The Two Noble Kinsmen

I honestly don’t believe that one’s opinion on same-sex couples has any importance when it comes to transvestite versus traditional role-play on stage. An author or director’s utmost goal is to successfully present his/her work in a way that makes the audience members feel as if they are apart of the show like they were one of the characters themselves. In other words, it is all about believability. If the play calls for a young female character then I am more likely to follow along when a female actor is playing that role. On the contrary, I would be distracted focusing on the male actor trying to portray a female role. In all versions of Twelfth Night, however, the roles are so convoluted that it is difficult to say which would be more believable: Viola/Cesario played by a female actress or male actor. For example, in Nunn’s film, the scene where Orsino is in the tub and asks young Cesario to help him bathe, it wouldn’t make any difference in believability whether the actor was male or female since our minds have already had to entertain the thought of Viola representing both a man and a woman. Others may disagree and say that the sex of the actor/actresses would not have an effect on their acceptance of the play. As previously stated, it is entirely a personal matter.

of the play. I will also explore the role the common man plays in the

It comprises of one act. In the content play of “Trifles”, male and female characters are plainly introduced as a binary pair of ‘unrivaled’ vs. ‘substandard’.

 In the plays female sexuality is not expressed variously through courtship, pregnancy, childbearing, and remarriage, as it is in the period.  Instead it is narrowly defined and contained by the conventions of Petrarchan love and cuckoldry.  The first idealizes women as a catalyst to male virtue, insisting on their absolute purity.  The second fears and mistrusts them for their

The theme for honour and fidelity apply for both men and women in Shakespeare’s play ‘much ado about nothing’. Honour and fidelity is represented very differently for men and women as it would have been for the people in Elizabethan times. In this first section of the essay, I will be exploring double standards and Shakespeare’s awareness of the double standards between sexes and his feminist approach, the differences of honour and fidelity for men and women and upper class and lower class comparisons.

The roles of the women in the drama are significant because of the way they shape the story and help the reader understand the nature of one of the strangest events in human history. Throughout the novel, women are portrayed in many different ways. Some are shown as being good and moral people while others the complete opposite. Arthur Miller's treatment of women in this play show women as weak beings who give into their husbands. Each women in the drama plays a significant role in showing the different archetypes there were among women especially Mary Warren, Elizabeth Proctor, and Abigail Williams. In addition, Kohlberg’s Moral Stages are six developmental stages of human moral reasoning which can tie into the view in which we have of the women in the play.

Much Ado About Nothing is one of Shakespeare’s more popular plays, a comedy loved by many, and produced still to this day. However, behind all the wordplay, misconception, and pranks Shakespeare successfully exposes the dark, ugly truth about gender roles and inequality within the Elizabethan society. The inequality of genders is prevalent in Beatrice’s language, how the male characters view women within the play, and the concept of honor.

The plot of both Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” and Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll House” provides scope for a few scenes that lack the presence of all or any men. These scenes, consisting of communication between the female characters, assist in developing the theme of women openly defying the fact that the society they live in is primarily run by men. All the power and authority in their society, no matter the situation, belongs to the men while the women are simply excluded. The women in these plays defy the norms set by society and manage to evade the expectations of their patriarchal societies.

Scholar Stephen Greenblatt, in Shakespearean Negotiations looks into the relationship between medical and theatrical practice, raising the questions: How does a play come to possess sexual energy? Quoting early modern physician Jacques Duval, Greenblatt gives an account that early modern anatomists believe that “erotic heat” is crucial in determining sexuality and gender. In fact, gender in the early modern period, as Greenblatt argues, is “teleologically male.” Through heat, according to Greenblatt, the struggle between male and female seed is determined and the male genital organ emerges from its “hidden” place. Linking the perspective of the medical discourse to theatrical practice, Greenblatt argues that the concept of individuation of

To get us started, how do the roles and identities of women in this play compare to that of the male figures?

Midterm: Much Ado About Nothing Classic, best-beloved, most popular, most entertaining, frequently preformed, funny- those are the descriptions used when recounting Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing. Written between 1598 and 1599, on the surface Much Ado About Nothing is simply a comedy that portrays various instances of love. However, it is much more than that; Much Ado brings to light the harsh cultural morals of the era in which it was written. Underneath the comedic nature of the play, Shakespeare examines the sociality gendered double standards, and how they affected his female characters. I plan to explore how others view the comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, specifically in relation to how they perceived the female characters,

This essay engages in a feminist analysis of The Reeve’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale. The specific goal is to unpack how the tales objectify women through instrumentality, ownership and denial of subjectivity and how simultaneously these tales can also defy the patriarchal master narrative in its problematizing of gender roles. In The Reeve’s Tale, the interactions between the three males in the story, Symkyn, Aleyn, and John, and the two females, Symkyn’s wife, and daughter Malyne is the primary focal point in female objectification.

During the time in which the play took place society frowned upon women asserting themselves.  Women were supposed to play a role in which they supported their husbands, took care of their children,

“How would a modern audience view this play in a different way to an audience in Shakespeare’s time, particularly in relation to the role and status of women and attitudes to marriage and courtship?

What I liked about most about this article was the used of psychology to help the reader fully grasp the characterization in the play. With the use of Freud, Erickson, and Kohlberg’s work we are shown that throughout history women have never been fully understood; leading them to be categorized as “less” than a man. The article also goes over how different the developmental years for males and females are because of gender roles placed on them. This helps to understand the built up frustration the murderess and women in the story felt. The underestimation and the belittlement the women experience from the men, their own husbands, leads up to them keeping the evidence to themselves and leaving the murder case