Strategies of Female Disguise in Shakespearean Comedy PDF Download

Author: Janet Kelly
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Author: Anja Hempel
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640850270
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 33

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Essay from the year 2009 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, Free University of Berlin (Englische Philologie), course: Seminar "Shakespeare and Women", language: English, abstract: In the Renaissance, the ideal of same-sex friendship between men was highly valued (cf. Kaplan 312). William Shakespeare referred to this theme in many of his literary works. In particular, his sonnets dedicated to the "Fair Lord" have provoked debates about the writer's own sexuality. But the idea of "the other I" presented in the sonnets and included in most of Shakespeare's plays is not limited to male friendship alone. Shakespearean drama offers many instances of affection or at least solidarity between women as well. " J]ust as Shakespeare seems to pull free of the strictly classical dramatic forms, so too does he free himself of the purely neo-Platonic expression and uses of friendship" (Longo 8). Feminist criticism perceives the women in Shakespeare's plays, in particular in the comedies, as powerful and dominant (cf. Berggren 18). Often cross-dressing appears to be the strategy that allows them to break with the traditional female role comprising the in the Renaissance still prevailing "virtues of silence, obedience and chastity" (McFeely 8) . "By obscuring their own sex, the heroines gain extraordinary access to the men they love..." (Berggren 22). But besides male disguise, relationships among women give strength to each other. All in all, nineteen of Shakespeare's plays include intimate talks between women which take place in private and refer to very personal issues (cf. McKewin 119). In the following, I will analyse the relationships that exist among the women in Shakespeare's problem play All's Well That Ends Well. They can be considered particularly important, as due to the complete absence of cross-dressing in the play, they play an exceptional role in empowering the heroine. Helena "breaks out of both the cultural (historical) and psychic (transhistor

Author: Anja Hempel
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640849973
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 15

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Book Description
Essay from the year 2009 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, Free University of Berlin (Englische Philologie), course: Seminar "Shakespeare and Women", language: English, abstract: In the Renaissance, the ideal of same-sex friendship between men was highly valued (cf. Kaplan 312). William Shakespeare referred to this theme in many of his literary works. In particular, his sonnets dedicated to the “Fair Lord” have provoked debates about the writer’s own sexuality. But the idea of “the other I” presented in the sonnets and included in most of Shakespeare’s plays is not limited to male friendship alone. Shakespearean drama offers many instances of affection or at least solidarity between women as well. “[J]ust as Shakespeare seems to pull free of the strictly classical dramatic forms, so too does he free himself of the purely neo-Platonic expression and uses of friendship” (Longo 8). Feminist criticism perceives the women in Shakespeare’s plays, in particular in the comedies, as powerful and dominant (cf. Berggren 18). Often cross-dressing appears to be the strategy that allows them to break with the traditional female role comprising the in the Renaissance still prevailing “virtues of silence, obedience and chastity” (McFeely 8) . “By obscuring their own sex, the heroines gain extraordinary access to the men they love...” (Berggren 22). But besides male disguise, relationships among women give strength to each other. All in all, nineteen of Shakespeare’s plays include intimate talks between women which take place in private and refer to very personal issues (cf. McKewin 119). In the following, I will analyse the relationships that exist among the women in Shakespeare’s problem play All’s Well That Ends Well. They can be considered particularly important, as due to the complete absence of cross-dressing in the play, they play an exceptional role in empowering the heroine. Helena “breaks out of both the cultural (historical) and psychic (transhistorical) strictures applied to women ... by the assertion of desire” (Asp 75). Her determined way of wooing Bertram makes him an object and thus a reversal of traditional roles takes place. The audience experiences All’s Well That Ends Well from a female desiring perspective. That makes the play unique within Shakespeare’s canon (cf. Asp 74) and makes the careful consideration of the background allowing this changed perspective inevitable.

Author: Christian Eric Carson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Love in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Author: Alexander Leggatt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521779425
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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An accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's comedies, dark comedies and romances, first published in 2001.

Author: Victor Oscar Freeburg
Publisher: Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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A comparative study of the five types of disguises and plot patterns found in Elizabethan drama. Specifically examines the female page, the boy bride, the rogue in multi-disguise, the spy in disguise, and the lover in disguise.

