As influenced by the witches, Macbeth allows them to manipulate him with their power. This is continually shown throughout the play as Macbeth is adamant to kill King Duncan by the witches telling him he will be King. The witches may have only said this to gain high hopes from Macbeth, yet Macbeth takes this as confirmation and
Sycorax was the mother of Caliban, Prospero’s deformed half-human slave, and was a powerful witch who had been banished to the island. Caliban is greatly influenced by Sycorax; he believes that as the island belonged to Sycorax it should rightfully belong to him now, through decent. This causes much conflict between Caliban and Prospero, and eventually leads to him plotting with Stephano and Trinculo to kill Prospero, in order to take control of the island. Sycorax’s legacy is reflected through Caliban who constantly talks about her and her power. In this way, her influence also extends over Prospero.
Despite all these changes, the free- thinking, independent woman has proved to be a durable stereotype. The concept of the disobedient women that opposed any male authority was worked into many different adaptations of the original play and used in other texts. Even though slightly changed and modified through the ages to relate to different societies, the Kate character has survived. The “shrew” idea became a major challenge for any actress offered the role of Shakespeare's Kate and attempt to develop it in an appealing way to the audience of their time. The word shrew as used in the concept of Shakespeare's original play, means a woman with a violent, scolding, or nagging temperament (TCM, fact sheet).
Unsex Me Here In her essay Shakespeare’s Sister, Virginia Woolf analyzes the reasons behind the lack of female authors in Elizabethan England despite it being such a prominent time for literature. She discovers that, according to the history books, women at the time had very little rights and were tragically mistreated members of society. On the contrary, the women pictured in the works of art at the time were smart and cunning, or at the very least had strong, influential personalities. One of these women being Lady Macbeth from The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Woolf interprets the contrast between the women in fiction and the real women of the period as evidence that the famous characters are nothing but impossibilities imagined upon by men.
This comes as no surprise, because if you aren't going to write your own ideas, what is the significance of writing at all? Shakespeare- for whatever reasons- thinks of women as how they are portrayed in his plays. He considers them weak, frail, un-able to function for themselves without the help of a man, and less deserving of the prosperities that it means to be human. This is obviously shown when Hamlet shows his own disdain for woman kind by saying, "fragility thy name is woman (p.29)!" in those five words, hamlet basically sums it up.
A Gender Criticism of Shakespeare’s Anthony & Cleopatra During Elizabethan times woman were viewed only as the lesser gender. They did not have any power, they also took the submissive role in the relationship, and did just as their would say. Even with a Queen that herself refused to marry due possibly to refusal to lose her throne to her husband who would be King they still were view this way. Men were always the lead in a relationship and always had the power. Although Anthony in Shakespeare’s Anthony & Cleopatra does undergo a gender role reversal, it is Cleopatra’s role reversal that make her one of the most fascinating female characters in the Shakespearean canon and Anthony & Cleopatra one of the most complex Shakespearean plays.
A Woman’s Portrayal in “To the Troops at Tilbury”, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, and The Tragedy of Mariam As the Renaissance began, we find that, much like the ancient days, women gain and then lose rights as the historical and political faces of Europe change. Even during Queen Elizabeth’s rule, as the de facto King of England, she was forced to uphold the standards given to a woman during the time. However, as we see in her speech “To the Troops at Tilbury” Queen Elizabeth also blurred the lines of masculinity and femininity as she to the role of a true king and all the masculine responsibility and strength that came with the title. As a male writer Shakespeare was able to quietly ask for change in society’s view of women in his satirical sonnet 130. Throughout the entire sonnet he mocks the ideas of women’s perfection in the Renaissance, and shows that no woman is perfect.
One of the persistent topics of interest in the field of Shakespeare studies is that which considers the various roles that women play in the bard’s comedies. Literary and historical scholars affirm that women did not enjoy political, economic, or social parity with men during Shakespeare’s time and this historical reality is important to keep in mind when analyzing the variety of female characters in the plays of Shakespeare. In this Shakespearean society, it was men who held exclusively the official posts of authority and power, and men who possessed the agency and influence to direct the outcome of events. Nevertheless, there is a curious trend in many of Shakespeare’s plays: many of Shakespeare’s female characters exercise a rather great deal of subtle forms of power and influence, and often do so in unusual and even subversive ways that challenge traditional gender roles. Some of the most interesting female characters in Shakespeare’s oeuvre are Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Viola and Olivia in Twelfth Night, and Gertrude, the Queen of Denmark and Hamlet’s mother, in Hamlet.
Ironically, nowadays some of the most interesting work on gender is happening in the Early Modern specialties. How would you characterize the ways in which the figure of Ophelia now works as a cultural trope? How do you think your play has added to the discursive resonances around Ophelia? Ophelia is the stereotypical female victim. If you look closely at Shakespeare's play she is a girl neglected by all who should hold some responsibility for her: her father, her brother, her boyfriend and the court.
William Shakespeare, although often accused of chauvinism, broke the norms and expectations of an otherwise sexist era and developed some of the strongest female characters in theatre’s history, thus establishing matriarchs that would later provide examples for the ideals of the feminist movement. Shakespeare’s time, more broadly defined at the Elizabethan era, was bleak for women. Even though Queen Elizabeth I was unmarried, powerful, and highly educated, the society did not heed her example and regard the rest of the female population accordingly. The Queen was an anomaly; most other women were fragile and dependent, not allowed to fend for themselves even if they desired to do so. Women were regarded as inferior.