Gender Stereotypes In Elizabethan Plays

With great honor comes great responsibility. Sure, men had the honor of putting on shows with their other male cast members, but there was much to be done before a show was ready. Aside from having to wear ladies garments, men had to memorize hundreds of lines day in and day out for an upcoming show. And not only that, they were given so little time to memorize a show, sometimes they are only given a week to prepare. “Rehearsal time was minimal. Actors learned their parts in about a week; a leading man might have to memorize eight hundred lines a day.” (Epstein, p.48) An actor was responsible for preparing all of his lines and his blocking mostly on his own time. So who really had the shorter end of the stick? However, men were given a little
bit of slack with the fact that they had to prepare full-blown performances in a week or less. They were given actor “sides” to help them learn the show and create their character in so little time. Sides are written parts of the show script that only contained the actor’s own lines and their cue lines to enter and speak. This saved on the task of writing out the full scripts for each actor since there was no printing press at the time. This also saved on rehearsal times since an actor had to rehearse all of this on the majority of their own time so that when the troupe came together then their lines, cues, and blocking would have already been learned. Because men were given the spotlight during this time, they set up the representation of how women were portrayed and even viewed in society. For instance, since there were women characters in Elizabethan plays, men had the freedom to portray them in any way that that wanted.
And it just so happened that they created the stereotypical setup of how they thought women acted by displaying their biased, opinioned portrayals in a production. “Feminist critics have considered the implications of this complex sexual impersonation, arguing that representation of females by males reinforced stereotypes of women found in many Elizabethan plays,” (Wilson and Goldfarb, p. 183) For starters, women were portrayed in plays as weak, vulnerable, and even as whores in many production. In some productions women were called dim-witted and played off as prostitutes. It did not help much either that the reason they were kept off the stage in the first place was because society viewed women on the same ranks as whores already. “Most historians believe that the absence of female performers was a continuation of a medieval English tradition and also a result of the religious attitude toward actresses: it was contended that actresses were little better than whores.” (Wilson and Goldfarb, p. 183) Women were not worthy enough to act, thus allowing men to further generate societal gender stereotypes against women on the
stage.
To dig even deeper, cross dressing was used to help fool the audience into believing that these young men were playing women as unworthy and weak in a truthful manner. “The fact that women were not members of the Elizabethan companies has led to interesting discussions regarding the representation of female characters. Cross-dressing (that is, dressing as the opposite sex)—which in today’s drama has become a popular way to point out sexual stereotyping—had many reverberations in Shakespeare’s plays. (Wilson and Goldfarb, p. 183) An example of how women were being portrayed as lesser beings than man is in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. There is a scene between two servants, Sampson and Gregory, where they are discussing sexual activity and the subject of maidenhead. Sampson argues that he would cut off the heads of maidens and Gregory, confused, asks if he means cutting off the actual heads. In Sampson’s reply, he claims that he would either cut off a maid’s head or take away their “maidenheads.” Sampson is saying that because he is the stronger, male vessel, he could cut off a maids head or simply take away her maidenhead (virginity) because he has that right as man. “To participate in the masculine ethic of this play is to partake in the feud, which defines relations with women as controlling and violent, so that women in Sampson’s language ‘being the weaker vessels.’” (Egendorf, p. 134) Sampson is explaining that he holds enough power over women to partake in murder and sexual intercourse.
Some other play examples that show violence towards women are in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Othello. Hamlet shows violence towards his mother because she is the weaker being. Not only that, but he calls his mother out, as well as women as a whole, as being prostitutes, two faced and full of lust. “‘I heard of your paintings, well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig and amble, and you lisp; you nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t; it hath made me mad’ (III i. 143-48)” (Egendorf, p. 135) Hamlet says that his mother has created a new face for herself, showing that she is two-faced for creating an alternate from what God had given her. And because he now sees his mother as two-faced, he views her as a woman of deceit and one of ignorance. Not only that, the quote goes on to say “while lust ‘will state itself on a celestial bed and prey on garbage’ (I. v. 56-57). Like whores, all women cannot be trusted.” (Egendorf, p.135) once again, this connects back to how women were viewed as whores in society and it was certainly added into plays to remind society that they will be seen as whores on the stage too.
Othello is no stranger to making women appear as weak and promiscuous either. The character Iago tricks Othello into believing that his wife, Desdemona is sleeping with another man. Because Othello falls for this trick, Iago successfully makes it seem that Desdemona is a whore. Once Othello finds Desdemona he proceeds to kill her, showing one again that women are weak and can be broken. He no longer saw his wife as the woman he married because of this little trick, rather he saw her as a whore that must be murdered. “Murder in this light is a desperate attempt to control” (Egendorf, p. 137) Othello killed his wife to show his male dominance and to further prove that women were powerless under male dominance.
The final example that shows the portrayal of women as pitiful and dim-witted is in Shakespeare’s King Henry VI. In part three of the play, a female character named Margaret is a warrior and she is accompanied by her son who discarded Henry’s attempts at a compromise. She talks about her weakness in one of her lines: “Had I been there, which am a silly woman, the soldiers should have toss’d me on their pikes before I would have granted to the act; but thou prefer’st thy life before thine honour (I. i. 250-3)” (Bassnett, p. 26) Margaret clearly came right out and stated that she was silly. Also, by saying that the soldiers should have tossed her on their pikes is saying that she was actually quite worthless and that the soldiers could just do away with her. The last example in King Henry VI is in York’s speech about Margaret. “And yet be seen to bear a woman’s face? Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible; thou stern, indurate, flinty, rough, remorseless. (I. i. 137-42)” (Bassnett, p. 26) York is calling her less than a woman, which is obviously a worse insult because women were already seen as low and worthless. He is basically saying she is a disgrace for not bearing the weak qualities that a woman does and also stating that it is an offense if a woman bears any similar qualities to that of a man (stern, rough, remorseless). Overall, women were being portrayed as soft and pitiful things in some shows, whereas, they were portrayed as whores and ones that should be shown violence towards. Men were given female roles and were allowed to portray these roles any way that they liked. It did not help that the roles were also written to show the weakness of women. Both of these factors contributed to how society viewed women in a stereotypical light and degrading their honor.
In conclusion, Queen Elizabeth was a huge supporter of the arts and paved the way for Elizabethan Theatre.
The overarching research question, what is the intersection of women in Elizabethan acting practices, specifically the role of censorship via the Master of Revels, between representation and casting female roles in Elizabethan theatre was covered through the explanation of who The Master of Revels were and how women were portrayed. Elizabethan acting practices, specifically the role of censorship through the Master of Revels, between representation and casting female roles set up Elizabethan theatre and how it was made as well as viewed during the Elizabethan Era. This is all very important in understanding Elizabethan Theatre because it showed just how women were being viewed and portrayed. It is important to look into how society looked at women to understand the societal stereotyping that emerged from this form of
theatre