Queen Goneril - by Erin Shields (Paperback)

About the Book

"Set seven years before King Lear, Queen Goneril centres the struggles of Lear's daughters as they negotiate patriarchal systems built to keep them relegated to the sidelines. In Goneril, we find a natural-born leader. In Regan, a boundary pusher. And in Cordelia, a reluctant peacekeeper. As the three work to dismantle their individual constraints, a storm of inner reckoning begins to brew that reflects their deepest yearnings and mirrors our contemporary world. Whip smart and wide awake, Queen Goneril is another deliciously disruptive adaptation from Erin Shields. In her signature revisionist style, Shields investigates some of our most urgent feminist issues by reimagining the roles of women in classic texts--shifting them from subjects, objects, or witnesses to central figures of both their own lives and the story's narrative. Queen Goneril lays bare the challenges of maintaining authenticity while achieving authority--how we retain a strong sense of self while twisting around systems meant to make us play small. A compelling story about complicated characters struggling--the way we all struggle--to find their place in this world."--

Book Synopsis

Set seven years before King Lear, Queen Goneril centres the struggles of Lear's daughters as they negotiate patriarchal systems built to keep them relegated to the sidelines. In Goneril, we find a natural-born leader. In Regan, a boundary pusher. And in Cordelia, a reluctant peacekeeper. As the three work to dismantle their individual constraints, a storm of inner reckoning begins to brew that reflects their deepest yearnings and mirrors our contemporary world.

Whip smart and wide awake, Queen Goneril is another deliciously disruptive adaptation from Erin Shields. In her signature revisionist style, Shields investigates some of our most urgent feminist issues by reimagining the roles of women in classic texts--shifting them from subjects, objects, or witnesses to central figures of both their own lives and the story's narrative. Queen Goneril lays bare the challenges of maintaining authenticity while achieving authority--how we retain a strong sense of self while twisting around systems meant to make us play small. A compelling story about complicated characters struggling--the way we all struggle--to find their place in this world.

Review Quotes

"Queen Goneril stays credible and remains compelling to its conclusion--and, thankfully, has its own enjoyable in-between dramatic voice; nothing too mock-Shakespearean, but unafraid to sample and remix his words." --J. Kelly Nestruck, The Globe and Mail

About the Author

Erin Shields is a Canadian playwright based in Toronto. Much of her work highlights the negation or misrepresentation of women in classical texts by adapting these stories through a feminist lens for a contemporary audience. Erin has won numerous awards for her work including the Governor General's Literary Award for If We Were Birds and the Quebec Writers Federation Prize for Paradise Lost and The Millennial Malcontent. Other plays include Jane Eyre (Citadel Theatre), Piaf/Dietrich (Mirvish Productions/Segal Centre), Beautiful Man (Factory Theatre), The Lady from the Sea (Shaw Festival), and Instant (Geordie Theatre/YPT).