Shakespeare Gender Roles

William Shakespeare is a renowned poet, playwright and actor. Many believe that he was the most zealous writer in the English language and also the most significant playwright in history. Shakespeare wrote his plays for an assorted audience, he manipulated complex and universal themes such as patriarchy and gender roles while placing emphasis on women’s quest for power, equality, happiness and identity. Shakespeare embarked on issues that everyone could relate to, hence, his stylistic techniques appeal to an extensive audience. Shakespeare wrote for an “audience encompassing almost an entire social spectrum of his time- from the monarch to the working class citizens who could occasionally just afford a penny to see the play” (Anderson 28). In his plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear, Shakespeare elucidates the impediments of human life and relationships, induced by the manifestation of the male pursuit to maintain power and dominance over the female gender. Shakespeare interrogates patriarchy and gender roles through his interrogation of power struggle and gender ambiguity, this is made clear through his use of multifaceted plot and intricate characterization.

During the Elizabethan Era, male dominance and masculinity ruled the society. Females where expected to conform and accept male power, without expressing dissatisfaction with such authority. Failure to do so would often result in harsh punishment for the female. For men, their family existence was one of authority and control, men were expected to provide for their families and make all decisions concerning the interests of their wives and children. Females were solely dependent on their husbands for support while single females relied on their families for suppo...

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...’s double standards as it relates to females perusing their love interest versus males’ who peruse females. This can be compared to the seizure of Hippolyta by Theseus.

Although the women in Shakespeare’s time where not given the opportunity for their voices to be heard, Shakespeare gave them a voice through the production of his plays. In both A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear, Shakespeare highlights the ways in which male superiority impedes with the lives of females, he also queries and mocks the accepted patterns of prescribed feminine and masculine behaviors. “While female characters such as Regan and Goneril take on masculine characteristics and King Lear takes on feminine characteristics, Shakespeare demonstrates that men and women are forever searching for a balance between their gender roles, and that this can sometimes be corrupted by power” (Ink).