Was Shakespeare Misogynist?

by M

So many 'scandalous' question surround Shakespeare because we're fascinated by his personal life but know so little about him. Was Shakespeare gay? A spy for the Queen? An atheist? Was Shakespeare... misogynist?

We will never know for sure if Shakespeare was misogynist or not - we weren't there. All we can do is decide for ourseleves whether his plays present a misogynist viewpoint. Obviously my opinion holds no authority, as I am most definitely not a Shakespearian scholar! But, from my research, perhaps you can decide for yourselves?

What is misogyny?

First, let’s set up a working definition of “misogyny”. This is tricky, because the concepts of sexism, feminism, misandry and misogyny didn’t fully exist in Shakespeare’s era – roughly the second half of the 1500s. However, as misogyny is simply the hatred of women, we can break it down into testable elements.

To rephrase the original question: did Shakespeare exclude women, commit violence towards women (characters) and/or portray women as inferior to men?

Did Shakespeare Exclude Women?

Certainly, the ratio of men to women characters tends to be rather imbalanced. In Antony and Cleopatra, only two of the ten lead characters are female. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, there are four female characters, compared to thirteen men. This seems suspicious – until we remember that, until the reign of Charles II (1649 – 1651) women were not allowed to participate in the theatre. Instead, adolescent boys played the part of women in wigs, skirts and make-up. Shakespeare was both playwright and actor with the Lord Chamberlain’s Theatre so he was surely aware that it would be unwise to write more female parts than there were “females” in the company. Hence, the relative lack of women’s roles.

(As an aside - Certain theatre groups strive to create historically accurate representations of Shakespeare performed by an all-male cast. The Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company has been doing something of the opposite for over eighteen years and is supposedly fantastic!)

Did Shakespeare Commit Violence Towards His Female Characters?

If Shakespeare were misogynist, it would likely reflect in his treatment of his female characters. Many of them come to violent ends, but this is also true for many of the male characters – and indeed, nearly any character from one of the Tragedies.

One of the main trials aristo women in Shakespeare's day face was that they were “educated to be proficient members of society only to be silenced at the hand of a husband they often did not desire.” [Jamie Bence, winner of the 2005 Shakespeare Fellowship Essay Contest!] At the time of Shakespeare, Elizabethan society was in the process of change all this, as arranged marriages began to give way to marriages of love.

It's interesting, then, that Shakespeare wrote an entire play about – on the surface, at least – the need for men to tame women. Katherina, from The Taming of the Shrew, is often cited as an example of women’s abuse at the hands of men. At the play’s beginning, she is notoriously witty, arguably misanthropic and decidedly not interested in propriety. Only after Petruchio conquers her (in every sense of the word) does she act sweet and gentle. Her famous speech in the play’s conclusion seems greatly at odds with her original personality, for she gives lengthy praise of men and explanation of women’s inferiority, claiming, “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper [...]”.

In fact, the extremities to which Katherina is pushed (deprived by her dear husband of food and sleep) and her subsequent adoration of her husband is so ridiculous that the play is often interpreted as a satire, indeed, a satire damning misogyny.

As director Conall Morrison writes, it’s difficult to believe that “the man who would be interested in Benedict and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet and all these strong lovers would have some misogynist aberration. [The Taming of the Shrew is] very obviously a satire on this male behaviour and a cautionary tale [...] That's not how he views women and relationships, as demonstrated by the rest of the plays.”

As Morrison indicates, Shakespeare gives positive characteristics to many female characters. Yet Shakespeare also acknowledges that, like men, women have the capacity to commit evil acts. Lady Macbeth is often acknowledged as a supreme villainess: ruthless, cunning and quite arguably an abusive wife. Regan and Goneril, the daughters of King Lear, are cruel and disrespectful to their aged father, while their sister Cordelia is entirely loving and sweet. There is no single ‘female’ character type in Shakespeare’s works.

Are The Women in Shakespeare’s Plays Inferior to the Men?

Having varied character types means little if the men are consistently more intelligent/passionate/strong/evil/[your adjective here]. That is, if men are consistently, shall we say, the ones wearing the trousers. Let’s look at one of the most famous pairings from Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet. Romeo is believed to be about sixteen years old; Juliet is thirteen. (The play is clearly set in Italy, which, at the time, was assumed by the general populace of England to be an exotic, passionate place. Thus, while thirteen would be far too young for an English girl to wed, it was acceptable for an Italian.) Though Romeo is the older of the two, he also acts more impulsively and passionately than Juliet does. He abandons his love for Rosalind the moment he sees Juliet, murders two men in the heat of the moment and is the first to initiate contact between he and Juliet. Neither of the two show exceptionally great foresight or judgment, but Juliet only takes the desperate action of faking her own death when she sees no other alternative. She is the stable element of their relationship, but clearly more than just a pretty little face.

Within the Shakespearian comedies, a common plot device involves switching identities and the ensuing hilarity. In no less than five of his plays, the identity switch involves a woman posing as a man or taking on a masculine role. Within each play, the woman not only passes as man, but also is regarded as an excellent man! We may as well, in the interests of research, insert a Blackadder clip for the sheer fun of it :)

Shipwrecked in a foreign land, Viola, the heroine of Twelfth Night, dresses as a man in order to provide for herself with a job in the Duke’s household. Portia, from The Merchant of Venice, goes to court to save her father and argues with supreme wit. To escape her murderous husband, the falsely accused Imogene of Cymbeline gets up the guts to escape across Wales, hiding her panic so well within her boyish disguise that she fools her own brothers. And so on it goes.

There are, of course, the Helenas and Biancas within the world of Shakespeare – the sappy, insipid mimsies interested only in their True Love and/or family fidelity – but so too are there the dull-witted Bottoms and Parises.

So, was Shakespeare a misogynist? Maybe, maybe not. Nevertheless, it looks like his plays weren’t!

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