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The role of the women in Shakespeare
The role of the women in Shakespeare
The role of the women in Shakespeare
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Few endeavors would appear as arduous and maddening to a responsible scholar as a biography of Shakespeare's wife, Ann Hathaway. We have almost no solid facts about Mrs. Shakespeare's life, and we know almost nothing about the Shakespeares' marriage. We know that the playwright could have brought his wife to live with him in London and did not, though we don't know how often he made the three-day trip back to Stratford. We know that in his will, he left his wife only his "second-best bed."
From this slender evidence, along with liberal and dubious readings of the plays and sonnets, scholars have created a robust portrait of the Shakespeares' unhappy domestic life - a "marriage of evil auspices," as one scholar put it. Rather than inhibiting biographers, the lack of information seems to have freed many of them to project their own fantasies onto the relationship. The prevailing image of Ann Hathaway is that of an illiterate seductress who beguiled the young Shakespeare, conceived a child and ensnared him in a loveless union.
Germaine Greer's task in her ingenious new book, "Shakespeare's Wife," is to expose the construction of this fantasy, tracing its evolution from early biographers like Thomas de Quincey through the work of respected modern scholars like Stephen Greenblatt. "The Shakespeare wallahs," she writes, "have succeeded in creating a Bard in their own likeness, that is to say, incapable of relating to women."
After sifting through records of lives that ran parallel to the young Shakespeares', Greer contends that in their time and place there was nothing unusual in a baby's being born six months after a marriage. She also demonstrates that an unmarried woman in her mid-20s would not have been considered exceptional or desperate. Ann Hathaway, Greer argues, was likely to be literate, and given the relative standing of their families in Warwickshire, she may very well have been considered a more desirable match than her husband.
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Though generally appreciative, several Shakespeare scholars have found Greer's approach "stridently . . . combative" and full of "scattergun assaults." But for those accustomed to Greer's feminist provocations, "Shakespeare's Wife" will seem extremely sober and restrained. Rarely have the possibilities of the conditional tense been so fully exploited: the entire book is written in elaborately tentative lines like "she may have permitted herself the odd grim little smile" and "he might have read them out to her.
The “domestic” scenes of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part I ground the battles, plots, and displays of knavery. The women—Lady Percy and Lady Mortimer—give the actions of territorial, cockfighting men consequence. In II.iv, we see Hotspur at home with his playful wife, and we can for a moment forget his arrogance and excessive language as he assumes the mantle of husband and even shows a slight bent toward uxoriousness. Kate leads the activity in the scene, however, and she is the one who closes it; by an examination of the play between the Percys, we see that Kate is a reflection of her husband and that she likewise reflects—but does not mimic or represent—his fate at the play’s end.
Many readers feel the tendency to compare Aphra Behn's Oroonoko to William Shakespeare's Othello. Indeed they have many features in common, such as wives executed by husbands, conflicts between white and black characters, deceived heroes, the absolute vulnerability of women, etc. Both works stage male characters at both ends of their conflicts. In Othello, the tragic hero is Othello, and the villain is Iago. In Oroonoko, the hero is Oroonoko, the vice of the first part is the old king, and the second part white men in the colony. In contrast to their husbands, both heroines—Desdemona and Imoinda—seem more like "function characters" who are merely trapped in their husband's fates, occasionally becoming some motivation of their husbands (like Desdemona is Othello's motivation to rage, Imoinda's pregnancy drives Oroonoko restless to escape). While Shakespeare and Behn put much effort in moulding them, to many readers they are merely "perfect wives". This paper aims to argue that, Desdemona and Imoinda's perfect wifehood may be the product of compliance to male-dominated societies, where women are
Shakespeare Alive!. Bantam, 1988. p. 85-102. “Love and Marriage.” Life in Elizabethan England.
Kemp, Theresa D. Women in the Age of Shakespeare. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2009. Print.
... comedies rather than tragedies in their source form the original characters from the source plays are revealed. Strong, ‘masculine’ women of the source are only revealed through the intertextuality of genre and the reassigned direct quotes from Shakespeare’s iconic plays. The feminist perspective of Shakespeare’s plays, which was there all along, could only be revealed by the strong use of intertextuality in MacDonald’s play. MacDonald relies on the iconic meta-theatre and intertextuality to magnify the feminist perspective within the Shakespearean plays. When turned in upon itself, Shakespeare’s plays reveal their distinct feminist perspective that could not be uncovered without the extensive and brilliant use of intertextuality such as that of Ann Marie MacDonald. Therefore the metatheatre’s intertextuality reinforces and supports the traits of the feminine.
“William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was and English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s preeminent dramatist” (vodppl.upm.edu 2). He was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon, UK, he also passed away in his hometown. “When Shakespeare died in 1616 the event was barely noticed” (Epstein 7). “Shakespeare’s family was initially prosperous but began having financial difficulties in the 1570’s” (Allen 325). “Shakespeare gained his education by attending the local grammar school, King’s New School, where the curriculum stressed a classic education of Greek mythology and roman comedy”(shakespeareinamericancomunites.org 1). He never carried his educational career to a higher level as in a university. “William Shakespeare was not recognized as an actor, poet, and playwright until 1592” (Allen 346).
