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  1. Home
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  3. The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines
  • Cited by 1
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
November 2010
Print publication year:
2009
First published in:
1851
Online ISBN:
9780511701511
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511701511
Subjects:
Literature, Renaissance and Early Modern Literature, English Literature: General Interest
Series:
Cambridge Library Collection - Literary Studies
Information

Book description

Mary Cowden Clarke (1809–98) was the daughter of the publisher Vincent Novello. She produced a complete concordance to Shakespeare's works in 1845, and her fascination with the plays led to her publishing in 1850 a series of imaginative accounts of the girlhood of some of his heroines. Her motive was 'to imagine the possible circumstances and influences of scene, event, and associate, surrounding the infant life of his heroines, which might have conduced to originate and foster those germs of character recognised in their maturity as by him developed; to conjecture what might have been the first imperfect dawnings of that which he has shown us in the meridian blaze of perfection'. These 'prequels' offer a back-story which is surprising in its subversive interpretation of the plays and especially of the role of the 'hero'. Volume 3 includes the stories of Beatrice and Hero.

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