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Shakespeare's Women

Module description

This module is aimed at inbound study abroad students who want to develop their critical evaluations of the representation of girls and women in Shakespeare’s works. Through analysing a selection of Shakespeare’s plays and poems, you will draw upon relevant scholarship that has contributed to processes of evaluating representations of gender in Shakespeare’s works. No previous experience in the study of Shakespeare or English literature is required to take this module. The module includes a field trip that will provide you with an opportunity to engage with a modern performance of Shakespeare.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The module aims to situate Shakespeare’s representations of female characters within the context of wider cultural and theatrical influences that inform how Shakespearean femininities relate to early modern ideas about age, bodies, sexuality, ethnicity, and the supernatural. The module aims, therefore, to familiarise you with key critical readings of ‘Shakespeare’s Women’, which have long informed Shakespeare studies, but where recent developments within the field continue a process of ‘rethinking’ how constructions of gender identity may be at work in Shakespeare’s drama and poetry.

The module will begin by exploring how ‘bardolatry’, a pronounced cultural reverence for a writer and his works, can place Shakespeare’s women in a position that resists being subject to critical scrutiny. On this module, however, you will be encouraged to apply critical scrutiny to the words and ideas Shakespeare uses in relation to women, in works that will include some or all of the following texts: King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Venus and Adonis, and selected ‘Sonnets’.You will explore how ideas about love, beauty, bodies and virtue work to inform constructions of femininities. Moreover, if you take this module, you will examine how early modern performance practices, including where boy players performed female parts, add complexity to the representation of Shakespeare’s famous female characters.

If you take this module, you will be expected to read and reflect on a selection of primary and secondary sources both as independent learners and as part of a seminar group. By the end of the module, you will have acquired a broad, deep, and nuanced understanding of critical debates that surround Shakespeare’s female characters.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate a critical appreciation of some of the dominant concepts, methods and debates informing the study of Shakespeare’s female characters in seminar discussions and through assessment on the module.
• 2. Demonstrate knowledge of the form and content of works by Shakespeare to offer a nuanced critique of the representation of female characters in seminars and through assessment on the module.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Demonstrate knowledge of literature of an earlier era and to relate its concerns and its modes of expression to its historical context in seminar discussions and through assessment on the module.
• 4. Interrelate texts and discourses specific to their own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history in seminar discussions and through assessment on the module.
• 5. Demonstrate understanding of relevant theoretical ideas inapplying these ideas to literary texts in seminar discussions and through assessment on the module.
• 6. Demonstrate understanding of contemporary debates about Shakespeare’s female characters in light of the history of the discipline in seminar discussion and through assessment on the module.

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Demonstrate, through seminar work, communication skills, and an ability to work both individually and in groups.
• 8. Demonstrate, through writing log entries and producing an independent study, appropriate research and bibliographic skills, a capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and a capacity to write clear and correct prose.
• 9. Demonstrate, through research for seminars and essays, proficiency in information retrieval and analysis

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

The module opens with an introduction to the words used in relation to female characters in Shakespeare’s works. You will confront ideas of ‘bardolatry’ to situate critical approaches to Shakespeare’s female characters as well as the absences and erasure of some characters, where the significance of offstage moments will be discussed. The module will example how ideas about age, bodies, sexuality, ethnicity, performance practices, and the supernatural inform Shakespeare’s constructions of female characters.

The module will use some or all of the following works by Shakespeare: King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Venus and Adonis, and selected ‘Sonnets’.

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Basic reading: Scholarly editions of King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Venus and Adonis, and selected ‘Sonnets’.

ELE – College to provide hyperlink to appropriate pages

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

Adelman, Janet. Suffocating Mothers: fantasies of maternal origins in Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet to Tempest. London: Routledge, 1992.

Hall, Kim. Things of Darkness Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Higginbotham, Jennifer. The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Sisters: Gender, Transgression,Adolescence. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.

Rackin, Phyllis. Shakespeare and Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Traub, Valerie. The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Key words search

Shakespeare, Women