Shakespearean Drama - Women in Renaissance

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2, University of Erfurt, course: Shakespearean Drama, language: English, abstract: 1. PREFACE This term paper has the women of Shakespeare's time in focus with a special interest in the figure of Lady Macbeth in his play 'Macbeth'. My goal to achieve will be to draw a line between the understanding of women in Shakespearean England and his forming Lady Macbeth as a destructive female figure in this drama. Macbeth was written predominantly as a stage play around 1605/06. The significance of gender and sex in this play is most obvious in the conception of Lady Macbeth. In Shakespeare's former plays women had only minor roles with a lesser quantity of speech acts. Although Lady Macbeth still has merely a third of her husband's lines, she is still the second largest role of the play. But focus should not only be laid upon quantity as such. Concerning the reception of Shakespeare's Macbeth, it becomes clear that Lady Macbeth's central role as wife, seductress and passive leader of events make her nearly as important as Macbeth himself. [...]