Introduction

Who ist can read a woman? Is there more? asks Cymbeline (5.6.4950). Women
in Shakespeare is a vast and fascinating topic: from roles as complex as Rosalind
to words as emotive as mother, as multi-layered as moon, or as secret as maidenhead.
To answer Cymbeline, there is always more: more than can be conveyed in a
single word entry or a series of entries jostling for space and attention. Women in
Shakespeare is selective in its choice of headwords in an attempt to do justice to
the depth and richness of Shakespeares writing while simultaneously giving some
sense of the breadth of the canons engagement with the topic.
At the level of roles and names, Shakespeares texts offer a rich range of
starting points for investigation. Female roles in the plays and the poems are
examined under name entries of varying length. These bring together figures
from different texts. Hippolyta covers a part from an early comedy and a very late,
joint-authored play, for example. Entries on Katherine or Helen group together
several figures by given name with the aim of exploring what kinds of common
attribute Shakespeare associated with that name or how he deliberately played off
expectations about a given name. Emilia is used for characters from across the
canon renowned for their loyalty, steadfastness and self-determination (Comedy of
Errors, Winters Tale, Othello, The Two Noble Kinsmen). The Biancas in Taming of the
Shrew and Othello and the Margarets in history plays and comedies do not match
up to the purity implied by their names. Names taken from classical or biblical
sources carry their own histories and reference to Shakespeares sources forms
part of these entries, as with Virgilia in Coriolanus, for example. Some, like Helen
and Cleopatra, carry histories from popular culture.
Character names in the speech headings in the early texts can be misleading,
however. Viola is not named as such until the end of Twelfth Night; the widow
Lady Grey becomes Queen Elizabeth in 3 Henry VI. Spellings and forms of name
also vary to fit the metre of the verse as with Helen and Helena, Katherine and
Katherina, Cressid and Cressida. Character names do, nevertheless, provide a
useful organizing principle by which parts can be recognized so The Riverside
Shakespeares name forms have been adopted to discuss these roles and are used
consistently. The female lead in Taming of the Shrew who is called Katherine,
Katherina and Kate, is referred to as Katherina, following The Riverside Shakespeare,
but is discussed alongside the other roles named Katherine. Where family names
are used more frequently, or perhaps exclusively, these are used for headwords,
as in the case of Mistresses Ford, Page, Quickly or Elbow.
As should already be evident, the proper name entries are not character

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studies; instead, the name and its meanings are a starting point from which to cast
a particular light on the role. The dictionary has the effect of fragmenting a part
(for example Paulina) across a range of different subject positions (wife, good
lady, mother, midwife, widow, callet, witch, crone and hag that will not stay her
tongue), reminding us that no role or identity functions as a coherent whole but is
built up from a range of different, often contradictory elements. This is, arguably,
especially pertinent when considering the identities of women. Early modern
women who informed, watched or read Shakespeares texts, and the women who
appeared on stage as the creations of boy actors were all the constructs of a variety
of different ideologies, cultural practices and material traces. Cross-referencing
in heavy type and use of the index will allow readers to reconstruct the identity
of a Juliet, Volumnia or Imogen from these fragments.
Female icons often shadow or inform characterization in Shakespeares plays
and separate entries on these figures historical, mythical, supernatural and
allegorical address their representation in the Shakespearian canon, directly
as characters or indirectly through allusion. The dictionary entries for Venus and
Diana consider their characterization in Venus and Adonis and Pericles alongside
references or invocations to them elsewhere in the canon. The entry on Diana,
for instance, considers the defiantly chaste character in Alls Well That Ends Well,
and the goddess, alongside textual allusions to her as an icon of chastity in As You
Like It and The Merchant of Venice, and the physical representation of the French
Princess as huntswoman in Loves Labours Lost. The entry on Isis examines how
Cleopatra strategically blends her identity as empress of Egypt with that of the
goddess. Classical and mythological figures such as Hecuba, Iris, Ceres and
Philomel haunt the canon. Entries offer guidelines to the significance of such
classical and biblical icons as models for early modern concepts of womanhood.
Entries on feminized personifications like Fortune, Patience and Peace are also
included. A third category of name entries covers significant living icons of the
early modern period (e.g. Anna of Denmark) and the women in Shakespeares
own life (e.g. Anne Hathaway, Mary Arden, Susanna and Judith Shakespeare,
Mary Mountjoy). The most pervasive of these is Queen Elizabeth I who figures
in entries on Elizabeth and Queen and then in diverse others linked to her royal
iconography, such as Diana, Phoebe, vestal, moon. Cross-referencing via heavy
type allows readers to follow a thread of allusions.
Titles of rank are another important way of defining female figures on
stage or in a narrative poem, so name entries include empress, queen, duchess,
countess, marchioness, hostess, lady, waiting-gentlewoman. Some roles such as the
Countess of Salisbury in Edward III have no proper name entry and some smaller
roles, such as the Duchess of Auvergne in 1 Henry VI or the Duchess of Gloucester
in Richard II are analysed under these broader generic headwords.
Key female roles in family and political arenas, as they appear in Shakespeares
texts, receive separate entries, listing all the characters who fall into the type and
discussing the differences / similarities between them. In addition to looking at a
role or character under a proper name, references to that role will also appear in
entries on, for example, queen; princess; mother; daughter; maid; wife;

