This is the first scholarly study devoted to Shakespeare's girl characters and conceptions of girlhood. It charts the development of Shakespeare's treatment of the girl as a dramatic and literary figure, and explores the impact of Shakespeare's girl characters on the history of early modern girls as performers, patrons, and authors.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Girls Included! 1. Peevish and Perverse 2. Isabelle de France, Child Bride 3. Enter Ofelia playing on a lute 4. Lost Girls 5. A Dancing Princess 6. The Lady and Comus 7. My Lady Rachells book 8. Perpetual Girlhood in The Concealed Fancies Conclusion: Girlhood After Shakespeare's Heroines

Deanne Williams is Associate Professor of English at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her previous books include The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare (2004), Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures, edited with Ananya Jahanara Kabir (2005), and The Afterlife of Ophelia, edited with Kaara Peterson (2012).