How does one know a whore is a whore? Upon what terms, standards, interpretive logics, and material practices does such knowledge depend? In Shakespeare and the Making of English Whoredom, Stephen Spiess pursues these questions and, in so doing, discovers the extraordinary cultural labor necessary to produce and sustain the fiction of the “whore” as a fixed, coherent, and readily apprehensible category of sexual knowledge. This work, he shows, unfolds across a variety of historica...

Shakespeare Studies is an annual peer-reviewed volume featuring work of performance scholars, literary critics and cultural historians. The journal focuses primarily on Shakespeare and his contemporaries but embraces theoretical and historical studies of socio-political, intellectual and artistic contexts that extend well beyond the early modern English theatrical milieu. In addition to articles, Shakespeare Studies offers unique opportunities for extended intellectual ex...