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nurse; widow; whore; mistress (often indicating self-possession); nun;
gossip; witch; prophetess; hostess. The ambiguity of such labels is often
demonstrated by bringing them together. As Launce points out in Two Gentlemen
of Verona, his mistress is a maid, yet it is not a maid, yet tis a maid for she is her
masters maid (3.1.268). Shakespeares critical treatment of misogynistic defamation in names becomes clear in the study of terms like drab, whore, callet,
strumpet across the canon. Interesting variations on womans traditional duty
appear in Shakespeares use of the word hostess as applied to Mistresses Quickly
and Overdone, Perdita at the sheepshearing and Lady Macbeth. The dictionary
examines Shakespeares presentations by discussing the cultural construction of
women and their social framings in early modern England. Brief descriptions
of the current, often conflicting, opinions on the mothers role, for example,
provide a context for understanding the relationship between Lady Capulet, Juliet
and the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.
It is hoped that entries on key issues surrounding female experiences and early
modern expectations about female behaviour will enrich readers experiences of
Shakespeares work. Many of Shakespeares female characters are represented in
ways that provoke debates on such issues. They also provide a form of dramatic
commentary on the constraints within which women in early modern England
were obliged to operate and the amazingly inventive ways in which women could
negotiate pathways to achieve their desires and ambitions. Entries cover a range
of physical, emotional and social aspects of female experience. Although womens
bodies were literally absent from the stage, their presence is invoked by references
to body parts such as breast, dug, belly / womb, lap. Ways in which female
bodies are categorized and labelled in Shakespeares texts are examined in entries
like blazon, beauty. Olivias ironic description of herself inventoried and every
particle and utensil labelled to my will (Twelfth Night 1.5.234), indicates one way
in which the texts often take an ironic perspective on the blazoning of the female
body in dramatizations of elevated courtly praise. Entries on betrothal, dower /
dowry gift draw attention to the ways in which woman is often constructed as a
gift and how, in Shakespeares texts (most obviously in Merchant of Venice), she can
work within such a definition and still achieve a degree of self-determination.
Pivotal moments that shaped or changed womens subject positions receive
entries drawing together examples from the canon to discuss Shakespeares
representation of topics like youth, betrothal, wedding, birth. Beatrices
description of marriage as mannerly, modest, as a measure, full of state and
ancientry (Much Ado About Nothing 2.1.68), increases the readers sense of
violation in the maimed rites which follow, or in the fantastical ceremony in The
Taming of the Shrew, or the rushed communion of Romeo and Juliet, for example.
In the case of very closely linked entries like wedding and marriage, readers are
explicitly directed to the parallel term. Pivotal events include crises, with entries
on rape (Titus Andronicus, Rape of Lucrece, Cymbeline), divorce and adultery,
for example.
An important set of entries focuses on the material representation of women
on Shakespeares stage. The entry on boy actors is accompanied by entries on

