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  • Unless To Spy My Shadow in the Sun
  • Katy Didden (bio)

after watching an all-male production of Richard iii

Pretend you’re Anne.Pretend you are a manwho plays an Annewho spits into the faceof Gloucester.Can a man expandwhat we know of Anne?Take our standards —failing the ideal, hemakes it more unrealthat Anne believesa wasting grief has made herbeautiful. Yet see howhe-as-she demandsour sympathy, provingman understandsAnne’s suffering.It’s hard to tell what to pity —did Anne fall for [End Page 25] the love-struck manthat Richard played,the version of herselfhe said he saw,or just for Richard?And if we’re willing to believewhen a man plays a manplaying a man in lovewith a man-as-Anne,aren’t we, in some sense,already Anne?Doomed like she wasto love the damnedbecause we believein the man insidethe man, and that insideevery man’s an Anne. [End Page 26]

Katy Didden

Katy Didden is the author of The Glacier’s Wake (Pleiades Press, 2013). A former Hodder fellow at Princeton University, she is currently an assistant professor at Ball State University.

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