Juliet

In her new book “The Diva’s Gift to the Shakespearean Stage,” Pamela Allen Brown explores the considerable impact of Italian divas on Shakespeare and other English playwrights. This excerpt looks at the character of Juliet.

The word “girl” means different things to us today than it meant in the Middle Ages, and Shakespeare was writing at a time when that meaning was changing, as Deanne Williams of York University in Toronto explains on a recent episode…