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aspects of womens costume (e.g. chopine, handkerchief, glove, smock,
fan and the important codpiece for cross-dressers). How women use props
is also important, especially with props with sexual or symbolic connotations like
ring so entries on these material objects are included.
The entries are laid out in three sections: the first giving a simple definition of the word, particularly as understood in early modern England, without
any referencing. At this level, Women in Shakespeare relies on the magnificent
resource of the Oxford English Dictionary and, rather than acknowledge it under
each individual entry, I here record my profound debt to the work that has gone
into this amazing book, which I have delighted in consulting. In addition, I have
used the electronic, public-access Oxford Dictionary of Names as a starting point for
proper names. Additional information from the Oxford Classical Dictionary edited
by N. G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard and the highly useful Shakespeare Name
Dictionary, by J. Madison Davis and A. Daniel Frankforter has been acknowledged
in individual entries.
The second, usually lengthier, section of each entry is an account of how
the word is used in Shakespeares plays and poems, including the joint-authored
texts Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen and those which it is now accepted
Shakespeare authored at least some of, such as Pericles and Edward III. In entries
where a role occurs in only one text, Act, Scene and Line references are given. For
other entries abbreviated forms of each texts name are included before the Act,
Scene and Line references so that the quotation can be found easily. All quotations and references are taken from The Riverside Shakespeare. Short quotations
from other early modern texts by men and women are included in some of the
discussions to provide a fuller picture of how the Shakespearean examples work.
The entries are designed to work at a level of conveying information but also,
often, as mini-essays making an argument about how a word or name is used or
might have functioned in performance, as in the entries on Hippolyta, Phoebe
or Youth, for example. I thus hope they will serve as a useful reference tool for
readers and that they will also provide new ideas for editors and researchers.
In composing each entry I have become aware of the wealth of critical writing
that helps us to interpret the words that have come down to us. It is impossible
to do justice to this properly or to include more than a small selection in the
final section of each entry, which suggests further reading on the topic. What
will become apparent when consulting Women in Shakespeare is that critical writing
on individual female roles is a feature of Victorian literary culture and secondwave feminism that has been in decline more recently. Essays on Shakespeares
heroines by pioneering figures like Anna Murphy Jameson, Elizabeth Griffith
and M. Leigh Noel have been reprinted in valuable editions by Cheri Larsen
Hoeckley, Ann Thompson and Sasha Roberts, and so have been referred to
frequently as setting out important ideas, often controversial for their time, about
how the roles worked. The flourishing of feminist criticism in groundbreaking
books like Juliet Dusinberres Shakespeare and the Nature of Women, Lisa Jardines
Still Harping on Daughters and the inspiring collection of essays The Womans Part,
edited by Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Gayle Greene and Carol Thomas Neely, is also

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recorded in the further reading recommendations. Post-structuralist criticism
and its particular focus on the illusory nature of early modern subjectivity has
inevitably fought shy of character-based studies. Theatre history has, however,
become aware of the womans voice. My recommendations for secondary reading
have endeavoured to draw attention to the views of actors who have lived with and
performed the roles. Essays and interviews in the Players of Shakespeare volumes, in
Carol Rutters Clamorous Voices and in accounts by earlier performers like Sarah
Siddons and the anonymous actress who recorded her very strong opinions on
Lady Capulet have been recommended as a vital, dynamic part of the theatre
history of Shakespeares women. Although it has not been possible to survey
each roles theatre history, references to Judith Cooks Women in Shakespeare, Liz
Schaefers Ms Directing Shakespeare, and Penny Gays As She Likes It, offer starting
points for those interested in pursuing further work on theatre history. The fascinating questions raised by boy actors as performers of the roles has also received
recent attention in the work of Stephen Orgel, David Kathman, Scott McMillin,
Stanley Wells and David Mann.
Bonnie Landers view that the Shakespearean character is the site at which
external forces acting on and shaping the interior life collide with internal forces
acting on and shaping the external world (Lander 2008: 157) gives a strong lead
for a politically sensitive and theoretically informed return to character-based
criticism. Simon Palfrey and Tiffany Sterns Shakespeare in Parts likewise focuses
on the actors response to an individual part as something that must be pieced
together from fragments and made to live theatrically. Although there were no
women on Shakespeares stage, his canon suggests, following Cymbelines Who
ist can read a woman? Is there more? (5.6.4950), that there is always more than
meets the eye.

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