My chapter begins with a survey of the Press’ response to Fiona Shaw’s playing the king in Deborah Warner’s 1995 production of Richard II. Shaw’s performance was met with general howls of derision, it was, according to the critic at The Independent, ‘Gimmick casting … the sort of thing you might expect to see at the end of term in a boarding school’. However, I argue that the British theatre practice of re-gendering Shakespeare entered contemporary performance history with Shaw’s King Richard.
It is a bold claim, but one that can be tested in Deborah Warner’s own subsequent career. Fast forward to 2016 and Warner was once again directing a centrally cast woman – this time Glenda Jackson – in King Lear. Maxine Peake, Harriet Walter, Michelle Terry and Tamsin Greig (among others) were playing Shakespeare’s traditionally male roles. Twenty years after Shaw’s Richard, female cross-gender casting in Shakespeare was no longer assumed to be gimmickry but had become standard practice.