William Shakespeare 's Romeo And Juliet Essay

Shakespeare uses female characters in his plays to illustrate a point or affect the plot, just like in Richard III. The world that Shakespeare shows us in Richard III is a man's world. Women are presented as being on the sidelines to grieve, complain, or bury the dead. Richard views women as instruments, as shown when he announces his plots to the audience. For example, the marriage with Anne and Elizabeth are only moves in his quest of intrigue and power. There are three main females characters that affect the plot with their interactions with the main character. They are Anne, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Margaret.

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Women in Shakespearian plays have always had important roles. Whether they create the main conflicts and base of the plays, or bring up interesting proper and cultural questions, they have always been put in challenging situations. Some women are stronger than others, and their effect on the play is different for each one. One woman who plays a very important role in Shakespeare's plays is Cleopatra, in Antony and Cleopatra. Cleopatra is the dominant force in the play. Cleopatra takes on masculine qualities such as being bold, `alternative masculinity' and manhood of stronger determination. She is also viewed as a perfectionist. During the play many critics notice that Cleopatra and Antony switch roles, by Cleopatra acting more masculine, and Antony acting more feminine. Antony becomes jealous of Cleopatra because sometimes she acts more masculine than he does. Cleopatra is not dependant on anyone. Some critics say that Shakespeare discriminated against women because of his actions. He did not allow women to have a role in his play, nor let them have any say in his writings. He had boys or men play the parts of women until later on in his playwriting. Shakespeare favored men during his time period and was also very sexist.

William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet Romeo and Juliet loved each other, but they knew that it wouldn't be possible to have a relationship because of their feuding families. Their deaths were tragic, as it was mainly the people around them that made them so unhappy. They were so in love with each other that they took risks to be together, which lead to their unfortunate deaths. Romeo is a Montague. He falls in love with Juliet the moment he sees her at a Capulet ball.

Similar to the 1963 film Cleopatra, in Plutarch's The Life of Antony, sexism is maintained in the passage and compatible with its message. Through the author's portrayal of Cleopatra and Antony, he spreads the message that obsession with power is bad and the idea that manipulation and attempts at domination are signs of a bad ruler. Sexism is compatible with such messages because as indicated by Plutarch, Cleopatra utilizes sexist expectations of women in order to manipulate Antony through her aspirations of domination. Therefore, similar to the films Cleopatra and Quo Vadis, because Cleopatra is unsuccessful as she commits suicide in the end and is found "lying dead upon a golden couch," as well as is portrayed as an immoral ruler in

The portrayal of Shakespeare’s female roles in the plays Titus Andronicus and Julius Caesar, leave one to question his belief on gender equality. Even though both of these plays take place during the Elizabethan era in Rome, the depiction of women’s roles in each play is significantly different. The female leads, Tamora and Lavinia, in Titus Andronicus, exhibit strong and powerful personalities, which however contradict with the portrayal of women in his other plays. The different approach used in his play Julius Caesar, leaves the only two female characters, Calpurnia and Portia, with much less significant beliefs. Shakespeare’s purpose behind the different portrayals of women in each play is to appeal to diverse audiences.

“A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is a given. A woman is human.” This quote by Vera Nazarian relates all the way back to the beginning of time when women were treated as less than men. Some have argued that gender equality has always been an issue throughout our world and has never quite gone away. Gender Equality is a predominant issue in the Shakespeare play Hamlet as the two women leading roles, are characterized as weak, obedient, and are used as tools of manipulation by the men characters . Ultimately, Shakespeare illustrates a sympathetic image of Gertrude and Ophelia as their downfall can be based on how sexist men of this time were.

