Shakespearean Plays Which Mirror the Dramatist\'s Idea

¶ … Shakespearean plays which mirror the dramatist's idea that it is the right of a woman to choose her own husband, without meeting her father's wishes in the matter. The drama "Othello" and the romantic comedy" The Merchant of Venice" are examples. In all three works, Shakespeare has contradicted the perceived roles that women play in the 17th century society through his portrayal of Desdemona, Portia and Jessica. Desdemona, the heroine in "Othello" is a young, white Venetian beauty and debutante in the Venice society. She is the joy and the pride of her father, Brabantio, a wealthy Venetian senator. Brabantio wishes his daughter to marry any of the wealthy, handsome Venetian men that everybody in her societal class expects her to marry. Instead of meeting the expectations of her societal surrounding, Desdemona decides to elope with Othello who is an older black man and clearly an outsider to Venetian society. In doing so, Desdemona not only defies her father's expectations that she becomes the wife of a white man of his choice. Her move is also an affront at a society that largely disapproves of interracial marriages. In this way, Desdemona's relationship with Othello speaks to the play's concerns with sixteenth century attitudes about sex, gender, and race. When her husband is deployed to Cyprus in the service of the Republic of Venice, Desdemona decides to accompany him. There, her husband is manipulated by his ensign Iago who successfully makes him belief that Desdemona committed adultery. This deception leads eventually in the last act to the effect that estranged spouse Othello murders Desdemona. Desdemona is at times portrayed as a submissive character, most notably in her readiness to take credit for her own murder. In response to Emilia's question, "O, who hath done this deed?" Desdemona's final words are, "Nobody, I myself." Farewell. Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell" [V.ii. 133-134]. But there also other parts of the play where her character comes out with conviction and authority. Examples for this character traits are her first speech ("My noble father, I do perceive here a divided duty" [I.iii. 179-180] and her fury after Othello strikes her ("I have not deserved this [IV.i.236]. In the comedy "The Merchant of Venice," Portia and Jessica, are the main female objects of love. As Desdemona in "Othello," both women have fathers trying to take control over the vast majority of their actions including to choose the man that they are to marry. But this seems to be where the similarities between the three women end. In Elizabethan times, men were regarded as the dominant and more important group in society, whereas women were stereotyped as less intelligent, weak, dependent and in general inferior to men. Shakespeare however created a strong, dominant significant female role in his portrayal of the character of Portia. Portia is not only wealthy but also very intelligent, eloquent, witty, sharp-tongued and bilingual. She speaks three languages, that of French, Latin and Italian clearly emphasizing her intelligence as well as ability. As a result, she comes across as more intelligent and powerful than any of the male characters of the play (Halyard 1). Shakespeare allows Portia to use rhetoric of law in Act 1 Scene 2 which further documents her intellectual greatness which - together with her high self-esteem, intelligence and art to manipulate other people (the latter shown in Act 3 Scene 2) - places her as an instrumental character to the development of the play. It appears, that Portia is completely subject to her father's will and has no self-control over her life. The Jewess Jessica, rich money lender Shylock's daughter, however, is a reactive and submissive character. She is without potential greatness and remains reactive throughout the whole play. Jessica has the double misery of not only biologically bound to her dominating father, but also restrained by an early modern England society that regards Jews as being inferior to Christians. This might be one of the reasons why she eloped with a Christian man, converting to Christianity. However, by the end of the play, after being thrown out of the will of her father, she is once again an heiress, and this becomes a similarity, because both of the women end up inheriting from their fathers. Both women, Portia and Jessica, eventually marry the man of their love, but they accomplish this goal in two completely different ways. Portia gets Bassanio obeying her father's will patiently and respectfully while steadfastly seeking to obtain him. Jessica however, is portrayed as rebellious and disobedient and has to run away and elope with Lorenzo in order to marry and be with him. I think there are strong indications that the marriage between Jessica and Lorenzo will not stay fortunate due to her Jewish origins and religion. Shakespeare gives a clue in part through the way in which he develops the plot between the Jewish and Christian protagonists and in part through the language that he lets Lorenzo use. Shylock is certainly vilified by the other characters in the play for his stubborn adherence to literal meanings and strange religious laws. He could not hope for admittance in the dominant social and economic hierarchy because of his usury (see Greenblatt 1f.). The cold, empty house he lives in seems to symbolize his societal isolation (see Greenblatt 2). Shylock hates Antonio because he is a Christian, and because, on one occasion, Antonio spat on Shylock for being a Jew. Antonio's speech calls Shylock a "dog." Lorenzo tells Gratiano that it is Jessica who "shall be my torch-bearer." This has a negative undertone as it evokes the image of a slave and an owned individual and somehow we are concerned that exactly this might happen to Jessica after getting married to Lorenzo. There are also allusions to classical lovers in the play that can be regarded as clues for an unhappy ending of the marriage between Jessica and Lorenzo. In the first 14 lines of Act 5 Jessica and Lorenzo allude to famous lovers in classical mythology. Shakespeare would have met these characters and events in the stories of Ovid's metamorphoses and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and Legend of Good Women. The significance of these allusions is that the tales had associations with moonlight and unhappy ending (Morris & Farrell 54).