Shakespeare’s Feminist Reproach of Elizabethan Criticism
By Andre Eslamian
Much of Shakespeare’s writing is influenced by the reigning queen of his time, Elizabeth I of the House of Tudor. Despite being largely considered one of the greatest monarchs in English history, Elizabeth was subject to a large amount of criticism on the throne because of pre-existing biases towards women in power. Shakespeare wrote the character Theseus to parallel this attitude towards Elizabeth and other women in power with the Greeks’ own view and epitomizes Theseus as a conqueror. He also attempts to offer an alternative to patriarchy in the form of Amazonian and feminine culture- likely in homage to the queen herself. As Louis a. Montrose puts it in his “Shaping Fantasies” Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture: “[Queen Elizabeth’s] pervasive cultural presence was a condition of the play’s imaginative possibility.” (Montrose 62). In other words, Shakespeare wanted his audience to reimagine a society in which the systems of pre-Elizabethan culture were outdated and that a new progressive culture was in order. Though this alternative is presented, Shakespeare still displays the triumph of patriarchy to show that the opposition cannot be quelled.
Christine de Pizan frames the historical context of Theseus’s marriage to Hippolyta by describing the battle between the Amazonians and the Athenians that happened before the play begins. “Oh what worship ought these ladies to have, that by such two women were beaten tow of the best knights that were in all the world,” she declares about Hippolyta and Menalippe’s battle against Hercules and Theseus (Pizan 204). Pizan’s pro-Amazonian perspective equates their might to the masculine power of the legendary Greek warriors. Almost overcome by them, the Athenians finally turn the tide of the battle and defeat the Amazons, thus laying the scene for the opening of A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Theseus in his first monologue is impatient for his marriage to Hippolyta (signifying his victory) comparing the moon passing “to a stepdame or a dowager/ Long withering out a young man’s revenue” (1.1. 5-6). This simile reveals his distaste for women with power, putting elder women with money in a negative context. Seemingly indifferent to Hippolyta’s response reassuring him that time will pass quickly, he continues to iterate his purpose in marrying Hippolyta:
“I wooed thee with my sword
And won thy love doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling.”
(1.1.16-19)
Referring to his courtship strategies as a musical key in this metaphor implies that conquering is his instrument. What attracted Theseus to Hippolyta is the fact that they played the same instrument. As Pizan described, the Amazonians were fierce conquerors that fought valiantly on the battlefield, so quite reasonably, Theseus becomes enamored by this. The Amazonians were put on Greece’s sights because of their rapid expansion conquering land closer and closer to Athens (Pizan 202-203). Pizan describes the attack on the Amazonians as preemptive on Hercules’s part: “This Hercules said it were not good to abide till these ladies of Amazonia came upon them, but it were much better to go upon them first.” (Pizan 203). Theseus joins because of his inherent need to conquer and his attraction to other conquerors, shown in his metaphor aforementioned. Their motivations in attacking the Amazons might also lie in their disbelief in such a society run by women. Pizan states, “All Greece was afeard” because in Greece, powerful women like the Amazons who were part of the ruling class and had political influence were rare and often unheard of (Pizan 203). The Athenians were intimidated by the Amazonians’ “obvious delight in subjecting powerful heroes to their will,” and their mythology that symbolically appears to “embody [and] control a collective anxiety about the power of the female not only to dominate or reject the male but to create and destroy him,” (Montrose 66). They felt they must put an end to the imminent expansion before it came to them. A matriarchical society such as the Amazonians are met by the Greeks and coincidingly the pre-Elizabethans with “fascination and horror,” (Montrose 66) which is due to their attachment to traditional patriarchal viewpoints. Theseus sees the looming threat to patriarchy in Hermia’s resolve to marry Lysander and beckons her: “your eyes must with [Egeus’s] judgement look” as opposed to her own (1.1.57). He would rather Hermia take her father’s point of view in order to avoid this Amazonian train of thought.
The Greeks attitude towards the Amazons are parallel to much of the attitude England had towards Queens Mary I and Elizabeth I. Women were seen as irrational and illogical leaders and incapable of reigning at the time A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written; as John Knox, a Presbyterian theologian during Mary and Elizabeth’s reign, puts it: “Their sight in civil regiment is but blindness; their strength, weakness; their counsel, foolishness; and judgement, frenzy” (Knox 212). Much like Theseus and the Greeks, Knox sees women incapable of making their own choices in politics because of their unstable minds. He believes “the empire of a woman to be a thing repugnant to nature,” because of Eve’s defiance to God’s demand to not eat the forbidden fruit (Knox 212). He also quotes Aristotle in his The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women when referring to Aristotle’s shared view of women in power, “For what ensueth the one must needs follow the other, to wit, injustice, confusion, and disorder.” (Knox 212). He then asks the reader what Aristotle and the Greeks, whom Knox and many Renaissance men revered, would think if they saw someone like Mary, Elizabeth’s predecessor, on the throne.