Author: Magdalena Cieslak
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498563759
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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When adapting Shakespeare's comedies, cinema and television have to address the differences and incompatibilities between early modern gender constructs and contemporary cultural, social, and political contexts. Screening Gender in Shakespeare’s Comedies: Film and Television Adaptations in the Twenty-First Century analyzes methods employed by cinema and television in approaching those aspects of Shakespeare's comedies, indicating a range of ways in which adaptations made in the twenty-first century approach the problems of cultural and social normativity, gender politics, stereotypes of femininity and masculinity, the dynamic of power relations between men and women, and social roles of men and women. This book discusses both mainstream cinematic productions, such as Michael Radford's The Merchant of Venice or Julie Taymor's The Tempest, and more low-key adaptations, such as Kenneth Branagh's As You Like It and Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing, as well as the three comedies of BBC ShakespeaRe-Told miniseries: Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. This book examines how the analyzed films deal with elements of Shakespeare's comedies that appear subversive, challenging, or offensive to today's culture, and how they interpret or update gender issues to reconcile Shakespeare with contemporary cultural norms. By exploring tensions and negotiations between early modern and present-day gender politics, the book defines the prevailing attitudes of recent adaptations in relation to those issues, and identifies the most popular strategies of accommodating early modern constructs for contemporary audiences.

Author: Annika Bolten
Publisher: Grin Publishing
ISBN: 9783656302841
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Wuppertal, language: English, abstract: Women mistaken for men, men mistaken for women, disguised as men - this play with identity and gender does not seem to be a new topic for the theatre audience of the 21. century. But in Elizabethan England, where identity and the question of class were very important for society, these confusing relationships shown on stage must have been puzzling. Although confusions over identity are nothing new in comedy since classical times, it is Shakespeare who mainly focused on the issue of gender in his comedies. In 'Twelfth Night' he plays with the cultural constructions of his time, for example the question of gender and erotic attraction, even between partners of the same sex.

Author: G. Beiner
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
ISBN: 9780838634677
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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"As the poetics is based on the texts (not derived by deduction or theoretical extension from some principle of poetics), so it is applied as a tool of analysis to the texts and used in conjunction with evaluation. The underlying assumption is that the task of poetics is instrumental, and that its usefulness has to be demonstrated and verified in practice. Hence, the division of the book into two parts. As Part I formulates a poetics on the basis of the texts, so Part II applies the poetics to the major texts - always within the dynamics of the multiple-plot and multi-layered perspective on a play. Part II focuses in detail on The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night, analyzing the agons and placing them in relation to the comedy of love and the perspective of folly."--Jacket.

Author: Dusica Marinkovic-Penney
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640177460
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 24

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Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen (Anglistik), course: Hauptseminar: The History of British Comedy, language: English, abstract: This paper will examine the four female characters of William Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream which is one of the early comedies of the playwright. Here we encounter four main female characters who come from three different backgrounds. While Hippolyta is about to be married to Theseus, one can say that she represents the leadership in the mortal world. Titania is another leading character who is the queen of the fairy land. Hermia and Helena represent young women who are trying to find the right partner for themselves. As in many Shakespeare’s comedies, the married couples are confronted with a certain problem that seems to endanger their marriage, while the unmarried people make choices that are not accepted or a confusing love constellation exists, for instance the “love chain” that can be found in this play, where Helena loves Demetrius who loves Hermia who loves Lysander. The play can be divided into three parts: at the beginning we face a world of Athens, where life is organized by law; the middle part of the play takes place in the magical wood where the fairies control the irrational events and cause a lot of discord, and finally a return to the ‘normal’ world occurs where all the mismatched couples can resolve their troubles and a triple wedding takes place which is the ultimate happy end for a comedy of Shakespeare’s times. All four female characters will be analyzed in all three stages of the play: before the magic intervention of the fairy king, during the confusion caused by him and after the initial conditions are restored. Hippolyta remains the only character who is not manipulated by the love potion. The female characters will be analyzed according to their behavior, their image of themselves and the relationship to the men. Each character will be introduced and analyzed in a separate chapter. The goal is to find parallels and contrasts between these characters which will be presented in the conclusion of this paper.