Shakespeare Queering Essay

If it were up to me to direct this play I would do traditional casting, like Nunn had done, with men playing male characters and women playing female

William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a comedy about Viola, a woman who washes up in Illyria and then assumes the role of a man in order to be closer to Orsino, the man she wants to marry. It involves multiple cases of mistaken identities and deception. The stereotypical role of the sexes and gender also have a significant impact in the play. Ultimately it provides the opportunity to disrupt the fixed polarities upon which the normative Elizabethan society is based. This essay will discuss Belsey’s statement that the closing of the play voids the transgressive gaps in sexual stereotypes. This will be done by considering the historical context and the sexual norms of the time and to what extent they are transgressed in Twelfth Night.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare brings about one of the most controversial topic of the gender portrayal in a play. During Shakespearean times, women were considered as the weaker sex, physically and emotionally. On the other hand, men were seen as the dominant sex that is expected to be the head of their households and a strong figure. Unlike this stereotypical representation of men and women, Shakespeare introduces the reversal of gender roles in his play. Shakespeare’s portrayal of the relationship and characteristics of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth diverged from the stereotypical representation of both men and women. The author, William Shakespeare’s use of reverse gender roles which contradicted with the traditional gender roles, is what

By completing the readings assignments of Shakespeare assigned to me by this class, I have achieved broader positive assumptions about Shakespeare, as well of understanding how Shakespearean plays apply to modern day society. Although I have had moderate experience in the readings of Shakespeare in High school, such as the reading of Othello. By participating a completing readings about Shakespeare’s plays and attending lectures discussing sexuality regarding Shakespeare, I have gained a greater overall understanding of Shakespeare. Through Shakespeare’s plays, overall, I have gained a greater understanding of what Shakespeare attempts to convey in his plays.

   Throughout the length of Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello there is a steady undercurrent of sexism. It is originating from not one, but rather various male characters in the play, who manifest prejudicial, discriminatory attitudes toward women.

   Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello features sexism as regular fare – initially from Brabantio and Iago, and finally from Othello. Let us in this essay explore the occurrences and severity of sexism in the drama.

Identity and Feminism: Themes such as Gender identity are illustrated in Shakespeare’s plays through the use of costuming and role playing. In texts like “Twelfth Night”, Shakespeare uses a female character named Viola who is the noblewoman disguised as a boy named Cesario, this creates a comedic gender exchange situation where the role reversal goes wrong and leads to mistaken

When Shakespeare wrote his plays, theatre companies were only using male actors; female parts were played by adolescent boys. Although boy actors were seen as the trainees and they would eventually play male roles when they were experienced and old enough, some of the most interesting and challenging roles in Shakespeare plays are women. Why would he write big female roles when there weren’t female actors? People believe that he wrote specific parts for specific actors; some boy actors might had become so good at playing women that they inspired Shakespeare to write those significant female parts.

Throughout the semester, one thing that was noticeable throughout Shakespeare’s plays was the cross dressing of women. The cross dressing of women occurred in Cymbeline, The Two Gentleman of Verona, and The Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare appeared to be ahead of his time in knowing what we know now. Through showcasing women, successfully disguising as men Shakespeare proves that gender is nothing more than a performance. During this era, women were not allowed to play women parts in the Shakespeare plays. However, this did not stop Shakespeare from having women parts in his plays. Having men perform feminine parts in the plays did not stop people from attending the Shakespeare plays as well. What resonates in all three of these plays is that the women successfully fool the men with

Many theatre students will tell you about Shakespeare, who he is, what plays he has written. But what if a theatre student came up to you and the first thing he said was that Shakespeare was all about gender and sexuality. Many people in the theater community may have to agree. If you don’t agree your mind may be changed by the end of this paper. In the plays The Winter’s Tale and Hamlet, you will find that Shakespeare brings out the theme of gender and sexuality.

However, this exhibition of gender ambiguity in Twelfth Night was not the first time the issue of a gender gradient was explored. Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s transvestite comedies, along with his plays As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice. These plays all have in common that they include female protagonists who, each with their own reason, must disguise themselves as young men. Casey Charles notes, in his Gender Trouble in Twelfth Night, that “critics have struggled recently to determine the degree to which such theatrical gender trouble affected the social fabric of Renaissance England”. While Catherine Belsey and Phyliss Rackin argued first that "stage illusion radically subverted the gender division of the Elizabethan world," new historicists like Stephen Greenblatt and Howard have more recently made claims that the Globe operated as a universe in itself, a place where comedy and theatre and breaking rules was acceptable, and had little to no effect on the diminishing power of women in Renaissance England. Shakespeare’s strongly feminist plays may not have coincided with social change for women in sixteenth century England, but the theatre also did not necessarily warrant a conclusion that the Elizabethan plays were socially ineffective on gender roles. “If the relative power of woman was diminished in Renaissance England, the causes of that reduction were as much due to religious and political forces as they were to

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.

“Boys will be girls will be boys” This statement refers to the theme of gender within Shakespeare’s comedies and it is portrayed significantly in both As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Gender is a major theme in the work of Shakespeare which is an issue which has had a significant impact on the criticism attracted to his work for many of his plays, led by feminists in particular. In each of the two plays there is gender ambiguity, mistaken identities and gender blurring as Shakespeare deals with the important issues of homosexuality and bisexuality. Before dealing with these issues it is important to look at the society of the time and the historical background to some of the issues such as cross dressing. It is also significant to note the motives behind the characters to disguise as men and also the relationships they have with other characters to give us a sense of their true gender identity.

Gender and sexuality are both prominent themes in Shakespeare’s plays. Depending on the the play, a character might use their gender as a tool to manipulation of the those around them, a form of sexist propaganda or both. During the Elizabethan era, when Shakespeare was alive and writing plays, there was a social construct of “normal” for both gender and sexuality just as there is today. There was a hierarchy of sexes. There was male and female because it was the 14th and 15th centuries and the idea of someones gender not matching their biological sex was absurd and both had their own role in society. Men were masculine, strong and hard working, the leaders and figureheads of society even though the monarch at the time was a Queen. Women, however, were meant for the home, they were practically owned by the men in their lived and ruled by their emotions. By creating confusion around sex and gender in his plays, Shakespeare disregards what would be considered “normal” in the society he lived in and changed the way women are portrayed in theatre and other forms of media today. Men can play the role of women or be effeminate, and did in his time when it was illegal and undignified for a woman to be on stage, and women can play male/masculine roles both without compromising their biological sex.  Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and As You Like It all show how Shakespeare uses sexuality and gender to affect the plots of his plays

Jean E. Howard analyses a brief history of development of Feminist Criticism within Shakespeare Studies. Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare changed the landscape in Shakespeare studies. Feminists analysed the portrayal of women characters in each genre, focusing on the patriarchal norms and gender stereotypes that shaped these representations. However, in the 1970s and early 1980s, the first goal was to change the questions one could ask of Shakespeare’s plays and to put issues such as gender and sexuality on the critical agenda. The 1980s, however, saw a new emphasis on historicising the particular gender system within which