Shakespeare draws this parallel between English and Greek thought further with the marriage dispute between Hermia and Egeus. She is claimed on three sides by men: by her father, her lord, and her lover, yet she wishes to keep her “claim to property in herself,” maintaining her Amazonian control (Montrose 67). Egeus demands “the ancient privilege of Athens” be used in order to force Hermia to marry Demetrius (1.1. 41). He makes the case that by law, it’s the patriarch’s choice in this matter and not the woman, and Theseus goes along with this logic. “To you your father should be as a god,” Theseus states to Hermia:
“One that composed your beauties, yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted, and within his power
To leave the figure of disfigure it.”
(1.1. 47-51)
Theseus sides with Egeus comparing Hermia to a wax figure casted from his mold and gives Egeus the right to end her life if she disobeys. He does not for one instant consider Hermia’s side because of his penchant to think women are secondary to men, much like Knox’s predisposition, and ought to be conquered. Theseus, by any means necessary, attempts to eliminate any thought or choice in Hermia in order to maintain this patriarchal authority. Hermia, in Shakespeare’s attempt to offer an alternative Amazonian power, believes it is her right to give her body to who she chooses; it is what “limited privilege” she is allowed in this society where men are given ownership of women’s chastity (Montrose 67). She proudly states, “My soul consents not to give sovereignty,” (1.1.82), utilizing “her ability to deny men access to her body,” (Montrose 68) yet Theseus dismantles her claim by taking ownership of the claim itself with his ultimatum: “Either to die the death or to abjure/ Forever to the society of men… Whether, if you yield not to your father’s choice,/ You can endure the livery of a nun.” (1.1.65-66, 69-70). By giving her the third choice of becoming a nun and living chaste among the two others (listen to her father or be put to death), Theseus removes her ability to choose who she can will her body to and reclaims authority over her (Montrose 68).
As Montrose states, “Theseus appropriates and parodies the very condition which the Amazons sought to enjoy,” (Montrose 68) in maintaining his authority over the women in this marriage ordeal, and Hippolyta throughout this first scene is made painfully aware of this. In response to Theseus’s monologue, her language aligns with Theseus. She likens the impatient moon Theseus described as slow “to a silver bow” that will quickly “behold the night of [their] solemnities” to contrast him (1.1.9-11). She uses weapons in her metaphor, thinking back to her time as a warrior and hopefully speaking in terms that Theseus would understand. Yet Theseus is not affected and continues on his own thoughts. She stays silent the rest of the scene, listening to the events unfold, until they exit. Theseus, before they exit, even asks Hippolyta “What cheer, my love?” as if something was wrong (1.1.122). She has realized her position as a woman in this society by watching Theseus enact the law on Hermia and is disheartened to speak.
Theseus and Greek culture as a whole were notoriously misogynistic, and Theseus, though considered a hero, was more of a conqueror. Shakespeare incorporated this aspect into A Midsummer’s Night Dream to correspond with the attitudes that were present during his time and offered a possible Amazonian alternative to suggest to his audience a new culture divorced of patriarchy in homage to Queen Elizabeth. However, Theseus and the patriarchy prevails over Athens much like it did in England. In Elizabeth’s speech to her troops at Tilbury, she is regarded as a man ruling rather than an Amazonian woman, “an Amazon yet not an Amazon,” (Elizabeth 214) and refers to herself as “your Prince in peace,” (Elizabeth 215) rather than their Queen, valuing manhood over womanhood. Shakespeare’s effort, however, in introducing the idea of an alternative power structure in society cannot be overlooked. Thinking optimistically, I believe it ushered the “imaginative possibility of the Queen” (Montrose 62) that England needed to put it on the right path to social justice of the sexes.
Works Cited
Queen Elizabeth I, “Address to the Troops at Tilbury.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Paster and Howard. 214-216.
Howard, Jean E, et al. “Feminist Criticism.” Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, 2003, pp. 411–423.
Knox, John. “From The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Paster and Howard. 210-214.
Loades, David Michael. Elizabeth I the Golden Reign of Gloriana. National Archives, 2003.
Montrose, Louis. “‘Shaping Fantasies’: Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture.” Representations 1.2 (1983): 64-94.
Neale, John Ernest. Queen Elizabeth I, by J.E. Neale, .. J. Cape, 1952.
Christine de Pizan, “From The Book of the City of Ladies” (c. 1405, 1521). A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Gail Kern Paster and Skiles Howard. New York: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 1999. 201-205.
