Description
Book SynopsisLabors Lost offers a fascinating and wide-ranging account of working women's behind-the-scenes and hitherto unacknowledged contributions to theatrical production in Shakespeare's time.
Trade Review"This is a very exciting book. Its chief claim, more than amply substantiated, is that women played a much more active role in the production of early modern theater than prior scholarship has asserted.
Labors Lost offers a rich and nuanced picture of the many different ways in which women took part in the early modern theatrical world." * Jean E. Howard, Columbia University *
"Long before they were regularly seen on stage, women were of crucial importance to the commercial theater behind the scenes. In
Labors Lost, Natasha Korda argues that female labor was central to the development of Elizabethan and Jacobean theater. . . . Korda evidently relishes the abundance and variety of her subject, using economic and commercial history as a lively and even lyrical approach. . . . Her subtle readings show that women's role in commercial theater was not just an issue behind the scenes, but one which was regularly dramatized by (all-male) casts on stage." *
TLS *
Table of ContentsNote on Spelling and Dates
Prologue
Chapter 1. Labors Lost
Chapter 2. Dame Usury
Chapter 3. Froes and Rebatos
Chapter 4. Cries and Oysterwives
Chapter 5. False Wares
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
