Annotated Bibliography on the Prevelence of Rape in Shakespeare's Work

The great William Shakespeare lived during a time of many noted and influential people such as Pocahontas, King James I, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Even though Pocahontas was born during the later years of Shakespeare’s life, interesting correlations exist between the playwright and the Indian princess. King James I of England wrote about witches, which gave some background information for Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Macbeth. As the special guest of Queen Elizabeth I, it is likely that Sir Walter Raleigh watched some of Shakespeare’s plays presented at court. The daughter of a Native American chief, the King of England, and the famous explorer, all lived and gained notoriety during the lifetime of William Shakespeare.

At a first glance, the poem “The Author to Her Book”, written by Anne Bradstreet, is quite difficult to decipher. With a perplexing use of diction, Bradstreet manages to lure readers in and stimulate interest, much like puzzle. The language usages in the poem was intrinsic to the time period it was written in however, a current audience may become confused at the site of this poem and be more inclined to investigate it. After reading this particular poem numerous times, the underlying story begins to be revealed. It appears as if the author being described in the poem is unhappy with her work. The speaker’s friends on the other hand, liked it and decided to publish it so the author was forced to revise the writings and make them better. The vibe from the speaker however, is of constant disgust in their work. No matter how much they revised and edited, they were never satisfied with anything completed. To add character to her work, Bradstreet effectively uses metaphors throughout the poem to aid in her overall theme of conflicts

Shakespeare uses language to explore the controversial gender roles. His use of two distinctively opposing female

CITEDShakespeare, William. Othello. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. Print

Some critics and other readers of Shakespeare's plays argue that he treats women with disrespect. However, he actually treats them with a great amount of respect. Shakespeare has been criticized by many modern writers for his portrayal of women.

The moon/Desdemona is seen as at once chaste and inclined to change. Later, Othello accuses Desdemona of infidelity despite her protesting innocence. Again, he compares her infidelity with the moon: "What committed!/ Heaven stops the nose at it and the moon winks . . . " (4.2.74). The moon, once chaste, is now flirting. Similarly, Othello believes that Desdemona, once chaste, is cuckolding him. These two examples show the multiple allegories of the moon that, similarly, exist in women.

William Shakespeare is accredited to writing thirty-eight plays, sonnets, and five other poems. It is believed that he was born in the Shakespeare dwelling on Henley Street, Stratford-upon-Avon, England. His birth date is widely assumed but, the actual date was not recorded as British births were not registered and birth certificates were not manufactured. Shakespeare was born to John and Mary, as the third child of the residence. Joan and Margaret, the two previous children died tragically of the Bubonic Plague. As his grandfather was a farm produce seller, his family was in constant state of danger of the Bubonic Plague. Shakespeare wed Anne Hathaway on November 28, 1582, in Worchester. Hathaway was pregnant during this wedding, and their first child Susanna was born May 26, 1583. Two years later, Hathaway delivered twins named Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet later died of the Bubonic Plague at the age of eleven. After the twins were born, there were seven years

Woolf demonstrates how women writers have often failed in this because of our frustration and bitterness with a world that presented to us and our writing not welcome, or even indifference, but hostility (41). She makes it clear that if there is ever going to be a “Shakespeare’s sister,” we must---at least while we are writing---swallow that sense of having been wronged, for it stands as an impediment to our creativity. This is the mental freedom that women writers must attain.

In addition to the contribution of establishing Shakespeare’s authorship, Pavier and Jaggard largely protected Shakespeare’s manuscripts and presented more authentic works of Shakespeare by referring widely to the resources they could get assessed. Their method of editing could be considered as “critical editing”, which aims to represent the author’s final intention by comparative analysis of multiple texts(Evenden, 2016, p.54-55). Most of the Folio text, according to Jowett(2007), involve a more complicated cross- fertilization, which means the Folio texts must have absorbed various copies of previous quartos and theatrical manuscript to include longer passages(p. 77). The more complicated work of the printers, the direct or indirect referring

Is William Shakespeare really a Renaissance Man? I believe Shakespeare was a Renaissance man, he wrote many famous plays. I'm sure everyone has heard of Romeo and Juliet, a love story between two people who could never be together because of family issues, which was written by William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is considered a Renaissance Man because he was a talented writer, he was very knowledgeable which showed in his plays. Shakespeare did have a few disadvantages along the way. Many disagree that Shakespeare shouldn't be given the title as the Renaissance Man. People do not see his potential as a writer, because of his lacking background. Because Shakespeare’s school caught on fire, the school lost most of his records.

William Shakespeare was possibly born on about April 23, 1564. . He was John and Mary Shakespeare's oldest surviving child. Their first two children were both girls but did not live beyond infancy. Growing up as the big brother of the family, William had three younger brothers, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund, and two younger sisters: Anne, who died at seven, and Joan.

Roland Barthes once said “literature is the question minus the answer.” In Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, a central question is asked concerning what about a women and her relationships is revealed when they are faced with oppression and attempt to resist and question it? What about a woman is revealed when they accept and enforce patriarchy? These question are replied to in multiple ways to different extents and reveals the play’s meaning of the work as a whole: when women question norms, they will have their beliefs dismissed and become a subject of scrutiny.

Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Goodnight Desdemona (Good morningJuliet) uses intertextuality to unveil the complete Shakespearean characters of Juliet and Desdemona to reveal the feminist narrative lurking between lines of Shakespeare’s plays. Only through the intertextual re-examination of the Shakespearean text itself via the interjection of genre and the reassigning of dialogue, within the metatheatre, is the true feminist representation of the female Shakespearian characters unveiled from behind the patriarchal preconceptions. From this understanding we may read Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) to be true feminist reworking of Shakespeare. Therefore the metatheatre’s intertextuality reinforces and supports the traits of the feminine.

By examining Shakespeare’s treatment of familial ties in his plays The Life and Death of King John and The Winter’s Tale, we can see how his attitudes and opinions towards family relationships evolved. In King John (written between 1594 and 1596), Shakespeare adopts what was then a fairly conventional attitude towards family relationships: his characters never question the highly patriarchal family hierarchy. They also assume that the majority of wives will be unfaithful, simply because they are female—however, they take the charge of adultery rather lightly. By contrast, in The Winter’s Tale (written between 1610 and 1611), he adopts a much more progressive, feminist view of family

Shakespeare and the members of the Elizabethan era would be appalled at the freedoms women experience today.  The docility of Elizabethan women is almost a forgotten way of life. What we see throughout Shakespeare’s plays is an insight into the female character as perceived by Elizabethan culture.  Shakespeare’s female characters reflect the Elizabethan era’s image of women; they were to be virtuous and obedient and those that were not were portrayed as undesirable and even evil.