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It is a peculiar feature of Shakespeare's plays that they both participate in and reflect the ideas of gender roles in Western society. To the extent that they reflect existing notions about the 'proper' roles of men and women, they can be said to be a product of their society. However, since they have been studied, performed, and taught for five hundred years, they may be seen as formative of contemporary notions about the relationships between males, females, and power. Derrida was right in asserting that 'there is no 'outside' to the text. ' His claim is that every text is affected by every other text and every other speech act.
As an instance, most of Shakespeare's plays have traceable sources for their central plots. Representations of gender in Renaissance drama are tied to their original presentation: 'bearing the traces of their history in a theatrical enterprise which completely excluded women, (these texts) construct gender from a relentlessly anglocentric perspective' (Helms 196). It is the ways in which these texts reflect or distort the gender expectations of society, either Elizabethan or contemporary, that is so important. Comedy that centers on the relationship between conventional couples rather than on resolution of the situation that keeps them apart is really quite difficult to find in Shakespeare. Ferdinand and Miranda are so uninteresting as a couple that their chief function seems to be as an excuse for Prospero to exhibit his art. The lovers in Midsummer Night's Dream are certainly at their most entertaining when they " re in love with the wrong person.
It is the exaggerated character -- Falstaff, Petruchio, Paulina, or Cleopatra -- or those who step outside the borders of their assigned gender roles -- Rosalind, Portia, Viola -- who generate the greatest theatrical and critical interest. Elizabethan society had a loosely determined set of normal behaviors that are frequently linked to gender. Despite diffusion of these gender expectations in both time periods (see Dollimore, Traub), there are definite behaviors that either lie within the constructs of gender or exceed / transgress patterns accepted as conventional. Through the mechanisms of exaggeration or transgression, Shakespeare's comedies focus attention on the matter of gender and derive comedy from the situations created.
Characters that are natural representations of their gender do not contain the same possibilities for comedy. Beatrice says 'O, that I were a man' (Much Ado About Nothing, IV. i. 303), implying in context that her gender has made it impossible for her to act. Other female characters in Shakespeare do take on male roles, and whether it is because their true identity is hidden or simply by virtue of their acceptance as non-female, they are able to function in the text in ways that an undisguised female character could not. Rosalind/Ganymede instructs Orlando in the ways of love. Viola/Cesario enters Orsino's house and, consequentially, his heart.
Portia argues a case at law; actually serving as a judge in a dispute involving her new husband's best friend. In assuming a man's role, these women overcome the limitations to which Beatrice finds her sex subjected. When male characters assume feminine characteristics these are seen as an impediment to action (or inaction is seen as womanish). In Tro. act I, Troilus has not taken the field because he is hopelessly in love with Cressida. He describes the experience as unmanning, as depriving him of his masculinity.
When Aeneas asked why he is not in the day's battle Troilus identifies himself as 'this woman... / because womanish it is to be from thence' (I. i. 106). He finds he cannot behave as a man should, because a woman exerts an authority over him. Troilus' weakness is paralleled and emphasized in Ulysses' figuration of Achilles who 'Grows dainty of his worth, and in his tent/ Lies mocking our designs. With him Patroclus/ Upon a lazy bed the livelong day/ Breaks scurrile jests' (I. iii. 145 - 148).
Both men are warriors, both are unmanned by affection. Achilles' dalliance with Patroclus carries with it the additional 'signifying burden of the 'unnatural'' (Traub 73), but the trope remains the same. Achilles and Troilus are neglecting their duties as warriors because of a physical attraction, and in each case it is seen as 'womanish' or 'dainty. ' Patroclus himself tells Achilles 'A woman impudent and mannish grown/ Is not more loath'd than an effeminate man/ in time of action' (III. iii. 217 - 219). Achilles is slow to be moved, however; when he expresses a desire to see the Trojan heroes it is 'a woman's longing... To see great Hector in his weeds of peace' (III.
iii. 237, 239). It is only when their objects of desire are removed that Troilus and Achilles resume their 'manly' duties; Achilles upon Patroclus' death, and Troilus after the trauma of seeing Cressida with Diomede. Neither Helen nor Cressida live up to the expectations forced upon them, but they do not fail to fit the stereotypes of femininity that the Elizabethan stage forces upon women in general. Cressida has by that point in history become synonymous with female infidelity, while Helen's status has been more privileged. However, 'the Elizabethan &n...
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Research essay sample on Gender Roles In Shakespeare