We also see here that Agrippa refers to Caesar as ‘great’ while Cleopatra is a ‘royal wench’, very emotive language that shows how lowly the Romans think of Cleopatra. This quote allows us to also see the power her sexuality has on the men, almost as if they are intentionally belittling her to make her appear less powerful as they are afraid of her true power over their leaders. The power of her sexuality alone does indeed stand as a threat to the triumvirs ruling the Roman Empire in 41 BC. Mark Antony’s personal lust after Cleopatra due to her sexual prowess leads to his imminent downfall and the consequential collapse of the triumvirate and the Roman Empire as it stood in 41 BC. Shakespeare’s plays, written in 17th century Britain, don’t often portray his woman as prostitute-type figures and this alone enables Cleopatra to have a certain level of dimension about her character. However, with Antony’s downfall, so too is she overthrown and it is revealed that she was predestined to fail as a powerful female figure, potentially due to her dependence on sexuality to bring about her power. Shakespeare’s Tragic Women supports this by saying “What little information we are given about what she was like before… suggests that she was self-indulgent and, by Roman standards at least, brazenly promiscuous.” This caricature of a sexually promiscuous, submissive woman is universally acknowledged in early age literature and common media and is a timeless

Coming to the Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, we once again come up with a character who is alienated but in this case it is not because of race or religion but because of gender. Shakespeare has a really funny way of developing his female characters. There are a few tropes that Shakespearean females fall under: the virgin, the mother, and the whore. What is particularly interesting about the characterization of Shakespearean females is that they rarely speak for themselves, but rather, are developed by how the men in the play perceive them. While this may create a biased interpretation of the character within the world of the play, the reader has the unique experience of finding the ways in which that female speaks for herself.

Sex, manipulation, selfishness, obsession, and dramatic interactions are all present in "Antony and Cleopatra" and "The Letters of Abelard and Heloise." The roles of women in society and conceptions of femininity in the eras of Cleopatra and Heloise were limited compared to today's standards. In Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra" and "The Letters of Abelard and Heloise," there are recurring images of women as well as conceptions that are unique to each text. In comparing and contrasting the parallel themes of the pieces, it is easy to see the overall themes of both works.

The binary oppositions of masculine and feminine are thus personified by Caesar and Cleopatra, not by Antony, whose men often regard him as the "pawn" of the deceptive queen and thus not a real man. On the contrary, Robert Miola says, "Caesar's sense of purpose and public responsibility directly opposes Cleopatra's love of idleness and luxury" (129), a conclusion supported by the fact that it is Caesar who, after the deaths of Antony and Cleopatra, provides some closure to the political chaos that has dominated the play.

In the opening of the play, Cleopatra is immediately described by Antony’s men as a ‘gypsy’ and ‘strumpet’ highlighting her mysteriousness and sensuality. As the ruler of a world foreign to the Romans, Cleopatra and her realm appears as a ‘dangerous mystique’. She becomes a figure of the forbidden to men, representing all that is prohibited but is longed for because it is repressed. Her capability to seduce the two most powerful men of Roman history engenders the Romans to view her as ‘cunning past man’s thought’. This immediately establishes Cleopatra as a powerful seductress, reinforcing the theme of power in the play. Enobarbus is one of the most significant characters in emphasising Cleopatra’s luxury and decadence. In Act 2, scene 2, he describes Cleopatra’s first meeting with Antony. ‘The barge’, ‘The poop was beaten gold’ and ‘lovesick’ all possess connotations of excess, demonstrating the Epicurean delights of Egypt. The references to immortality such as ‘Age cannot wither her’ and to ‘Venus’ the Goddess of love, sex and

It is a man’s world, right, because behind every strong man is an even stronger woman. However, in Shakespearean times women roles in plays were minimized but provided a strong impact on the characters, plot, and climax displaying their relevance to each play. Throughout history, Shakespeare developed a series of plays and considered one of the greatest writers in the English language, plus, the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. In society Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet are known for their tragic ends, however, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Othello resembles the drama and tragedy of the characters. As for the women in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” Hippolyta, Hermia, Helena, and Titania roles presented strength, love, devotion and a perplex balance in

As the ‘virgin queen’ she bore no heirs, and curiously Shakespeare’s works have a distinct lack of mother characters. Cleopatra, historically the mother of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony’s children, is only referred to as a matriarch once and briefly in this particular play. Motherhood was not a new theme for women characters, but power, lust, learnedness, intelligence, and ambition were somewhat more novel.

The prim and proper women and the strong and strapping men are no match for Shakespeare’s haze of character’s muddled together in Antony and Cleopatra. As always Shakespeare delivers a luminary cast of individuals that deviate from the socially accepted gender roles. As the audience works its way through the fierce genesis to the catastrophic resolution, it is made more than apparent that lines are being crossed all over society’s conformist board of gender specific expectations.