William Shakespeare: An Analysis of his Progressive Messages It was not until the 20th century that the topic of poor treatment towards minorities and women began to make recurring appearances in legislation and US Supreme Court decisions. Minority ethnicities and religions, as well as races, began to obtain more rights and experience less discrimination due to progress in legislation. Before the 20th century, most ethnicities, races, and women were viewed as subordinates and accepted that position because they had no opportunity to move up the socioeconomic ladder and lacked the means to fight against the system that disenfranchised them.
Unbeknownst to most, several of these explosive topics were addressed in literature over 300 years prior to the first glimmer of equality. William Shakespeare, who wrote his famous plays in the 16th and 17th centuries, actually addressed several major social problems in Europe including the degrading treatment of women, the inhumane views on blacks and the poor, and the intolerance towards outside religions. William Shakespeare’s display of minorities in his works mirrored his own abhorrence for the prevalent social disparities and inequalities which now define American culture.
He was, by addressing such contentious subjects in his time, being both a progressive and a bold author. In three of his most controversial plays–The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, and The Merchant of Venice– Shakespeare successfully addressed several social inequalities that mirror issues of today without major backlash, making him arguably the most progressive author of his time. William Shakespeare was born into one of the busiest time periods in English history; the peak of the Renaissance, the beginnings of the slave trade, and the age of divine right in the English monarchy.
It is no surprise that his writing reflects every aspect of his time, for he drew inspiration from his surroundings in all of his literature. Some of the most direct literary influences on his stylistic choices were Marlowe, Chaucer, and the English Bible. Most notable was Chaucer, who gave Shakespeare his most original quality in writing, “the representation of change by showing people pondering their own speeches and being altered through that consideration”(Chapter III). Few authors of his time period developed such dynamic characters as he did.
Shakespeare was famous for his characters’ depth and brevity; they often speak in exhaustive monologues so that the audience may understand better what is going on in the character’s head. Shakespeare also found inspiration in nature (for example, no other playwright mentions birds more than Shakespeare) and the marvel of humankind was clearly ever-present in his mind, due to his biblical influences. His appreciation of mankind may also be due to his everyday surroundings; Europeans were making huge strides in technology as it became common practice to sail across the Atlantic for trade.
That, along with the end of several European wars, made England a thriving country for Renaissance connoisseurs like Shakespeare, “England was slowly emerging as a modern nation state, one where the arts were becoming more and more popular”(Rackin). The juxtaposition of wealth and poverty and love and hate of his time became the central focus of many of his plays. He took the truth that was occurring all around him- blatant racism, sexism, discrimination against outside religion- and wrote about it.
Shakespeare did what no other author dared to do in his era, and that was address controversial issues that were present in his surroundings in humorous or dramatic scenarios in his writing. The most obvious expressed issue in Shakespeare’s plays is the concept of women’s equality, it is the central focus of The Taming of the Shrew, but also makes subtler appearances in other plays as well. Feminism did not begin in any organized form until 1848 with the Seneca Falls convention, and “women began to realise that in order to transform society they would need their own organisations to do so”(Greenberg).
Knowing this, it is obvious that feminism did not exist during Shakespeare’s era, and he was essentially doing something no one had ever had the gall to attempt before. In The Taming of the Shrew, he created a strong willed woman who voiced her opinions and refused to be married off like a object. Most notable in this play is how Shakespeare presents the men; each one in the play is powerful, wealthy, handsome, or a combination of the three, as there is no man that does not have some ability to get what he wants.
Yet Shakespeare uses extreme amount of humor, much of it crude due to his being influenced by Marlowe, and intelligent female characters to make the men seem like egotistical idiots. It may have been a social norm to act like an arrogant fool in the Renaissance, but as time goes on and Shakespeare’s plays only become more popular, it becomes more and more obvious that the men and women in the novel are on completely different intelligence levels. Although having only two female characters, The Taming of the Shrew passes he Bechdel Test, which is a social test used as a flatline for equality: The famous Bechdel test does not tell us whether the representations of women in a piece of fiction are compelling or satisfying, but it does give us a sense of whether the writer regards women as an integrated part of the world being created.
