Shakespeare Play: Female Exclusion In Shakespeare's Plays

anie Osczepinski

Female Exclusion in Shakespeare’s Plays

If William Shakespeare was alive today, he would most likely be considered a “mennist”. In many of his plays, he included a large number of male characters, but only a handful of female characters. If one were to ask someone on the street what female roles were in Shakespeare plays, only handfull would be easily retrieved for most. Of course, those female roles would be the infamous Juliet from Romeo and Juliet, Lady Macbeth from Macbeth, Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing, and possibly Titania from A Midnight’s Summers Dream. Most people cannot think of many more female Shakespearian characters than those few. Although it make sense due to the time period and the fact that only men were allowed to act on stage during Shakespeare’s lifetime, female characters were insignificant even in the plays where their name was in the title of the play. Shakespeare includes a small number of female characters between his plays King Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, and Romeo and Juliet, but only the male characters

There are only three titled female characters, the Duchess of York, the Duchess of Gloucester and the Queen, throughout the entire play, and their roles are not very significant to the plot. The Duchess of Glousester’s husband, who is dead, seems to even be more important in the play than his living widow. While it is true that in Shakespeare’s time, all the actors on stage were men, thus the female characters had to be portrayed in drag and using imagination, but Shakespeare did not seem to have any problems including women as main characters in his other plays, such as Taming of the Shrew and A Midnight’s Summerdream. William Shakespeare appears to believe the women in King Richard II are insignificant, with even the queen, King Richard’s wife, making only a few appearances throughout the