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The Development of Women in Shakespeare's Comedies

In the Medieval and Renaissance Ages, many women were considered chattel and property. Women were the weaker sex, not educated, and considered weaker not only of body but also of mind. Correspondingly, women were not allowed to perform on stage, giving rise to the speculation that women characters were given short shrift by the playwrights. Not so, Shakespeare, although using boys to play his female characters, gave his female roles the depth and breadth of human experience. These women were not browbeaten or broken, but were high-spirited, witty, and intelligent beings. This paper will compare Kate, Portia, and Rosalind, while showing the process Shakespeare used to develop such memorable characters.

One of the first comedies Shakespeare wrote, The Taming of the Shrew, is plot driven not character driven. The plot derived from the name of the play shows Petruchio taming Kate. The comedy centers on her disposition. Shakespeare does not fill out Kate's character but uses broad strokes to identify one deplorable aspect of her temperament. When she says to her father, "Is it your will/ To make a stale of me amongst these mates?" (I.i. 57-8) Kate shows a vulnerability to her father. She continues this vulnerability when she accuses her father that "she is your treasure, . . . I must dance barefoot on her wedding-day,/ And for your love to her lead apes in hell" (II.i.32-34) But, she reaffirms the opinions conceived by her fathers' friends when she rails at them "to comb your noodle with a three-legg'd stool,/ And paint your face, and use you like a fool" (64-5). Further, Shakespeare's broad strokes include using the testimony of others to confirm Kate's nature. For example, Hortensio tells Petruchio that Kate is "renown'd in Padua for her scolding tongue" (I.ii.100). However, when Petruchio trains his "hawk" Kate reveals the positive side to her temperament. Her capitulation speech shows a fierce intelligence and a high-spiritedness that is not broken but trained to function properly in her society.

Although Kate is an interesting character, Shakespeare did not provide more information about Kate than would exceed the plot. Simplified, shrew meets man, shrew is tamed. However, in The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare uses character development to drive the two inherent stories contained in the plot. The character essential to both stories, Portia, contains dimension that makes her interesting in her own right. She starts

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