Written Task Rationale: The format of this written task is me interviewing the three main characters that appear in one of the most famous plays of Shakespeare, Macbeth: Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and one of the witch from the three witches. The questions that I am focused on are the characterization of each character or about how they think about the other characters that appear in the play or thoughts on Shakespeare on how he described him or her self as a character appearing in the play. Interview with Macbeth Interviewer: What kind of characterization do you have in the play? Macbeth: In the beginning of the play, I am showed to the audience as a brave and capable warrior. The reason is that I am first heard in the wounded captain’s account
She has disturbed, horrified and intrigued both contemporary and modern audiences alike through her powerful diction. This study will focus on the way in which Shakespeare crafts his play and uses dramatic devices in his portrayal of Lady Macbeth in order to confront the gender stereotypes of the time, femininity and the natural order of society. During the early 17th century there was a substantial fear that if women were liberated from their domestic, maternal roles, the historically patriarchal society would unravel. With prevailing challenges of gender such as “When you durst do it, then you were a man” Shakespeare uses the character of Lady Macbeth to transgress the natural limits concomitant with her sex. In order to be able to answer the research question, it is vital to concretely establish the contemporary gender roles and the context of the play.
The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare explore an abundance of encounter to the rigidity of gender representation. Throughout many of his plays, Shakespeare depict gender role as not being a stereotype and the gender did not define who or how they act. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both display traits that are not the way how a male and female should act. Shakespeare proves that not all men can kill easily and how female aren’t fragile and innocent like they look. When the three witches first appearance they wasn’t acting like women suppose to act or look even like a woman should be.
Furthermore, men in the play are misogynistic. They do not care about Ophelia’s feelings, but are responsible for her eventual suicide. The misogyny (which is also present in other Shakespeare’s plays) can be best seen in Hamlet’s line "Frailty; thy name is woman." In 18th and 19th century novels, the predominance of male characters is also evident. Daniel Defoe puts a man (Robinson Crusoe) on a desolate island, Jonathan Swift
His father is dead and his uncle marries his mother. Then, he finds out that his uncle murdered his father for the crown. Many aspects of Shakespeare’s characterization of Hamlet in the play, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, point toward the idea of moral ambiguity. Not all people are purely evil or purely good, especially in Hamlet. Every character in the play is responsible for some sort of wrongdoing, but each character is a good person, excluding Claudius, manipulated by other characters with or without the character’s own knowledge.
The women in Macbeth are presented by Shakespeare to be powerful and ambitious which was unlike the typical views during Jacobean times. The playwright portrays Lady Macbeth and the witches to be highly influential to male characters in the play, which again contrasts the contemporary views to that time. Their ambition and power are demonstrated through the perversion of nature. This highlights the evil and immoral side, they possess. Shakespeare, however, presented Lady Macbeth and the witches to be manipulative and cunning, rather than violent like Macbeth was during the play.
Dracula strays far from the feminist ideal, painting Mina Murray, the fiancée of main character Jonathan Harker, as the “ideal” woman based off her role as an obedient wife and as a figure of purity. Jane Eyre shows a better portrayal of women, exploring Jane’s female relationships and providing a variety of characters that don’t quite fall into typical tropes, such as the pure maiden or the old hag. The Merchant of Venice proves to be more complicated; although Shakespeare often acknowledges the Elizabethan expectations for women, that they be docile and submissive, he rarely challenges societal norms in a way that inspires drastic changes, both inside his writing and outside in the real world. However, by writing realistic and fully human characters, Shakespeare created unique and varied women in his plays, which was a progressive act in and of
Shakespeare’s portrayal of Lady Macbeth is distant to the role that a Jacobean audience would be comfortable with women being in. In a time where “the repetition in a woman’s ear/would murder as it fell”; a woman readily savage and merciless caused a disturbance to their ideas of how a woman should behave. This makes Lady Macbeth one of the most striking villains in Shakespeare’s plays. Lady Macbeth’s entrance is her reaction to the letter sent by Macbeth in which he discloses the Witches’ prophecies. In this scene, Shakespeare’s use of diction presents Lady Macbeth as a calculative woman, who holds no qualms in manipulating her husband and chastising his character.
Role Reversal in Macbeth Stereotypes are preconceived notions identifiable in society and culture around the world. William Shakespeare utilizes the stereotypes in reference to gender roles in his romantic tragedy, Macbeth, to shape characters and advance plot. The typical characteristics between genders in the era in the play are initially revealed but are then readdressed thereafter in a complicated gender-role reversal which Shakespeare portrays the difference between women and men by how they derive the ultimate theme in Macbeth: power. To begin, Shakespeare employs his progressive view on gender in the play. Extending off of that point, Shakespeare wrote his plays in an era where women had been stereotyped as less intelligent and rational, therefore labelled as the weaker sex.
Shakespeare rarely wrote strong or interesting women, and due to the sexist mentality of his era, he could easily get away with this. His plays often depicted a very vivid image of gender roles in the time, explaining how women were treated and how, as a result, women acted. In one of his most successful plays, Hamlet, he portrays only two women in a very harsh light, mainly from the perspective of a man who hates women. The women of this play rarely think for themselves, and are constantly victimized by the mental