Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays: Annotated Bibliography

Dusinberre, Juliet. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women. Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.

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The source gives a lengthy analysis of feminism of Shakespeare's plays and his contemporaries. The author argues on sexuality teaching and the spiritual equality that raises questions about women, where the role of women in relation to authority structures is constantly renegotiated. Using a critical language, Shakespeare and the Nature of Women argues that Renaissance drama highlights ways in which the feminine and the masculine are socially constructed. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women claimed for women a right to speak about the literary text from their own place in history and culture. Traces of contemporary developments in the feminist scholarship can be traced supporting the main thesis of the book which is Renaissance feminism, feminist Shakespeare.

McManus, Clare. "Shakespeare and Gender: the 'Woman's Part.'" Shakespeare, vol. 99, no. 5, 15 Mar. 2016, doi:10.1542/peds.99.5.e2.

The article tries to explain to the reader on how during the Shakespeare's time, female parts were acted by male ctors, while more recently, actresses have taken on some of his most famous male roles such as Hamlet and Julius Caesar. The article shows how Shakespearean performance is an arena for exploring desire, sexuality and gender roles for challenging audience expectations, especially when it comes to the female performer. The tries to explain to us how by the 20th century, women role had changed where star actresses had started to take male parts. It opens the reader to focus on the presence of the role of the female in acting connecting to the rich history of female Hamlets and interrogating the opportunities open to women in the early 21st century.

Kemp, Theresa D. Women in the Age of Shakespeare. Greenwood, 2010.

The source provides an overview of the role of women in society from the period of classical antiquity through the medieval period. The author tries to explain to the reader about Shakespeare's women who have been adopted by every succeeding era. Female characters in his time have tried to be changed in relation to changing ideas about women. Shakespeare's women can testify on the experiences and cultural expectations set for women both in the time of Shakespeare and later ages. The source also introduces the readers to some of the issues related to the study of women in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras in general and Shakespeare's works in particular. It is also a good source to look at some of the sources for ideas about women in Shakespeare's time and in his plays. It also traces the responses of critics, readers, performers, and viewers of Shakespeare's women throughout the ages.

Rackin, Phyllis. "Anti-Historians: Women's Roles in Shakespeare's Histories." Theatre Journal, vol. 37, no. 3, 1985, pp. 329-344. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3206852.

The article is a good source that the author uses tell about women's roles in Shakespeare's Histories. According to the article, no woman is the protagonist in a Shakespearean history play. Renaissance gender role definitions prescribed silence as a famine virtue, and Renaissance sexual mythology associated the feminine with body and matter as opposed to masculine intellect and spirit. The author explains to the reader on how within the historical record, women had no voice. Men were considered as tools of authority. Readers can learn from the article that speech at this particular period was an expression of authority, but male speech has been considered to represent legitimate authority while female speech attempts to usurp authority or rebel against it. Most of Shakespeare's history plays were inevitably male but the women who do appear are typically defined as opponents and subverters of the historical and historiographic enterprise-in short, as anti-historians but Shakespeare a voice of challenging the masculine historical record.

Packer, Tina. Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays. Vintage, 2015.

In this article, Packer shows that Shakespeare in the plays considers women as sweet little things with no definable independent thought. It shows the first woman character that Shakespeare ever created. The article can be used to feed the readers with a different notion about the role of men and women in society as the author shows that Shakespeare's imagination, his creative knowledge and how women featured in his plays showed clear that women just like men should have equal status towards changing the world.

The article references play an important in explaining the different character's actions in the play 'The Tempest'. Society has used social status and gender to manipulate others and control others. Men tend to believe that the role of women should be to listen to them even though they do not want. For example, in the play, Prospero who is the protagonist and the main character in the story, we see some growth in character where he goes from being an unsympathetic character to a much more sympathetic and likable character with redeeming characteristics that can be seen to control other people. He is the main character in the play and so much of the character analysis can be considered on him as an individual who tries to manipulate others and exercise power and control over the lives of others. The same case with the article references, Shakespeare's main aim in his plays and on the role of women wanted to show that women should be given the same role as men as a way of positively changing the world. Based on the scenes of the play, it is clear that we all need each other despite our gender to initiate some creative knowledge and have a sense of a larger spiritual good and having men and women with equal status.

References

Dusinberre, Juliet. Shakespeare and the Nature of Women. Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.

Kemp, Theresa D. Women in the Age of Shakespeare. Greenwood, 2010.

McManus, Clare. "Shakespeare and Gender: the 'Woman's Part.'" Shakespeare, vol. 99, no. 5, 15 Mar. 2016, doi:10.1542/peds.99.5.e2. https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/shakespeare-and-gender-the-womans-partPacker, Tina. Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays. Vintage, 2015.

Rackin, Phyllis. "Anti-Historians: Women's Roles in Shakespeare's Histories." Theatre Journal, vol. 37, no. 3, 1985, pp. 329-344. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3206852.