Marianne Novy's Shakespeare and Feminist Theory stands as part of a series on Shakespeare and Theory, edited by Evelyn Gajowski. Topics range broadly, from ecocriticism, to economics, to the posthuman. Gajowski notes that each volume is designed to define and explain each theory in clear detail; to introduce key terms, practitioners, and trajectories; to trace intersections between the theory's concerns and other societal circumstances; to establish the theory's role in Shakespeare studies; and to provide resources for further investigation (ix). Primarily envisioned as a pedagogical tool and an aid for critical reflection, these books, including Novy's, condense significant complex thought and argument into valuable introductions to the theories that have shaped Shakespearean scholarship over the past several decades.

Novy's prose is so clear and accessible that some readers who are new to this subject may not recognize that many of the arguments she presents so cogently, such as French feminism and psychoanalytic criticism, came across initially as complicated and hard to decipher. Novy, however, distills these often dense presentations into paradigms and examples that reflect their sources accurately while offering the kind of contextualization that will help guide her readers. Her linguistic precision and the deceptive simplicity of her chapter titles (“Likeness and Difference,” “Desire,” “Marriage,” “Motherhood,” “Language,” “Between Women,” and “Work”) belie her facility with extracting the core premises of these theoretical positions in order to place them in eloquent and illuminating dialogues. Her introduction of the terms underlying “likeness and difference,” for instance, draws from a range of diversely important female voices, such as Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Carol Gilligan, and Susan Griffin (14), in order to discuss the alternative perspective offered by what she terms “equality (or humanist) feminism” and “difference (or gynocentric) feminism” (14). In this discussion, she raises pertinent issues such as gendered staging practices in Shakespeare's time and the influence of early modern political circumstances on the perspectives offered by playwright and audiences. As part of her exploration of these topics, she introduces innumerable relevant ideas presented by significant Shakespearean scholars, such as Lisa Jardine, Mario DiGangi, Stephen Greenblatt, and Dympna Callaghan (15). Inevitably, the author condenses the works of these writers significantly, but provides sufficient information to guide her readers to the texts most congruent with their interests. While it seems likely that those most invested in these arguments will find such summaries reductive, Novy is surprisingly adept at synthesizing many lengthy arguments into the limited space available in a volume of this kind.

There are many useful sections in this book, but Novy's discussion of “Class: Ladies, Companions, Maids, Prostitutes” offers a particularly valuable overview of the relationships between women in Shakespeare's plays, which often confuse or disorient readers. As Novy notes, the categories referenced in these texts are often unclear in a modern context: “Many of Shakespeare's maidservants, such as Maria and Emilia, are ladies-in-waiting, also referred to as companions, a relationship in which the degree of subordination is often ambiguous, but the sharing of confidences is often dramatically marked” (130). After describing the kinds of interactions commonly occurring between such women in the plays, Novy further elaborates on a point that could be overlooked by typical readers: “Shakespearean plays that include women of markedly different classes who are not mistress and maid to each other often keep them apart” (133). She also reminds audiences that class distinctions are not always definitively delineated in these dramas, noting, for example, “As Michael Neill points out, there is no clear evidence that Bianca is actually a prostitute or a courtesan” (136). Class remains a slippery concept in this period; however, its significance within feminist theory and its centrality within early modern texts make this discussion and its contiguous exploration of women and race particularly valuable.

The compression of texts inevitably leads to some confusions, such as the unexplained reference to Titania's purported pregnancy in A Midsummer Night's Dream (126). Nonetheless, Novy offers an accounting of the subject that will prove useful to those wishing to gain an overview of this important topic.