Lotte Collin 1

How far does the gender-creative casting in these modern Shakespeare

productions show progress towards gender equality?

Introduction

In recent years, gender-creative casting has firmly rooted itself in the tradition of
Shakespearean performance. Today it is almost considered rare to see a Shakespeare
production that doesn’t have some sort of twist: be it through casting choices, setting or
costume, directors and designers have proved that there are infinite ways to play with and
develop Shakespeare’s timeless texts. Gender-creative casting, specifically, can have a
variety of possible reasons and effects, most of which are individual to each production.

While many interesting productions have arisen from this concept in recent years, the
intentions and effects of them are often unclear. Some commonly-cited reasons include
experimentation, opportunity creation, or a desire to “make the play talk to now”.1 Using
three recent productions as examples, it is clear that gender-creative casting can both reflect
and effect progress towards gender equality.

These three productions are: Globe’s Hamlet (2018), the RSC’s The Taming of the Shrew
(2019), and Bridge Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2020). Each has approached
gender-creative casting in a different way:

Hamlet
This production of Hamlet occurred soon after Michelle Terry became the artistic director of
the Globe, and since then she has pursued a vision of equal opportunity wherein each play
company has an even split of men and women. Though the productions may seem “gender-
blind”, Terry rejects this term, preferring instead to take a more nuanced approach by
suggesting that it is insensible to ignore gender, but that it should be confronted; it should be
used as a tool to challenge audience’s perceptions, and to see how far their suspension of
disbelief can be taken, while also allowing equal opportunities for performers regardless of
gender.2

The Taming of the Shrew

While the casting choices in Hamlet appear gender-blind, the choices in this production are
entirely deliberate. The RSC set their Shrew in an imagined 1590s Matriarchy, where women
hold all the power, and the unmarried maidens are now men, who are abused and bartered
over like property. This “fresh perspective”3 on what is now viewed as a very problematic
play, asks certain questions of the audience, and provides opportunities for actors that are
likely the first of their kind.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Perhaps the most subtle of the gender-creative casting choices, this production chose to take
the power couple of the show, the fairy king and queen, and reverse their lines, so that their
roles in the plot are reversed, as well as their power dynamic. This also means that any
relationships they form become queer, due to the traditional casting of the rest of the players.

1
Thomason, 2019
2
ShakespeareanAuthorshipTrust, 2019
3
RSC, 2019
 2

Furthermore, Puck is portrayed in a palpably queer way, emphasising the overall sexual
fluidity of the play, and creating an atmosphere in which gender roles are unstable.

Through thematic analysis of these productions and the texts on which they are built, there is
no doubt that the different reasons and effects of their directorial and design choices are
widespread and complicated. Nevertheless, each production clearly reflects the journey
towards equality that is occurring in today’s society, and has its own positive effect on the
industry and the audience, which cumulates in further progress towards gender equality.

Historical Overview of Shakespeare, Gender, and Casting

In order to assess how far gender-creative casting in these modern Shakespeare productions
shows progress towards gender equality, it is important to first consider a few more general
things: Firstly, how far did Shakespeare’s original productions challenge gender hierarchies
and therefore how much of this is still implied simply by the choice to do Shakespeare? And
secondly, how do we view and measure (progress towards) modern gender equality, and in
which ways can it be reflected and demonstrated on the modern stage?

The gender hierarchies in the time Shakespeare was alive (1564 - 1616) were very strict
compared to modern standards. Women did not have the right to vote or own property,
including money, which meant that they were entirely dependent on men, and on marriage,
for survival, and were therefore expected to remain at home and rear children. In addition to
other legal restrictions on the rights of women, there was considerable social pressure on
women to behave according to specific social roles. Women were expected to be subservient,
deferential, elegant, quiet and homebound, with their primary ambitions confined to
marriage, childbirth and homemaking. Granted, social status and economic class played into
what degree these expectations manifested, with the chief example being Queen Elizabeth I.
Though she was widely celebrated for her virginity, and was often idolised in art through
depictions of her as a virgin or goddess, ultimately she proved that women could make
reliable and successful monarchs. She was succeeded by King James I in 1603, whose
fascination with witchcraft is commonly associated with Shakespeare’s use of witches4,
thereby demonstrating the profound effect the monarch could have on a country’s cultural
output. In line with the pedestalisation of Elizabeth I and other virginal women, as well as the
nation’s obsession with evil women such as witches or shrews, medical ideology of the time
suggested further that woman were an “incomplete” version of man, who was the true sex.
Many even believed that the female sexual organs were a physical inversion of male
genitalia, thus rendering women insignificant and preventing them from being identified as
real, distinct humans; rather, they were a commodity to be bought and sold through marriage.

