The first full-length study of how the concept of the and "girl and " was constructed in sixteenth and seventeenth century literature and drama. The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Sisters argues for a paradigm shift in our current conceptions of the early modern sex-gender system, challenging the widespread assumption that the category of the and "girl and " played little or no role in the construction of gender in early modern English culture. Girl characters appeared in a variety of texts, from female infants in Shakespeare's late romances to little children in Tudor interludes to adult and "roaring girls and " in city comedies. Drawing from a variety of print and manuscript sources, including early modern drama, dictionaries, midwifery manuals, and women's autobiographies, this book argues that girlhood in Shakespeare's England was both a time of life and a form of gender transgression. Key * Charts the emergence of the word and "girl and " into early modern English and its evolution from a gender-neutral term applied to both male and female children to one used only for female individuals * Challenges the misconception that girls were largely absent from English Renaissance literature * Offers a literary history of female child characters in Renaissance drama * Features an examination of how women writers described their own girlhoods