Includes bibliographical references (pages 158-200) and index.
Contents
'Why should he call her whore?': defamation and Desdemona's case -- 'No offence i' th' world': unlawfull marriage in Hamlet -- Cultural confusion and Shakespeare's learned heroines: 'These are old paradoxes' -- Twins and travesties: gender, dependency and sexual availability in Twelfth night -- Reading and the technology of textual affect: Erasmus's familiar letters and Shakespeare's King Lear -- Alien intelligence: Mercantile exchange and knowledge transactions in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta -- Companionate marriage versus male friendship: Anxiety for the lineal family in Jacobean drama -- Unpicking the tapestry: the scholar of women's history as Penelope among her suitors -- What happens in Hamlet?