by Dr. Ratan Bhattacharjee
Shakespearian England was a patriarchy when men held the power and women were expected to be obedient and submissive. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1558, Queen Elizabeth famously said, “I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king,” reflecting her desire to establish her strength as a leader. This ever-virgin Queen insisted that she was married to her kingdom and subjects, though the Marriage Question was a key political issue of the era which highlighted the expectation of the society of women in 16th-century England regardless of their role in society or politics. The Scottish reformer John Knox wrote The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women, which attacks female monarchs by arguing that female rule is blasphemous.
The vitriolic diatribe against female authority, however, did not have much impact on the plays of Shakespeare At that time of Elizabeth’s rule over England, Mary, the Queen of Scots, ruled Scotland. Interestingly enough, Shakespeare enjoyed the patronage of Queen Elizabeth. True, women in general in England did not enjoy the same freedom that they do today. It was a time of strict social hierarchies and stringent rules about how women should behave in the home and in public. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare wrote, “Though she be but little, she is fierce.” Shakespeare’s depiction of such fierce women opens for us the window to a new lighthouse which shows directions towards a rapid change coming to the society.
In the plays of Shakespeare, we have on the one hand seen fierce ladies like Lady Macbeth or Goneril and on the other hand the soft-tempered, sweet, sophisticated ladies like Ophelia, Cordelia, Juliet, Rosalind or Viola. Shakespeare, being one of the best dramatists of all time and ages, ever managed the varied positions in which women are depicted to play their different roles, and he perfectly dramatised them as women of real flesh and blood. Shakespeare’s female characters mirror the image of women in the Elizabethan era, where they were to be virtuous and tractable, while they can be equally vicious and devilish. He created all types of women, good and innocent like Ophelia and Desdemona or Cordelia and also the female villains like Goneril, Regan or Lady Macbeth.
In a play like The Merchant of Venice, women characters are given central roles. In Julius Caesar women are friends to husbands. In Antony and Cleopatra we get pictures of wileful women who are courageous and even diplomatic. Many of these women also knew how to use their beauty as in our modern times and showed incredible knowledge, essentialness and a solid feeling of individual autonomy, which made Shakespeare a victor of womankind, as he seems to understand women more than the women understand themselves.
He is a pioneer who went beyond stereotyped portrayals of females. The conception still prevails that in the tragedies of Shakespeare women look more dependent on men than they are in the comedies. Thus, Portia of Julius Caesar is different from Portia of The Merchant of Venice. Heroines of the comedies play more pivotal roles than their male counterparts Despite reflecting the age-old man-made concept about race, gender, female sexuality and power, Shakespeare’s plays suggest themselves to be at odds with patriarchal gender assumptions. Cleopatra and Katherine dare to defy the existing norms and stand out prominently in their own spheres. They suffered for this defiance of conventional roles, though the audience were able to guess their intellectual superiority.
Shakespeare’s England did not observe Women’s Day, nor did Shakespeare have to establish himself as a feminist writer to uphold the rights of women. But if one reads his plays, one is bound to be amazed to see how the ever-great dramatist of the world is still unparalleled in his impartial and realistic depiction of women even in his romances, and his keen sensibility and width of visionary horizon amaze all of us till today for the faithful portrayal of women as humans. Very few writers of the world can claim this infinite variety in the portrayal of the female mind and psychology. The plays of this greatest dramatist of the world , are unthinkable without women, who form half the sky of the Shakespearean universe in the realistic sense of the term.
Though the four plays which A.C. Bradley selected as his representative tragedies are male-centric, women have no less important roles in them. But still, can we ever think of Macbeth without Lady Macbeth, or Hamlet without his mother and Ophelia, or King Lear without his three daughters, or Othello without Desdemona? Shakespeare’s artistic genius in presenting his women characters is outstanding, as they throw light on the situation of women in the public arena in the Elizabethan era. We have seen the varied types – trapped, tragic, comic and stoic women. The women of the history plays reflect the uncertain status of Elizabethan women, yet Shakespeare questions their predetermined roles and identities.
In Macbeth, Hamlet and Merry Wives of Windsor. there are several points in these plays which deal with women and their rights. Shakespeare’s plays have a big relation to feminism, as they pay more attention to the rights of women and their true identity. In fact, they represent the voice for equality between men and women. The plays of Shakespeare reflect the social situation during the Renaissance when consciousness about women’s rights and capability was a big issue. We saw Juliet sighing over Romeo or Rosalind and Celia fleeing through the Forest of Arden, and then we saw them as boys or young men in dresses. There were no laws which explicitly forbade women from acting. It was common to see traditionally masculine roles in Shakespeare’s plays portrayed by women – several of Shakespeare’s plays make gender switching a key part of the plot, also highlighting the inequalities of power in his society.
We see in his plays also men pretending to be women – Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bartholomew clothed as a woman to confuse Christopher Sly in The Taming of the Shrew, and Falstaff dressed as ‘the fat woman of Brentford’ to avoid Ford finding him in his wife’s house in The Merry Wives of Windsor. But by far the bigger examples, with characters switching gender for large sections of the plays, involve women pretending to be men. They include Portia and Nerissa, who pretend to be lawyers (Balthazar and his clerk) in the courtroom scene in The Merchant of Venice – they can be taken seriously and use their intelligence to resolve an impossible situation. Rosalind pretends to be Ganymede in As You Like It – this allows her to be safer in the forest with her cousin, Celia, than if they were two women. Viola in Twelfth Night becomes Cesario so she can work for the Duke. Imogen dresses up as a boy, Fidele, to travel to her exiled husband in Cymbeline. Julia pretends to be Sebastian so she can travel safely to Milan in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Historians suggest that Shakespeare’s female relatives, including his mother and wife, may have inspired many of his female characters and the themes he explored in his plays. Despite the limitations placed on women in Elizabethan society, Shakespeare created an infinite variety of complex and memorable female characters who reflected intelligence, independence, and magnetism whose beauty cannot be withered by time or staled by custom.
Author is a former Affiliate Faculty of Virginia Commonwealth University USA. He can be mailed at profratanbhattacharjee@gmail.com
