Gender is society's dictation of how an individual should act, in accordance with their sex. Shakespeare challenges the assumptions made about gender in his own society. He presents gender as a changeable trait, not necessarily corresponding to the sex of the character. Furthermore, he presents gender in a way contradictory to the conventions of his time, through the use of disguise. In Elizabethan times, women were not allowed to act on stage, and society considered them to be the weaker sex, who needed to be looked after, or 'owned' by men. ...

• Word Count: 2131
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Some of the most interesting female characters in Shakespeare's writing are Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Viola and Olivia in Twelfth Night, and Gertrude, the Queen of Denmark and Hamlet's mother, in Hamlet. ... In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the reader recognizes right away that Hermia is not ordinary woman. ... In Twelfth Night, the reader meets two female characters who are different from Hermia in many ways, but who are affected similarly by the constrictions of the dominant social norms that determined how women should act and what they could reasonably expect fr...

• Word Count: 2208
• Approx Pages: 9
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Graduate

When looking at the similarities between Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and As You Like It, the most obvious connections lie in the manner in which the two main female roles both disguise themselves as men within the plays. ... Throughout Twelfth Night Shakespeare examines patterns of love and courtship through a repositioning of traditional Elizabethan gender roles. ... Twelfth Night is not without its own homoerotic subtext. ...

• Word Count: 1484
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate