The Roaring Girl Essay

While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.

The masking of an identity is a common solution that many people of today’s society turn towards. Whether it is to hide something from someone or to use it as a form of protection. William Shakespeare’s popular play Much Ado About Nothing is an excellent example of masking that is achieved by some of the characters. The story reflects events of people masking themselves intentionally, unintentionally or having the ability to see through other’s masks. It demonstrates that masking can end in deception, although not constantly.

In studying William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will, it becomes clear that the theme of “Inside/Outside” is visible at many different levels. One of the comedic methods applied is the mistaken identity of Viola and Sebastian. Another case is Malvolio’s sudden change of character and clothes. Furthermore, Feste, who acts as a professional fool in the play, turns out to be a bright and wise character, against the expectations of the readers. Without these important elements where the characters show to be entirely different on the outside than on the inside, the play would be less intriguing, and moreover, they are essential to develop major scenes.

Middleton and Dekker collaborate to write The Roaring Girl, which concentrates on a real-life London woman named Moll Cutpurse. Moll was reputed to be a prostitute, bawd, and thief, but the playwrights present her as a lady of great spirit and virtue whose reputation is misrepresented by a small, convention-bound civilization. In the play, as in reality, Moll dresses in men’s attire, smokes a pipe and bears a sword representing a colorful and in the underworld life of Moll Cutpurse. She stood London on its head with her cross-dressing and gender-bending behavior, and illegal pursuits. Her defiance of women in this play is exceptional. Also, she is perhaps one of the only players to be scrupulously true to herself; some of the other characters display very hypocritical aspects. Such unorthodox and unconventional role, Middleton and Dekker implies, leads to her spotted standing. She is a roaring girl; An audacious and bold woman-about-town. But beneath this absence of femininity, is a courageous, high-principled woman. Moll interposes in the central plots and is associated in skirmishes with many of the characters, consistently showcasing her ability to stand up for the downtrodden and wronged. Therefore, Moll creates a 'third space ' that identifies her as importantly freed in her navigation of space and social relations.

Shakespeare's use of cross dressing and deceitfulness extends beyond the actual writings in the plays and goes onto the stage. Women were not allowed to perform on stage in Shakespeare's time. ."..all the great women's roles in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, from Juliet and Lady Macbeth to the duchess of Malfi, were written to be

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.

The very fact that Jessica is forced to pose as a male in order to gain freedom –thus shirking the cultural norm –highlights the subjugation of women in Shakespeare’s time. Further enforcing Jessica’s lower social standing is her acceptance to be Lorenzo’s torch-bearer. Shakespeare provides a negative connotation because “torch-bearer” insinuates the image of a servant or otherwise owned individual, which the audience equates with what Jessica will become after her marriage ceremony.

One of the most overt examples of disguise is through the character of Viola. This is the origin of much of the deception in the play. Stranded in Illyria after a shipwreck, she dresses as a male in order to work as a Eunuch for the Duke Orsino.

In the book “Gender Trouble” (1990), feminist theorist Judith Butler explains “gender is not only a social construct, but also a kind of performance such as a show we put on, a costume or disguise we wear” (Butler). In other words, gender is a performance, an act, and costumes, not the main aspect of essential identity. By understanding this theory of gender as an act, performance, we can see how gender has greatly impacted the outcome of the play in William Shakespeare’s Othello. From a careful analysis of the story, tragedy in Othello is result of violating expected gender roles, gender performance by Desdemona and Othello, and the result of Iago’s inability to tolerate these violations.

The Roaring Girl at first gives off an impression of being a run of the mill early advanced play around a couple attempting to wind up marry without being excluded. At a more critical look however, we see that The Roaring Girl really concentrates the majority of its activity around the character of Moll Cutpurse. Moll's refusal to absorb into English society makes her an extremely extraordinary heroine. Despite the fact that it is far from being obviously true regardless of whether she is in the long run acclimatized into society, I for one trust that she is not, the play raises numerous fascinating parallels in the middle of Moll and other female heroines that we've concentrated up to this point. Whether the play is intended to advance female

Comedy, in the Elizabethan era, often included themes of wit, mistaken identity, love, and tragedy, all tied up with a happy ending. These themes are prevalent in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a comical play that explores the pangs of unrequited love and the confusion of gender. Love is a powerful emotion that causes suffering, happiness, and disorder throughout the play. The play also demonstrates the blurred lines of gender identity, which ties into the modern day debate on sexuality and gender identity. The main characters in the play, Viola, Olivia, and Orsino are connected by a love triangle, each person pursuing an unrequited love. Suffering from love and the fluidity of gender are the prevalent themes explored throughout the play and intertwined with Viola, Olivia, and Orsino.

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.

Perhaps the theme that is most recurrent in William Shakespeare's plays is that of filial relationships, specifically the relationship between daughter and father. This particular dynamic has allowed Shakespeare to create complex female characters that come into conflict with their fathers over issues ranging from marriage to independence. At the same time, the dramatist exposes his audience to the struggles women face when attempting to assert themselves in a misogynistic world. Through the daughter-father dyads portrayed in The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare highlights the effects that gender constraints have on female characters while simultaneously drawing attention to the sharp contrast between both relationships.

“He starts a rumor going round to the effect that he has become a eunuch; …wives, he trusts, will be intrigued” (2288). Horner’s conclusion is logical and clever, considering the fact that masks “were a widespread item of Restoration fashion[;]…they were worn both by ‘virtuous’ women and by prostitutes, with the tantalizing effect of rendering those two human categories not quite distinguishable from one another” (2288). From this social climate, he discerns that if he wears a metaphorical mask, or a unique social label, this mask might have a similar “tantalizing effect” on women; it might make discerning female wits want to discover whether the man behind the mask is truly asexual or erotic.

With Shakespeare being born in the sixteenth century, there were still three centuries to go before women started the feminist’s movement. However, with his storyline in both The Merchant of the Venice and Twelfth night, the females leads disguised themselves as males to accomplish what needs to be done. Both plays, shows the heroine choices which challenges the characters they interact with. These endearing characters shows similar and different traits. The focus of these plays was based on Portia’s and Viola’s ambition which showed Shakespeare’s respect for women.