English Restoration Research Paper

Once more as a modern audience we find it hard to appreciate the impact a woman speaking up for herself in this situation may have had on an Elizabethan audience. This is because in our society women speak up fro themselves everyday and this is taken for granted.

The reconstruction of history as tragedy in Richard III is accompanied by a remarkable transformation in the representation and placement of female characters. Paradoxically, even as the female characters are ennobled, they are also disempowered. On the one hand women are much more sympathetically portrayed. On the other, they lose their vividly individualized voices and the dangerous theatrical power that made characters like Joan and Margaret in the Henry VI plays potent threats to the masculine project of English history-making. (Rackin 267)

The focus of this paper will be to compare and contrast the works of two playwrights. The works that will be considered are Molière’s The Would-Be Gentleman and Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro. Both considered comedies, Moliere’s is a short play that tells the tale of Monsieur Jourdain, a tradesman who desires to become a gentleman. Beaumarchais’s play, second in the Figaro trilogy, follows the series of event prior to Figaro’s wedding. Figaro and his companions scheme to ensure that his marriage occurs smoothly. Furthermore, the plays are dated 100 years apart from each other, and they deal with the representation of social hierarchy, social mobility, and gender roles in various ways. With that in mind, they become good sources to compare and contrast the changes in society that occurred within those 100 years. This paper will compare both plays to examine how Molière further endorses the social values and ideas of his time, while Beaumarchais’s presents a shift in attitude towards those values and challenges them.

Second, the transvestism of the English renaissance theatre creates a "space of possibility" for "structuring and confounding culture" as well as enacting a "category crisis" which reflects a potential destabilization of the dominant hierarchy (Garber 16, 17). Greenblatt points out that the enactment of such difference is an instrument to increase audience anxiety before reifying the normative and conventional in the play's res-olution, a pattern played out in The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night; yet this cannot account for the defiant and yet compassionate resolution of Dek-ker's The Roaring Girl, where the mannishly clad Moll blesses the marriage of Sebastian and Mary Fitz-Allard and their reconciliation with their fathers, at the same time refusing the conventional solution for herself.

In the 1700s women were supposed to play the role of doting woman standing by her man virtuous and loving. However, one can say that gender power dynamics could easily be turned when the idea of sex and prostitution in placed in the dynamics. The two texts to support this thesis will be Eliza Haywood’s short story Fantomina: Or, Love in a Maze. Being A Secret History of an Amour between Two Persons of Condition, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s poem “The Reasons that Induced Dr. S to write a Poem called ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’”.

In recorded history, women have always been valued as inferior to men. This patriarchal concept prevails all the way to modern times, but what facts actually give credence to this concept? In both Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun and Susan Glaspell’s one-act play Trifles, there is a multitude of female roles, all which have a significant importance in the story. Time and time again a subtle irony is played up in these stories that highlight the lack of credit these women receive for their monumental efforts.

In order to first understand the world Shakespeare wrote from and about, I will briefly discuss the male/female dichotomy within the Renaissance. Gender distinctions can be traced throughout Western history, but it is in a new conception of the family in the sixteenth century that patriarchy gains

The Elizabethan Era is one of the most fascinating periods in the History of the World. It is named after one of the greatest of the Queens of England - Queen Elizabeth I. It was the era of the very first Theatres in England - William Shakespeare and the globe Theatre and Christopher Marlowe! It also had a very different feel and look to it than we experience nowadays and this is shown in the marriage and wedding customs, recreation, social hierarchy, and how it is a patriarchal society. The Elizabethan worldview is strongly reflected in Shakespeare’s play ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ set in the 17th century in Messina, a port on the island of Sicily,

The Renaissance was a time of celebration, a celebration of man’s achievements in the arts, the sciences, literature, and the spirit of the time. But, perhaps, even though a great outpouring of intellectual genius existed, these accomplishments were mainly centered on man and his world, not on promoting woman and her works. Furthermore, this concept of ignoring woman and her talents can easily be seen through the Character Ophelia in Hamlet.

the english renaissance is a time of great culture and writing. the renaissance means rebirth it started after the medieval ages in 1485 and led to our modern age in 1660. it had writers such as sir walter raleigh, John Donne, edmund spenser, and of course the greatest writer in history william shakespeare whose plays still to this day touch the lives of millions. after the english renaissance there was a period called the enlightenment where people such as John Locke, Francis bacon, baruch spinoza, and isaac newton. these people came up with the ideas that would one day lead to the creation of our great country.

In fact, all the women in these texts display some anti-female traits. In this essay, I wish to explore how Shakespeare, Duffy and Browning all give these women a voice to fight back at

A common discussion between the sexes is the omnipotent power that men seem to hold over women in all societies. Why do men always have the social advantage over women? Both Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro show that there is indeed a social stigma placed on women where women are not allowed as much freedom to either fight back against a suitor or choose not to accept a suitor’s love and choose another. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night focuses mainly on the negative stigmas against women, while Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro places most of the blame for perpetuating the stigmas on the aristocracy, especially the men within the aristocracy (i.e. the Count). Both texts examine the social role women play in society, and both texts critique the societal norms that restrict women.

Throughout our classes and discussions we have discussed the topic of true womanhood, along with women in medieval drama. Thinking of these two concepts, the question arises are they any true women in medieval plays? The multiple plays that we have read, there are many different types of women that have been discussed. These plays covered drastic differences with the way the women acted, and their actions towards the men in their lives and certain circumstances. Through four plays, there are four women that come to mind Gil, the Virgin Mary, Eve, and Noah’s wife. These women have major parts in Biblical history, along with major parts in medieval plays. The research conducted is to see if these medieval women would be considered a true woman from the 19th century standard, and if they are not know as a true woman, what have they done to show that they have not establish this title.

Gender identity and its roles in 17th and 19th century England were regarded as rigid fact — definite and unyielding. The adherence to these social protocols was of utmost importance. Masculinity was viewed as being dominant, assertive, and bold, whereas femininity involved beauty, obedience, and chastity. The theatre became a method of challenging this rigid social concept. Both William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest explore these public values through their characters. Wilde and Shakespeare’s use of gender reversals satirize the traditions of social order, marriage, and gender responsibilities at the time, thereby revealing that gender is not absolute.

In this piece I will be showing the role of women in the 18th century