By Andre Eslamian
Much of Shakespeare’s writing is influenced by the reigning queen of his time, Elizabeth I of the House of Tudor. Despite being largely considered one of the greatest monarchs in English history, Elizabeth was subject to a large amount of criticism on the throne because of pre-existing biases towards women in power. Shakespeare wrote the character Theseus to parallel this attitude towards Elizabeth and other women in power with the Greeks’ own view and epitomizes Theseus as a conqueror. He also attempts to offer an alternative to patriarchy in the form of Amazonian and feminine culture- likely in homage to the queen herself. As Louis a. Montrose puts it in his “Shaping Fantasies” Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture: “[Queen Elizabeth’s] pervasive cultural presence was a condition of the play’s imaginative possibility.” (Montrose 62). In other words, Shakespeare wanted his audience to reimagine a society in which the systems of pre-Elizabethan culture were outdated and that a new progressive culture was in order. Though this alternative is presented, Shakespeare still displays the triumph of patriarchy to show that the opposition cannot be quelled.
Christine de Pizan frames the historical context of Theseus’s marriage to Hippolyta by describing the battle between the Amazonians and the Athenians that happened before the play begins. “Oh what worship ought these ladies to have, that by such two women were beaten tow of the best knights that were in all the world,” she declares about Hippolyta and Menalippe’s battle against Hercules and Theseus (Pizan 204). Pizan’s pro-Amazonian perspective equates their might to the masculine power of the legendary Greek warriors. Almost overcome by them, the Athenians finally turn the tide of the battle and defeat the Amazons, thus laying the scene for the opening of A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Theseus in his first monologue is impatient for his marriage to Hippolyta (signifying his victory) comparing the moon passing “to a stepdame or a dowager/ Long withering out a young man’s revenue” (1.1. 5-6). This simile reveals his distaste for women with power, putting elder women with money in a negative context. Seemingly indifferent to Hippolyta’s response reassuring him that time will pass quickly, he continues to iterate his purpose in marrying Hippolyta:
“I wooed thee with my sword
And won thy love doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with reveling.”
(1.1.16-19)
Referring to his courtship strategies as a musical key in this metaphor implies that conquering is his instrument. What attracted Theseus to Hippolyta is the fact that they played the same instrument. As Pizan described, the Amazonians were fierce conquerors that fought valiantly on the battlefield, so quite reasonably, Theseus becomes enamored by this. The Amazonians were put on Greece’s sights because of their rapid expansion conquering land closer and closer to Athens (Pizan 202-203). Pizan describes the attack on the Amazonians as preemptive on Hercules’s part: “This Hercules said it were not good to abide till these ladies of Amazonia came upon them, but it were much better to go upon them first.” (Pizan 203). Theseus joins because of his inherent need to conquer and his attraction to other conquerors, shown in his metaphor aforementioned. Their motivations in attacking the Amazons might also lie in their disbelief in such a society run by women. Pizan states, “All Greece was afeard” because in Greece, powerful women like the Amazons who were part of the ruling class and had political influence were rare and often unheard of (Pizan 203). The Athenians were intimidated by the Amazonians’ “obvious delight in subjecting powerful heroes to their will,” and their mythology that symbolically appears to “embody [and] control a collective anxiety about the power of the female not only to dominate or reject the male but to create and destroy him,” (Montrose 66). They felt they must put an end to the imminent expansion before it came to them. A matriarchical society such as the Amazonians are met by the Greeks and coincidingly the pre-Elizabethans with “fascination and horror,” (Montrose 66) which is due to their attachment to traditional patriarchal viewpoints. Theseus sees the looming threat to patriarchy in Hermia’s resolve to marry Lysander and beckons her: “your eyes must with [Egeus’s] judgement look” as opposed to her own (1.1.57). He would rather Hermia take her father’s point of view in order to avoid this Amazonian train of thought.
The Greeks attitude towards the Amazons are parallel to much of the attitude England had towards Queens Mary I and Elizabeth I. Women were seen as irrational and illogical leaders and incapable of reigning at the time A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written; as John Knox, a Presbyterian theologian during Mary and Elizabeth’s reign, puts it: “Their sight in civil regiment is but blindness; their strength, weakness; their counsel, foolishness; and judgement, frenzy” (Knox 212). Much like Theseus and the Greeks, Knox sees women incapable of making their own choices in politics because of their unstable minds. He believes “the empire of a woman to be a thing repugnant to nature,” because of Eve’s defiance to God’s demand to not eat the forbidden fruit (Knox 212). He also quotes Aristotle in his The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women when referring to Aristotle’s shared view of women in power, “For what ensueth the one must needs follow the other, to wit, injustice, confusion, and disorder.” (Knox 212). He then asks the reader what Aristotle and the Greeks, whom Knox and many Renaissance men revered, would think if they saw someone like Mary, Elizabeth’s predecessor, on the throne.
