Shakespeare - Female Characters

I. INTRODUCTION

The dramatic work of Shakespeare is impressive even numerically speaking: he wrote 37 plays: many - and of many kinds. In his works there are almost one thousand characters, belonging to different eras, various people, distinct social classes or statuses. These characters are represented by women and men, young people, adults and old ones, by lovers and life-weary people, by heroes and villains and also by intelligent or poor spirited people. The human typology enlisted by the playwright is endless and offers a new perspective at each new reading. Shakespeare’s work presents variety but is still a unitary one presenting different tendencies and a remarkable internal coherence altogether. Nothing is randomly selected in the Bard’s work; all characters and all events are present and happen for a reason.

The main themes, the literary motifs and symbols of all tragedies are punctured by the same humanistic spirituality specific of the renaissance period and in all we find the same tragic expression of human condition.

The importance of women’s presence in Shakespearean tragedies is shown by their surprising, multi-sided personalities; many times women prefer showing their honor in a bloody ambitious manner rather than exposing traditional feminine values in general and womanly love in particular. These characters are at the root of many reactions and changes in situation as they stand for power and influence over the other characters.

Sometimes women in Shakespeare’s tragedies are seen on one hand as provocative, moody, constantly struggling for power, cunning, daring, mischievous or even violent. On the other hand, they appear as loving and loyal to their men, wanting to know truth and force of character, heavenly, divine, gracious in behavior and sometimes dominated, controlled and influenced by other characters.

In order to best illustrate the character of women in Shakespeare’s tragedies it is of utmost importance to outline that the feeling which acts as an engine in these women’s lives is love. People’s feeling of love oscillates between shallowness and deepness, and women almost always situate themselves near the limits of the two extremes. To watch deep into their soul, trying to decipher their personality from the perspective of a love relationship behavior means getting closer both to the feeling of maximum purity of love and to that of its most humble ways of expressing itself, temporarily chained by a combination of circumstances. Shakespeare clears out such situations, managing to give life to some admirable human portraits, which illustrate a large register of feelings, by describing women’s behavior. “When truth is separated by falsehood through a more or less fortunate and expected event” , tragedy invades the scene and the readers and spectators understand why some women deserve to be respected, while others can’t be seen as anything else but as the bearers of some erotic masks set on top of clay bodies, incapable of loving and strictly dominated by a mean interest.

II. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed (National Portrait Gallery, London).

A complete, authoritative account of Shakespeare's life is lacking; much supposition surrounds relatively few facts. His day of birth is traditionally held to be April 23; it is known he was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. The third of eight children, he was the eldest son of John Shakespeare, a locally prominent merchant, and Mary Arden, daughter of a Roman Catholic member of the landed gentry. He was probably educated at the local grammar school. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a farmer. He is supposed to have left Stratford after he was caught poaching in the deer park of Sir Thomas Lucy, a local justice of the peace. Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway produced a daughter, Susanna, in 1583 and twins - a boy and a girl - in 1585. The boy died 11 years later .

Shakespeare apparently arrived in London in about 1588, and by 1592 had attained success as an actor and a playwright. Shortly thereafter, he secured the patronage of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton . The publication of Shakespeare's two fashionably erotic narrative poems “Venus and Adonis” (1593) and “The Rape of Lucrece” (1594) and of his “Sonnets” (published 1609, but circulated previously in manuscript) established his reputation as a gifted and popular Renaissance poet.