female migration is crucial to
emerging ideas about what early modern communities must retain and
expel in order to create a shared history, identity, and moral framework.
Elizabeth Mazzola is a Professor of English at The City College of
New York.
Routledge Studies in Shakespeare
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.
14 Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, and Civic Life
The Boundaries of Civic Space
Edited by Silvia Bigliazzi and Lisanna Calvi
15 Shakespeare in Hate
Emotions, Passions, Selfhood
Peter Kishore Saval
16 Shakespeare and Hospitality
Ethics, Politics, and Exchange
Edited by David B. Goldstein and Julia Reinhard Lupton
17 Shakespeare, Cinema, Counter-Culture
Appropriation and Inversion
Ailsa Grant Ferguson
18 Shakespeare’s Folly
Philosophy, Humanism, Critical Theory
Sam Hall
19 Shakespeare’s Asian Journeys
Critical Encounters, Cultural Geographies, and the Politics
of Travel
Edited by Bi-qi Beatrice Lei, Poonam Trivedi, and Judy Celine Ick
20 Shakespeare, Italy, and Transnational Exchange
Early Modern to the Present
Edited by Enza De Francisci and Chris Stamatakis
21 Shakespeare and Complexity Theory
Claire Hansen
22 Women and Mobility on Shakespeare’s Stage
Migrant Mothers and Broken Homes
Elizabeth Mazzola
Women and Mobility
on Shakespeare’s Stage
Migrant Mothers and Broken Homes
Elizabeth Mazzola
First published 2017
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Elizabeth Mazzola to be identified as author of
this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CIP data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978-1-138-62960-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-21032-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
In honor of my grandparents Frances Rakowski and
Dominick Mazzola, with gratitude for their abiding love,
over and across many years
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
PART I
Mobility and Fearless Flying 19
1 Arden and Eden in As You Like It 21
2 Going Rogue in Othello 35
3 Enemy Fires in King Lear 55
PART II
Migration and the Wider World 75
4 Encrypted Genealogies and Bloody Napkins:
Missing Mothers in As You Like It and Othello 77
5 Heading Out and Heading Home in The Merchant
of Venice 94
6 “Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores” in The
Winter’s Tale 111
Conclusion: How Many Daughters Make a Kingdom? 127
Bibliography 145
Index 159
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Acknowledgements
The extraordinary work of Irene Gedalof and Gillian Rose has
transformed my thinking about nearly everything important to me and,
as I hope they would agree, their particular influence on these pages is
profound and valuable. But many other people have been a part of this
book in one way or another. My students at The City College of New
York have supplied both the inspiration and audience for many of the
ideas presented here, and I thank them once again for the rigor of their
questions, tolerance of my confusions, and patience with my typically
unwieldy formulations. I want to mention in particular Christian Chicas,
Tamra Lepro, Richelle Blanks, Sophia Monegro, Claudia Donofrio,
Chinomso Ekanem, Jamie Mallette, Hagar Alsaedi, Aeriel Badiola,
Elaine Millien, Leon Thomas, Tatiana Vargas-Caba, Conor McClone,
and Michael McCarther for pushing me to think harder and more care-
fully and to always reconsider the importance of what I’m leaving out.
My family also helps keep me honest, and it remains my greatest bless-
ing to talk things through with my husband Jim and daughters Pamela
and Alison and to have their own examples of insight and humor and
imagination (and steady supply of exotic cuisine, erudite puns, and ques-
tionable YouTube videos) before me. Many friends have reliably listened
to ideas with curiosity and kindness, and I especially want to point to
Selma Erhardt, Mary Ellen Gerrity, and Gene Caille. I am equally lucky
to have colleagues at City College whose support and goodwill I too of-
ten take for granted. Special thanks go to my English Department Chair
Renata Miller and English Department Administrator Yana Joseph, as
well as to Rosaymi Santos, Paul Oppenheimer, András Kiséry, Mikhal
Dekel, Doris Barkin, and especially Dan Gustafson. I also want to ac-
knowledge the members of a seminar on Migration sponsored by the
City College Rifkind Center and led by Mikhal Dekel. My gratitude also
goes to Evelyn Bodden and the Interlibrary Loan Department staff at the
City College Cohen Library for once again helping me locate materials
with inordinate speed and regular ingenuity.
A 2016 Folger Shakespeare Library Colloquium on Early M odern
Theatres of Learning brought me into contact with extraordinary
scholars from across the world, and I remain grateful to Margaret Ezell