Consent in Shakespeare’s Classical Mediterranean: Women Speak Truth to Power

Consent in Shakespeare’s Classical Mediterranean fills a gap in knowledge about how female-identified, gender-fluid, and non-binary characters made choices about intimacy, engagement, and marriage in Shakespeare’s classical Mediterranean plays.

This classical sequel explores how female-identified, gender-fluid, and non-binary characters accessed agency in Shakespeare’s Mediterranean plays set in classical Troy, Athens, Thebes, Antioch, Ephesus, Mytilene, the North African Pentapolis, Tarsus, Egypt, Rome, Antium, Britain, Sardis, Philippi, Sicily, greater Bohemia, and the Balkan region. Through the lens of sources from Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, and the Maghrib, Shakespeare’s heroines and their supporters may have initially appeared to conform to Early Modern contexts, but the diverse backgrounds of female-identified, gender-fluid, and non-binary characters impacted the right to consent to friendship, affection, betrothal, and marriage in the classical Mediterranean. By focusing on perspective views about female-identified, gender-fluid, and non-binary characters in and around Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, and the Maghreb, classical realities collide with Early Modern preconceptions and misconceptions to reveal commonalities and differences in the lived experiences of female-identified and non-binary royalty, nobility, servants, enslaved peoples, matchmakers, courtesans, sex workers, madams, herbalists, tailors, and merchants.

This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in Theatre, Middle East Studies, Asian Studies, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, African and Maghrib Studies, and Social Justice Studies.

Artemis Preeshl is a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Theatre and professional director, actor, dialect and intimacy coach, and choreographer who has worked at Tulane University, Loyola University New Orleans, Elon University, the University of West Georgia, Utah State University, Buena Vista University, the Faculty of Creative and Artistic Technology at Universiti Teknologi MARA in Malaysia, and Kalakshetra Foundation, the University of Madras, and Central University of Tamil Nadu in India. She is the Director of the Center for Teaching, Innovation, and Research at Adams State University.