Introduction

Abstract

The special issue entitled “Shakespeare and Women: Voices and Silences” seeks to cast further light on the definitions and interrelations of female voices and silences, subjectivity and objectivity, speech and non-speech, adding to the ongoing feminist debate on these topics. The papers collected in this issue focus not only on women’s silent voices and voiced silences but also on women ventriloquized by Shakespeare and ‘Shakespeares’ ventriloquized by women. In this introduction, we situate the special issue within feminist Shakespeare scholarship and provide an overview of the articles and of the methodological approached employed.