Review: "Is She Not He Or He Not She?"

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review: Mark Rylance, Artistic Director of the Globe Theatre, explains this year's Season of Regime Change as focusing on plays by Shakespeare and Marlowe which "explore power and change on three levels: in our states, in our marriages, and in our relationship to the divine." To these notions I would like to add gender relations, as the issues mentioned are highlighted in different productions precisely through an illuminating use of notions of femininity and masculinity. This seems to be most conspicuous in the Globe productions of Shakespeare's Richard II and Richard III, the first staged by the Globe's Men's Company, the latter presented by the Women's Company (introduced on the Globe's stage for the first time).