The Fair Maid of the West, or a Girl Worth Gold, Part I by Thomas Heywood. Play readaloud, recommended by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
a_t_rain. I was a bit nervous doing this after As You Like It because Shakespeare is a hard act to follow! And yes, it's not nearly as good, and reactions were mixed: "this is totally groundling bait", "well, I must be a groundling, then!" but it was still a fun romp, and interesting to see what the popular entertainment of Shakespeare's time was like. I am now wishing that the Shakespearean Genres class I took in college had had more cross-dressing plays (IIRC it just had the bit in Merchant of Venice and nothing else) -- it's really cool how the Elizabethan era was a time when strong, independent, sometimes gender-bending female characters were fashionable. (Apart from Shakespeare, we've done this and The Roaring Girl, and I'm eyeing John Lyly's Gallathea for the future.)
Dune, Frank Herbert. Still rereading this, most of the way through. Interesting how much attention Herbert pays to his female characters -- there's a certain amount of gender essentialism, but the women get to be people and are not depicted in a particularly male gaze-y way (even if I'm not sure what "tortured by the winds of puberty" even means).
a_t_rain. I was a bit nervous doing this after As You Like It because Shakespeare is a hard act to follow! And yes, it's not nearly as good, and reactions were mixed: "this is totally groundling bait", "well, I must be a groundling, then!" but it was still a fun romp, and interesting to see what the popular entertainment of Shakespeare's time was like. I am now wishing that the Shakespearean Genres class I took in college had had more cross-dressing plays (IIRC it just had the bit in Merchant of Venice and nothing else) -- it's really cool how the Elizabethan era was a time when strong, independent, sometimes gender-bending female characters were fashionable. (Apart from Shakespeare, we've done this and The Roaring Girl, and I'm eyeing John Lyly's Gallathea for the future.)Dune, Frank Herbert. Still rereading this, most of the way through. Interesting how much attention Herbert pays to his female characters -- there's a certain amount of gender essentialism, but the women get to be people and are not depicted in a particularly male gaze-y way (even if I'm not sure what "tortured by the winds of puberty" even means).