Gender, Evolution, and Adaptation in Shakespeare’s Plays By Lauren Chochinov   Heather Russell-Smith gender-occupies the role of Hamlet, 2019 (photo by Leif Norman)   During Shakespeare’s lifetime, women were famously not allowed to act on stage. This is not to say that women didn’t act at all – there are records of aristocratic women performing in private pantomimes, for example – but women could not be paid actors in public venues. Curiously, no law existed that outright banned women from public performance. Yet it was a rule socially enforced throughout the period. This is, perhaps, due to the homosocial environs
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