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The first full-length study of how the concept of the "girl" 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 "girl" 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 "roaring girls" 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 Features: * Charts the emergence of the word "girl" 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