Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays.

[Surya Gayatri]

Shakespeare's evolving attitudes towards women


Marcelle Dupre (centre) played Juliet in a 1996 adaptation for the BBC



An actress and Shakespeare expert, Tina Packer has just published a new book - Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays.It looks at the way Shakespeare developed his female characters, and how his own views of women changed over time.

She says Shakespeare didn't understand women in the beginning of his career.

"I think something happened, somewhere around Love's Labour's Lost and the early history plays and going into Romeo and Juliet. Either he fell in love or he just grew up, but something happened to him where he suddenly 'got it' about women and there was a profound shift in his writing," she says.

"You see it in his first full blown version, in Juliet herself. Through her he began to take on what it meant to be a woman."


Juliet in the past...


... and Romeo and Juliet as played by Syrian refugees in 2015


Mark Ryland played Olivia in Twelfth Night in 2011 at the Globe Theatre. Most female roles in Shakespeare's time would have been played by young boys

But all the roles have one thing in common, Paster says.

"Whether they're mothers, ingenues or unruly woman, they are all women discovering how to find their way in the world. And it's a pretty tough world."

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32379759

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Really excellent read, expecially for the Shakespeare lovers out there.