Shakespeare's Women in Love

In Shakespeare’s Women in Love, Alice Griffin presents an original, lively, in-depth view of Shakespeare’s women – and their men – as they experience that most important of human emotions: love. A guide and companion for the reader and theatergoer, including students and teachers, this volume focuses on overlooked or misinterpreted women characters and provides fresh insights into them and their lovers in courtship, marriage and relationships.

Shakespeare’s depiction of the major stages of love, Griffin discovers, was and is a conduct-book, offering solutions for such problems as parental disapproval and inconstancy in courtship, and in marriage, those of disillusionment, infidelity, friend vs. spouse, and domination vs. mutuality. A relationship as the Bard sees it can be cynical, self-serving or fulfilling.

Juxtaposing women’s and men’s behavior in facing problems of love, Griffin offers new interpretations of such tragic figures as Desdemona and Lady Macbeth, and introduces in depth some less familiar heroines of the romances, like Helena and Imogen.

Entertaining and enlightening, Shakespeare’s Women in Love makes a significant contribution to the appreciation and enjoyment of Shakespeare’s plays.