THE UNDEFINED SETTING. SPACE AND GENDER IN SHAKESPEARE’S CHRONICLE PLAYS
THE UNDEFINED SETTING. SPACE AND GENDER IN SHAKESPEARE’S CHRONICLE PLAYS

Summary/Abstract: The paper starts from the cultural and feminist theories which impose an image of early modern space projections as strictly segregated in terms of gender. Thus, while the public space is masculine, with very few exceptions, and populated with male professions and occupations, the private, domestic space is traditionally feminine gendered , characterized by intimacy and conviviality. Conventionally, this observation is true, but I argue that, in the case of Shakespeare’s historical plays, the usual gender-genre continuum, highly applicable in the reading of the comedies and romances, is interrupted. Here, space, in the usual historical settings, is permeated with a cross-gender contamination. If, in Henry V or Richard III, the settings are presented consecutively (the all-male battlefield and then the mixed gender royal palace, respectively, the palace and then the battlefield), in King John, the battle and the siege of Angiers is represented symbolically not only by the single combat between male soldiers, but also as the verbal duel between two queens.

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