Academic literature on the topic 'Women in Shakespeare'

This thesis brings the performativity of William Shakespeare’s plays into focus; in presenting an alternative approach to his works, I show how literary criticism can be reinvigorated. Dramatic works demonstrate that, in their theatrical world, everything is mutable, and capable of evolving and changing, negating stability or reliability. Why, then, should what I term monogeneric approaches (forms of analysis that allocate one genre to plays, adopting a priori ideas as opposed to recognising processes of dramatic construction) to criticism remain prevalent in Shakespearean scholarship? Performativity, as defined by Judith Butler, is a concept that focuses on the dynamic constitution of a subject, rather than on the end result alone (whether ‘female’ for gender, or, for example, ‘comedy’ for plays). In establishing an analogical relationship between the performativity of gender and the performance of dramatic works, I offer new, interpretive possibilities for dramatic works, moving away from monogeneric methods. Constructing a method of analysis based on performativity allows an approach that recognises and privileges dramatic dynamism and characterisation. The role of female characters is vital in Shakespeare’s works: we see defiant, submissive, calculating, principled and overwhelmingly multifaceted performances from these characters who, I argue, influence the courses that plays take. This thesis joins a conversation that began in 335BCE with Aristotle’s Poetics. In acknowledging and interrogating previous scholarship on genre in Shakespeare’s works, I trace monogeneric themes in analysis from Aristotle, through A.C. Bradley, through to later twentieth- and twenty-first-century critics. I challenge the practice of allocating genre based on plot features, including weddings and deaths; such actions are not conclusively representative of one genre alone. To enable this interrogation, I establish relationships between theories such as Nicolas Bourriaud’s work on artistic exchange; Jacques Derrida’s hypothesis on participation and belonging; and feminist research by scholars including Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. Performance analysis is a vital component of this thesis, alongside textual analysis. In a number of cases, multiple performances of a dramatic work are considered to illustrate the fascinating variety with which the text is translated from page to stage and the impact of different directorial decisions. I use the term ‘textual analysis’ to include the varying editions of Shakespeare’s plays, and to consider that every Complete Works publication is not, in fact, complete. The existence of quarto texts makes clear an important process of dramatic evolution, particularly when dramatic works and their allocated genres shift between quarto and Folio versions. Such textual instability highlights the difficulties inherent in applying singular identities to dynamic works. In locating performativity at the core of dramatic works and emphasising the key role of female characters, this thesis brings performance to the fore and presents an alternative ‘lens of interpretation’ for readers, watchers, teachers and scholars of Shakespeare.

The plays of William Shakespeare have long been considered a source of cultural and educational interest by both academics and filmmakers, and the practice of adapting Shakespeare’s works to film has existed for almost as long as film itself. The name “Shakespeare” evokes ideals of cultural legitimacy and importance, and Shakespeare film as a genre is always caught up in questions of fidelity and legitimacy. In adapting Shakespeare to the screen, filmmakers also adapt, whether deliberately or not, the various cultural beliefs that his work is steeped in. Early modern ideas about gender, race and class are reproduced in modern film through the adaptation of Shakespeare, often excused or unexamined in the name of fidelity. This thesis discusses Shakespeare’s three plays Hamlet, Richard III and The Taming of the Shrew, all of which deal in some way with gender roles and the place and power of women, whether that power is sexual, political or verbal. I also examine three film adaptations of the plays: Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, Ian McKellen and Richard Loncraine’s Richard III, and Gil Junger’s 10 Things I Hate About You. All three films serve as examples of the way the misogyny present in Shakespeare’s works is reproduced and sometimes magnified through adaptation to the screen. The reproduction of early modern gender hierarchies is naturalised in a number of ways across the three films, including the use of star power, the invocation of Shakespeare as a cultural authority, and specific filmic techniques such as flashback and the cutting and editing of film and screenplay. I argue that in all three films, the faithful adaptation of Shakespearean ideas of gender comes at the expense of both the women characters and those women who make up the films’ audience.

The aim of this thesis is to clarify the role that female interpreters in Britain played at an early stage in the canonisation of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare, one of the popular playwrights in English Renaissance theatre, became increasingly famous during the first half of the eighteenth century, and the Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769 marked the climax of the popularisation of his works. It is said that since then, he has maintained his position as the ‘national poet’ of England (or Britain). Although women had supported Shakespeare even before his works had established their canonical status, the extent to which female interpreters contributed to the canonisation of Shakespeare, how they participated in the process, and why they played the roles that they did have not yet been sufficiently visible. In this thesis, I illustrate women’s engagement in the process of the popularisation of Shakespeare by examining the early reception of his works, and to document how individual women’s pleasure of reading and playgoing relates to their intellectual activities. I adopt three approaches to provide answers to my research questions in this thesis: reading critical and fictional works by women; analysing the descriptions of female readers and playgoers by male writers; and conducting a large-scale survey of the ownership history of pre-mid-eighteenth-century printed books of Shakespeare’s plays. This thesis is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, I analyse women’s engagement with theatre in Renaissance England, and consider Shakespeare’s popularity amongst them based on records about female audiences. The second chapter discusses female readers and writers in Renaissance England and their responses to Shakespeare’s works. Chapter 3 focuses on Restoration Shakespeare and female interpreters from 1642 to 1714. The fourth chapter discusses women’s playgoing, play-reading, writings, and their participation from the early eighteenth century to the Shakespeare Jubilee in 1769.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2009.<br>Shakespeare portrayed women in his plays as people who should be valued. This is an opinion I held in the past, and one I still hold after intense reading of his works and that of authors such as Marlowe, Webster, Thomas Kyd and others. Shakespeare created his female characters out of a mixture of good and evil. When they interact with others, either the best or the worst in them is brought out: extreme evil in some cases and perfect goodness in others. I hope the reader will enjoy this study as much as I did, and that it will enhance their reading of Shakespeare‟s works and cultivate their interest in him. This study is intended to motivate other people to change their view that Shakespeare‟s works are inaccessible. Those who hold this view will come to know that anyone anywhere can read, understand and appreciate the works of this the greatest writer of all times. In his study Shakespeare’s World, Johanyak says, “I wrote [it] to help students appreciate the depth and breadth of Shakespeare‟s global awareness. Shakespeare was not only a London playwright, but a man of the world who dramatized his perceptions to create a lasting legacy of his times” (2004: ix).

