Shakespeare's Representation of Women | Michael Jamieson (essay date 1964)
Michael Jamieson (essay date 1964)
SOURCE: "Shakespeare's Celibate Stage," in The Seventeenth-Century Stage: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Gerald Eades Bentley, University of Chicago Press, 1968, pp. 70-93.
[In the following essay, Jamieson explores ways that ihaving young male performers enact female role affected Shakespeare's presentation of women characters.]
The Characters of Women, on former Theatres, were perform'd by Boys, or young Men of the most effeminate Aspect. And what Grace, or Master-strokes of Action can we conceive such ungain Hoydens to have been capable of? This Defect was so well consider'd by Shakespear, that in few of his Plays, he has any greater Dependance upon the Ladies, than in the Innocence and Simplicity of a Desdemona, an Ophelia, or in the short Specimen of a fond and virtuous...
[The entire page is 7057 words long]
Navigate
