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Essay: Shakespearean Plays: Understanding Women’s Role in Elizabethan and Jacobean Times

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  • Published: 23 March 2023*
  • Last Modified: 22 July 2024
  • File format: Text
  • Words: 891 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 4 (approx)
  • Tags: Shakespeare essays

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The arguments presented in this extract from Lisa Jardine’s ‘Introduction to Still Harping on Daughters 1989’, is one that suggests that female characters in Shakespeare’s plays, subvert the existing views on women in society in late 16th and 17th century. Jardine exclaims that views concerning the position of women in society were well understood and established yet identifies that Shakespeare’s females are not reflective of the social sphere. In the collection of essays, she aims to provide a successional narrative that follows the journey of women’s perspective in literary representation by offering “alternative and corrective possibilities” to such readings. She challenges two schools of thought she calls: “perfectly reflecting glass” and the “distorted masculine view”, expressing in the introduction that she doesn’t completely identify with either, but instead takes aspects of the relevant theories proposed and provides a more practical, holistic understanding on the subject matter. Jardine explores the “interest shown in women through Elizabethan and Jacobean drama” with its relation to patriarchy’s underlying fear about the social changes that characterizes this period.
Unlike Jardine, Johnson suggests that Shakespeare is a ‘poet of nature’ as he “holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life”. Johnson essentially supposes that the characters in Shakespeare’s plays are universal and are not necessarily a reflection of the social scene. He believes “they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find…’. He proposes the idea that a character’s identity can resonate with all kinds of people across time as people “act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated”

Lisa Jardine explores the historical period of the late 16th century and 17th century in relation to the position of women and how that fits in with Shakespeare’s female characters. During this time, patriarchy was well established and men were seen as superior to women. This role was reaffirmed by religion, as it was believed God and nature instituted this authority. Aristotelianism, referring to the belief that women were incapable of reason was generally assumed and was reflected in both the public sphere and social life within the puritan communities and the general household. Therefore, it is widely accepted that in order to be a reflection of societies expectations of women, a woman’s role in drama should be rather submissive and non-conforming. However, for Shakespeare’s female characters this was not necessarily the case, as Jardine says in the quote he “does not mirror the social scene”. For example, take Macbeth where the three witches are characterized to depict a dark and mocking nature and Lady Macbeth taking a rather dominant figure in the play. Written in early 17th century, such powering female narratives would not only be uncommon in Jacobean drama but they challenge the idea of the contemporary woman question. The woman question was an intellectual dispute that spanned across the 1400s into the 1700s on the nature of women, leading feminist campaigns for social change well after the 1700s and into modern day. The question in theory was to look at the capabilities of women that would determine if they were to become active in society by studying, writing and governing in the same sphere as men. These are the patriarchal social changes Jardine refers to, that characterise this period in relation to the role of women in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.
Jardine basis her arguments through historicism as she explores genuine themes like patriarchy and social changes in this period instead of theoretical approaches that do not necessarily serve as a practical basis of criticism. Although Jardine does not explicitly say what she believes womanhood in drama is, she explores what and how it isn’t: “Shakespeare’s plays neither mirror the social scene, nor articulate explicitly any of the varied contemporary views on ‘the woman question’”. There is a consistency in her language that suggests the main aim of this text is to dispel restrictive views on women presented as the role women in drama subverts the societal understanding. The purpose of Jardine’s criticism is not to seek specific answers to any questions raised, as she implies that it is the reader’s job in the introduction, but by providing us with the relevant historical background, we can fully absorb the idea of womanhood through her “practical” possibilities. In this quotation, readers may find that there is accuracy in Jardine’s criticisms as it goes beyond her own personal thoughts and touches uses on societal realities faced by women to explore their role in drama.

In his ‘Preface to Shakespeare (1765)’ Samuel Johnson suggests that Shakespeare’s characters are representative of general nature, that all people can relate to. He famously calls Shakespeare “a poet of nature” for his ability to create an identity within his characters that will resonate with an audience across time and addresses questions of perennial importance in human existence. John’s preface was written over 200 years before Jardine’s, which is important to note when addressing the nature of his quotation in comparison to Jardine. Where Jardine believes that Shakespeare subverts the characterisation of women against societal views, Johnson’s quotation suggests that women in this era could still relate to the dramas

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