Scholarship on Victorian productions of Shakespeare typically isolates Shakespeare from the rest of the repertory. My thesis illuminates how late-Victorian performances of Shakespeare and contemporary Victorian drama conditioned each other. I re-interrogate iconoclastic performances of Shakespeare’s heroines to reveal actresses’ performance networks, showing how actresses’ movements between fin-de-siècle roles created consonances between ostensibly antithetical areas of the repertoire. The performances and receptions of British actresses with high cultural capital reveal Shakespeare’s interventions into fin-de-siècle debates on gender and sexuality. Highlighting female performance genealogies, I offer the first narrative of women’s acting traditions in Shakespeare. I explore actresses’ commercial strategising, celebrity personae, theatrical innovations and contributions to Shakespearean hermeneutics. The thesis draws on significant unpublished archival material, including from private collections. Chapter One examines how the ostensibly puritanical Madge Kendal and Royal mistress Lillie Langtry used the role of Rosalind (As You Like It) within a portfolio of self-promotional strategies, inscribing their professional legitimacy and dramatising different sexual identities. Chapter Two explores how Terry’s Lady Macbeth (1888–9), interpreted as a loving wife, challenged theatrical semiotics, contemporary ideals of marriage, and perceptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ women. Chapter Three, on Mrs Patrick Campbell, demonstrates the success of her movements between the ‘sex-problem play’ and Shakespeare, revealing how her Shakespeare reception reflected fin-de-siècle concerns as the unwell body and mind, the figure of Salome, and the child – as both a sexual object and potentially suicidal. Chapter Four, on Terry’s Imogen (Cymbeline) discusses Shakespearean actresses’ contribution to ideas of national character and queenship, as Queen Victoria’s reign neared its end, including specific milestones such as the 1897 Diamond Jubilee. Chapter Five examines Shakespeare’s intersections with the ‘New Woman’, commodity culture and politics, as suffragists co-opted Shakespeare as a ‘suffrage’ playwright, with The Winter’s Tale’s Paulina as their icon.

For almost a century Shakespeare’s work has been viewed primarily under a supremacy of performance with an insistence that Shakespeare wrote his work to be staged, not read. This prevailing view has ensured that most responses in Shakespearean research fit within this line of enquiry. The recent argument that Shakespeare was a literary dramatist who wrote for readers—as well as audiences—has met with resistance. This thesis first exposes the very literate world Shakespeare lived in and his own perception of that world, which embraces a writer who wrote for readers. The material evidence of readers begins in Shakespeare’s own lifetime and grows steadily, evidenced by the editorial methods used to facilitate reading, the profusion of books specifically for readers of general interest, and the thousands of lay reading circles formed to enjoy and study the plays. Readers of the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries are shown to have spontaneously responded to the works as literature, as reading Shakespeare aloud within a family or social circle has a tenacious history. For three hundred years after Shakespeare’s death it was readers and Shakespeare reading groups who created and maintained Shakespeare’s legacy as a literary icon and national hero. The history of millions of lay readers reading aloud in community was engulfed by the transition of the texts into academia and performance criticism until by the 1940s Shakespeare reading groups were virtually non-existent. A new genre of editorial practice can support a re-emergence of community reading and point toward a greater acceptance of Shakespeare as a literary dramatist, enlarging the field of Shakespearean scholarship and criticism. A prototype of a Readers’ Edition of a Shakespearean play specifically edited and designed for reading aloud in groups is included with this thesis.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a nuanced play that illustrates revenge, madness, and complex relationships. The paper proposes a feminist reading of Hamlet and analyses the play’s central characters, Gertrude, Ophelia, Hamlet, Claudius, Polonius, and Laertes, and their behaviour under the influence of a patriarchal society. Furthermore, the study will focus on the ways in which Shakespeare represents Ophelia and Gertrude in the play. The study does a feminist reading of the play to investigate how Ophelia’s and Gertrude’s actions and behaviour are affected by the contemporary patriarchal society, and how it affects the male characters’ choices. This research allows readers to interpret female characters in several ways, and to see how women are forced to act and make choices in a contemporary patriarchy to be able to influence societal structures.