Sabine Mollenhauer: Die Repräsentation von Geschlechterrollen in W. Shakespeares Dramen. Der Beitrag moralischdidaktischer Traktate in der elisabethanischen und jakobäischen Zeit

This study analyzes the representation of gender in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, comparing Shakespeare’s drama with the views expounded in contemporary treatises. Generally, as Mollenhauer argues, treatises express a narrowly moral and normative view while drama tends to take a more open and flexible approach. In terms of method, the author takes her cue from New Historicism, more precisely the work of Stephen Greenblatt. In chapter 2, after the introduction, she gives an account of this approach with a focus on such terms as ‘self-fashioning’ and the ‘circulation of social energy’. The first analytical chapter (ch. 3), “Männerwelten in der englischen Renaissance”, argues that early modern culture is androcentric and patriarchal. Treatises by such authors as Roger Ascham, Richard Brathwaite or Henry Peacham show that male self-fashioning, particularly the fashioning of the gentleman, was a contemporary concern – a concern also reflected in Shakespeare’s drama by such figures as Orlando in As You Like It, Lucentio in The Taming of the Shrew or Polonius in Hamlet. Importantly, in drama, male dominance is often threatened by the stereotype of the cuckold as the victim of female treachery and sexual infidelity. Another central theme in the discourse of masculinity is homoeroticism, which, unlike in contemporary drama, is strictly condemned in treatises because it undermines received views on the divine order of things. Drama thus shows masculinity to be anxious and contested: “Der Mann der englischen Renaissance befand sich in einem permanenten Kampf um die Anerkennung und die Stabilisierung der eigenen Persönlichkeit.” (p. 170)