SOURCE: "Playing the Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism and Shakespearean Performance," in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, edited by Sue-Ellen Case, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990, pp. 196-206.

In the following essay, Helms provides a feminist critique of Shakespeare's female roles in performance and envisions "a theatre where patriarchal representations of femininity can be transformed into roles for living women. "

Feminist film theorists have revealed ways cinematic representation constructs the female as the object of the male spectator's gaze.¹ Their analyses have raised parallel questions for theatrical and specifically Shakespearean representation: to what extent and through what strategies does Shakespearean performance also construct female characters for the spectator's eye, and, since Shakespearean theatre is as verbal as it is visual, for the auditor's ear? Kathleen McLuskie argues that the representational strategies of the playwright she calls "the patriarchal bard," like cinematic cues, "resist feminist manipulation by denying...