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Shakespeare & Beyond

Shakespeare and early modern girlhood

Ophelia from Hamlet
Ophelia from Hamlet

The word “girl” means different things to us today than it meant in the Middle Ages, and Shakespeare was writing at a time when that meaning was changing, as Deanne Williams of York University in Toronto explains on a recent episode of Shakespeare Unlimited.

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Williams talks about the girls in Shakespeare’s plays, how he portrays them, and how that reflects attitudes about girlhood in early modern England. We’ve selected six of these characters that she’s paired in unexpected ways. The excerpts below are taken from the podcast transcript.

Juliet and Miranda

There’s [a] distinction between a “child” and a “girl,” a young child and a girl. So, in Romeo and Juliet, the Nurse asks us to imagine Juliet as a child, as a toddler, falling on her back. And then when she has a mind of her own and wants to choose her own husband, she becomes a girl, this word “girl,” that all of a sudden becomes associated with a sort of challenge to patriarchal authority.

We also see that in The Tempest, when Prospero imagines his little girl Miranda as a child, as a cherubim, when she was three, when they were on the boat together, fleeing across the Mediterranean. And when she falls in love with Ferdinand, all of a sudden she becomes a girl. So, the word “girl” brings with it a certain kind of danger, a certain kind of heedlessness to patriarchal authority.

Comments

I am having my students investigate this very issue in Romeo and Juliet in class right now. It is interesting how forward thinking Shakespeare was in portraying his two main characters in reverse stereotypical manners. Romeo is seen as sensitive and crying, while Juliet is seen being strong and standing up to her father (and mother). Romeo chooses to end his life in the bloodless less violent manner (“True apothecary, thy drugs are quick…”), while Juliet snatches Rome’s dagger from his lifeless body, makes a bold declaration, and kills herself brutally (O happy dagger! This is thy sheath!).

Teresa Hill — November 19, 2016