Shakespeare draws this parallel between English and Greek thought further with the marriage dispute between Hermia and Egeus. She is claimed on three sides by men: by her father, her lord, and her lover, yet she wishes to keep her “claim to property in herself,” maintaining her Amazonian control (Montrose 67). Egeus demands “the ancient privilege of Athens” be used in order to force Hermia to marry Demetrius (1.1. 41). He makes the case that by law, it’s the patriarch’s choice in this matter and not the woman, and Theseus goes along with this logic. “To you your father should be as a god,” Theseus states to Hermia:
“One that composed your beauties, yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted, and within his power
To leave the figure of disfigure it.”
(1.1. 47-51)
Theseus sides with Egeus comparing Hermia to a wax figure casted from his mold and gives Egeus the right to end her life if she disobeys. He does not for one instant consider Hermia’s side because of his penchant to think women are secondary to men, much like Knox’s predisposition, and ought to be conquered. Theseus, by any means necessary, attempts to eliminate any thought or choice in Hermia in order to maintain this patriarchal authority. Hermia, in Shakespeare’s attempt to offer an alternative Amazonian power, believes it is her right to give her body to who she chooses; it is what “limited privilege” she is allowed in this society where men are given ownership of women’s chastity (Montrose 67). She proudly states, “My soul consents not to give sovereignty,” (1.1.82), utilizing “her ability to deny men access to her body,” (Montrose 68) yet Theseus dismantles her claim by taking ownership of the claim itself with his ultimatum: “Either to die the death or to abjure/ Forever to the society of men… Whether, if you yield not to your father’s choice,/ You can endure the livery of a nun.” (1.1.65-66, 69-70). By giving her the third choice of becoming a nun and living chaste among the two others (listen to her father or be put to death), Theseus removes her ability to choose who she can will her body to and reclaims authority over her (Montrose 68).
As Montrose states, “Theseus appropriates and parodies the very condition which the Amazons sought to enjoy,” (Montrose 68) in maintaining his authority over the women in this marriage ordeal, and Hippolyta throughout this first scene is made painfully aware of this. In response to Theseus’s monologue, her language aligns with Theseus. She likens the impatient moon Theseus described as slow “to a silver bow” that will quickly “behold the night of [their] solemnities” to contrast him (1.1.9-11). She uses weapons in her metaphor, thinking back to her time as a warrior and hopefully speaking in terms that Theseus would understand. Yet Theseus is not affected and continues on his own thoughts. She stays silent the rest of the scene, listening to the events unfold, until they exit. Theseus, before they exit, even asks Hippolyta “What cheer, my love?” as if something was wrong (1.1.122). She has realized her position as a woman in this society by watching Theseus enact the law on Hermia and is disheartened to speak.
Theseus and Greek culture as a whole were notoriously misogynistic, and Theseus, though considered a hero, was more of a conqueror. Shakespeare incorporated this aspect into A Midsummer’s Night Dream to correspond with the attitudes that were present during his time and offered a possible Amazonian alternative to suggest to his audience a new culture divorced of patriarchy in homage to Queen Elizabeth. However, Theseus and the patriarchy prevails over Athens much like it did in England. In Elizabeth’s speech to her troops at Tilbury, she is regarded as a man ruling rather than an Amazonian woman, “an Amazon yet not an Amazon,” (Elizabeth 214) and refers to herself as “your Prince in peace,” (Elizabeth 215) rather than their Queen, valuing manhood over womanhood. Shakespeare’s effort, however, in introducing the idea of an alternative power structure in society cannot be overlooked. Thinking optimistically, I believe it ushered the “imaginative possibility of the Queen” (Montrose 62) that England needed to put it on the right path to social justice of the sexes.
Works Cited
Queen Elizabeth I, “Address to the Troops at Tilbury.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Paster and Howard. 214-216.
Howard, Jean E, et al. “Feminist Criticism.” Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, 2003, pp. 411–423.
Knox, John. “From The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Paster and Howard. 210-214.
Loades, David Michael. Elizabeth I the Golden Reign of Gloriana. National Archives, 2003.
Montrose, Louis. “‘Shaping Fantasies’: Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture.” Representations 1.2 (1983): 64-94.
Neale, John Ernest. Queen Elizabeth I, by J.E. Neale, .. J. Cape, 1952.
Christine de Pizan, “From The Book of the City of Ladies” (c. 1405, 1521). A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Texts and Contexts. Ed. Gail Kern Paster and Skiles Howard. New York: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 1999. 201-205.