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Shakespeare & Beyond

Studying early modern women—in Shakespeare's plays and in his time

Early modern women reading
Early modern women reading

The roles of early modern women in Shakespeare’s time—both the fictional characters in his plays and the real-life women of his era—have been central to many projects created by Georgianna Ziegler, Louis B. Thalheimer Associate Librarian and Head of Reference Emerita.

Ziegler, who is also a co-founder of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, curated several Folger exhibitions, including a number focused on women. (Most recently, she also curated the America’s Shakespeare exhibition; it opened Nov. 17 in Los Angeles as America’s Shakespeare: The Bard Goes West.)

To talk with Ziegler about some of the exhibitions, we started with her first Folger exhibition, the strikingly titled Shakespeare’s Unruly Women. It wove together Shakespeare’s often dynamic female characters—who were reflective of his time—and the Victorian notions of womanhood that cast them in a very different light.