The heart of many of Shakespeare’s works is love and tumultuous relationships. It is not a difficult task to attempt to analyze the relationships of his protagonists. Many of his characters would fit into at least one of the “love-styles” presented by John Alan Lee. There are many different types of relationships and John Alan Lee aims to categorize them, or breaking them down into “different colors,” (Lee, 40). The love-styles can be applied to many relationships such as those in the works of Shakespeare. The love styles that John Alan Lee describes can also determine the successfulness of a relationship. He fits the love styles into a diagram and the location of one style of lover in relation to another can cause a relationship to succeed or fail. This phenomenon is known as the “theory of proximity” (Lee). Two people who share the same love style or who are close to each other on the diagram have a better chance at a successful relationship.
Throughout the historical literary periods, many writers underrepresented and undervalued the role of women in society, even more, they did not choose to yield the benefits of the numerous uses of the female character concerning the roles which women could accomplish as plot devices and literary tools. William Shakespeare was one playwright who found several uses for female characters in his works. Despite the fact that in Shakespeare's history play, Richard II, he did not use women in order to implement the facts regarding the historical events. Instead, he focused the use of women roles by making it clear that female characters significantly enriched the literary and theatrical facets of his work. Furthermore in Shakespeare’s history play, King Richard II, many critics have debated the role that women play, especially the queen. One of the arguments is that Shakespeare uses the queen’s role as every women’s role to show domestic life and emotion. Jo McMurtry explains the role of all women in his book, Understanding Shakespeare’s England A Companion for the American Reader, he states, “Women were seen, legally and socially, as wives. Marriage was a permanent state” (5). McMurtry argues that every woman’s role in the Elizabethan society is understood to be a legal permanent state that is socially correct as wives and mothers. Other critics believe that the role of the queen was to soften King Richard II’s personality for the nobles and commoners opinion of him. Shakespeare gives the queen only a few speaking scenes with limited lines in Acts two, four, and five through-out the play. Also, she is mentioned only a few times by several other of the characters of the play and is in multiple scenes wit...
What is so interesting about Shakespeare's first play, The Comedy of Errors, are the elements it shares with his last plays. The romances of his final period (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest) all borrowed from the romantic tradition, particularly the Plautine romances. So here, as in the later plays, we have reunions of lost children and parents, husbands and wives; we have adventures and wanderings, and the danger of death (which in this play is not as real to us as it is in the romances). Yet, for all these similarities, the plot of The Comedy of Errors is as simple as the plots of the later plays are complex. It is as though Shakespeare's odyssey through the human psyche in tragedy and comedy brought him back to his beginnings with a sharper sense of yearning, poignancy, and the feeling of loss. But to dismiss this play as merely a simplistic romp through a complicated set of maneuvers is to miss the pure theatrical feast it offers on the stage - the wit and humor of a master wordsmith, the improbability of a plot that sweeps...
Smith, Rebecca. "A Heart Cleft in Twain: The Dilemma of Shakespeare's Gertrude." The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Ed. Carolyn Ruth Swift, Lenz Gayle Greene, and Carol Thomas Neely. 1980. 194-208. Rpt. in Shakespearean Criticism. Ed. Dana Ramel Barnes. Vol. 35. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Nov. 2011.
Neely, Carol Thomas. “Shakespeare’s Women: Historical Facts and Dramatic Representations.” Shakespeare’s Personality. Ed. Norman N. Holland, Sidney Homan, and Bernard J. Paris. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. 116-134.
Shakespearean subtext has been of interest for centuries, to professional scholars and English students and Shakespeare fanatics alike. To most, the subtext is just as important as the writing itself, and this is understandable. Two plays in particular—As You Like It and Twelfth Night—rely significantly on subtext. The audience’s interpretation is based entirely on what is shown to them, including the subtext, and this is on both the playwright’s and the actors’ parts: how it is written, and how it is played. Throughout the ages, implications of homosexual desire have been a matter of dangerous controversy. In the modern world, the gay community is of course more tolerated, and becoming more and more accepted as the struggle for equality continues. In William Shakespeare’s time, there was no such thing as the concept of homosexuality (or sodomy, as it was called back then) being acceptable in any sense—except, perhaps, in comedy. Shakespeare exploits this opportunity quite successfully in the “transvestite comedies” aforementioned, if it is at all indicated by the attention received for the blatant plot twists such as cross-dressing and lovers confused about whom it is that they actually love, and the more subtle, perhaps not even intentional but certainly open-for-interpretation exploration into human nature regarding sexual and/or romantic attraction. Within these themes are distinct similarities and dissimilarities—the former being other women falling in love with the gender-bent characters, and there being happy endings albeit with certain twists; the latter being the specific differences in the relationship dynamic between Antonio and Sebastian in Twelfth Night and everyone else’s dynamics.
Stpetershigh.org.uk, (2014). 'Anne Hathaway' by Carol Ann Duffy. [online] Available at: http://www.stpetershigh.org.uk/DEPARTMENTS/ENGLISH_DEPT/PRUSH/KS5_Resources/Year13A2Resources/Anne_Hathaway_Duffy.html [Accessed 8 May. 2014].
Women Reading Shakespeare 1660-1900, An anthology of criticism, ed. Ann Thompson and Sasha Roberts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 17-18.
Shakespeare, William, Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus. The Norton Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. Print.