Women's history

Ramie Targoff explores the lives and works of Mary Sidney, Aemelia Lanyer, Anne Clifford, and Elizabeth Cary in her new book, Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance.

English women didn’t act on London’s professional stages until the 1660s. But Pamela Allen Brown argues that despite this, star actresses from Italy altered both plays and playing in a process that began in the 1570s, when commedia dell’arte troupes first set foot in London.

Over the centuries there have been hundreds of editions of Shakespeare’s plays: Small, inexpensive schoolbook copies of individual plays, massive, leatherbound editions of the complete works, and everything in between. At some point, every one of those…

Naomi Miller’s novel Imperfect Alchemist is about one of early modern England’s most significant literary figures: poet, playwright, translator, and scientist Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke.

Think there were no women onstage in Shakespeare’s time? Think again. Scholar Clare McManus tells us where and how women performed in early modern Europe: emerging from mechanical seashells in elaborate court masques, dancing across tightropes, and on the stages of the European Continent.

What was everyday life like for women throughout Tudor society? Elizabeth Norton’s social history The Hidden Lives of Tudor Women introduces us not only to the restrictions, but also to some of the surprising freedoms.