To pass, the work must follow three rules, (1) It has to have at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something besides a man. Selisker) Over half of Shakespeare’s plays pass the Bechdel Test, which is impressive when considering the time period he wrote them during, with powerful kings and lords everywhere in Europe. Classic literature from this era is surprisingly devoid of female characters who speak or interact with one another, and for Shakespeare to write a play entirely about one woman who uses her sister’s support to stand up for herself against arranged marriage is mind-boggling.
And to think he received so little criticism is even more astounding, of course there were some that were critical of his work, but not as many as expected for a plot so different than anything that had ever been written before. The ways in which Shakespeare addressed women’s rights were not usually so principle to his works, but in The Taming of the Shrew, he created Katherine, a head strong feminist who knows that she deserves to marry by her choice.
She is still regarded to be one of the most influential female protagonists of literature to this day. Although Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew was Shakespeare’s most notable example of a powerful woman figure, other empowering female figures did pop up in both Othello and The Merchant of Venice. In Othello, the two main women, Desdemona and her friend Emilia, are foils of one another.
Desdemona is Othello’s wife and acts exactly as a woman was believed to in their era, a devoted and subservient wife who would die if that is what her husband requested, whereas Emilia was loyal to her husband only until it contradicted her moral code. Emilia stood up for her friend when she was threatened, “Good gentlemen, let me have leave to speak: / Tis proper I obey him, but not now. / -Perchance, Iago, I will ne’er go home”(Othello V. ii. 195-197).
Throughout the play, Emilia makes references to her independent nature, but it is not until this scene at the end of the play that she openly defies her husband in order to protect her closest friend. It is a total girl power moment for her and led to many discussions about her as a character, “[she] achieved psychological freedom and freed herself from societal domination and self-imposed restraints by speaking and acting as she thinks and feels”(Iyasere).
Emilia also has a powerful monologue comparing women to men in this play. Her outcry to the men is a strikingly radical speech in a play that had repeatedly displayed patriarchal dominance. Her tone is powerful and progressive throughout the final scene, contributing to the impact the scene would have on an audience when being performed; it speaks to men and women alike about equality and the ill treatment of women. Powerful women like Emilia also pop up in the play The Merchant of Venice.
That entire play seems to be about men making deals, earning money, and being racially intolerant, but it has twist to it that actually relates it back to Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. The women in Merchant of Venice actually save the day and force their husbands into respecting them and their property through a cleverly thought out ruse. Albeit, they were disguised as men when they pulled off the trick, they revealed themselves at the end of the play and earned respect from men by using the things men love most against them, sex and companionship.
While the play is not the best example of progressivism for females (one of the female leads, Portia, gets her husband through a test her father designed without her consent), it does still emit a powerful message about stereotyping genders, races, and religions. The fact that women’s rights wholly embodied itself in not one or two, but three of Shakespeare’s famous plays speaks to the importance the issue must have been for him as a person and as a playwright.
Topics of such controversy are still avoided by many authors in the 21st century, it is hard to realize that William Shakespeare defied all expectations by eloquently addressing the topic of gender equality, but he did, along with bringing awareness to racial inequalities. In Othello, as mentioned previously, the women play important roles in the creation of the plot, but the main prejudice of the story is racial profiling and discrimination. Othello is a black man, or “The Moor”, as he is often is called because of his dark skin.
The entire plot of this play consists of the character Iago betraying his long time friend and boss, Othello, for the sake of revenge because he is jealous of Othello’s success. Iago says that his anger stems from the fact that Othello unfairly passed him over for promotion and made Michael Cassio his lieutenant, even though Cassio, unlike Iago, has no military field experience. While this may be true, Iago makes it a point at several moments in the play, along with other characters, to talk ill of Othello and state that he doesn’t deserve his position because of his personality and skin color.