It is due to these social beliefs and expectations that women were not allowed to act on stage
until 1661, when Charles II began his reign. Before this, despite evidence that women acted
in street performances and in other notorious venues, all commercial acting companies were
made up entirely of men, which also meant that all the female characters were played by
boys.5 This practise of “cross-dressing” may form part of the reasons why theatre had a less-
than-virtuous reputation: acting was effectively the lowliest job to have in society, and there
was a growing Puritan objection to the theatre, which even culminated in the illegality of
theatre productions between 1642 and 1660. Dressing in clothes that were not “assigned” to

4
Calhoun, 1942
5
Garcia, 2018
 3

your gender was understood as a threat to the gender hierarchies of the time, and any woman
apprehended cross-dressing was understood to be in rebellion against her betters, i.e. men.
Any man caught in similar circumstances was also punished, as dressing in women’s clothing
was understood as a perversion of masculinity and a sign of moral and sexual degeneration.
While all-male companies were seen as socially legitimate because they did not directly
threaten gender hierarchy (only the idea of woman was portrayed and embodied on stage; not
the reality), there were also moral concerns over the crossing of economic class boundaries.
Actors playing roles such as Kings, Generals or Thanes was viewed as transgressive at least
to the same degree as boys playing women6, and was often considered even more disrupting
in the state of order and normality due to the rigidity and significance of class boundaries in
the Jacobean era. If anything, these restrictions make gender-creative modern productions all
the more meaningful, as they represent the progress that has been made since Shakespeare’s
time, and are part of a tradition of transgression and rebellion.

As Shakespeare was already writing for an art form that was viewed as transgressive by its
very nature, it is not surprising that his work is considered inherently “queer” by so many.
Though it could be argued that all drama texts written within these contexts are transgressive,
there are a number of reasons why Shakespeare’s plays can be viewed as more so than other
work written in this period. Not only did Shakespeare garner a lot of attention for his work,
making its overall impact wider, but also it has long been hypothesised that Shakespeare
himself was queer.7 Many of his sonnets appear to be addressed to the same young man, and
several of his plots blur the lines of gender, involving several crossdressing characters and
suggesting an almost post-structuralist fluidity in his concepts of gender. Virginia Woolf,
who described the so-called “androgynous mind” as the ideal place from which to write, said
that Shakespeare achieved this phenomenon more than any other writer.8 Furthermore, it has
been widely noted that Shakespeare’s plays are “not for an age, but for all time”9, i.e. they are
transhistorical, and can be made applicable to any time, an endeavour that is often achieved
through creativity with setting, or indeed, gender. This is perhaps because the ideas and
questions he presented about gender, class, race, and other political issues, not only
challenged contemporary beliefs, but have remained relevant over time due to their
existential, gender-less, and above all human, nature.

It can be said that, even today, there is a degree of transgression still implied by the choice to
play Shakespeare. In some ways, producing Shakespeare in the 21st Century can be
considered to be transgressive in the opposite direction; the focus on men as protagonists and
the dubious outdated ideas about race have prompted some backlash in recent years. It could
even be argued that gender-creative casting is a necessary adjustment to make if Shakespeare
continues to be produced, due to the limited opportunity for women and nonbinary people in
the field of Shakespearean acting if casted traditionally, which feeds into the gender
inequality that is still rife in today’s society.10 Despite this, directors repeatedly find new
ways to continue the Shakespearean tradition of transgressive theatre (often through casting
decisions), and to demonstrate the suitability of Shakespeare’s plays to modern theatrical
interpretations and social criticism. Furthermore, as Shakespeare often wrote non-human
characters, such as ghosts, witches, fairies, and sprites, who could already be said to exist
outside society’s rigid, binary ideas of gender, the canvas of Shakespearean tradition is even

6
Appendix A
7
Goldsmith and Thompson, 2021
8
Woolf, 1929
9
Johnson, 1623
10
Appendix A
 4

more fitting for gender-creative casting, and is the ideal way to create theatre that questions
society’s constructs and beliefs, thereby paving the way towards a fairer society in which
women, nonbinary people, trans people and queer people have equal rights and opportunities
throughout both the theatre industry, and wider society.

Theme I: Gender and Marriage

Introduction
Marriages are a common occurrence in Shakespeare’s plays, both “comedies” and
“tragedies” alike. Though marriage has often been used as a way to categorise the plays, with
weddings concluding the comedies and deaths concluding the tragedies, these divisions have
long been debated - they are not necessarily exclusive, and it is suggested that they were
perhaps simply convenient groups for publishing, rather than being intentional categories by
the author.11 Indeed, it can be said that there are elements of sadness at the end of many
comedies, for example innocent Malvolio’s imprisonment at the end of Twelfth Night, and
indeed lots of comedy throughout the tragedies, such is Shakespeare’s way of writing; puns,
innuendos and amusing asides are rife in every play.

Marriages on stage are often used to represent order, and, when disrupted, chaos. In so-called
“comedies”, marriage is used as a bookend representing the restoration of order after two
hours of folly and disruption. While marriage has a less definitive relation to tragedy, it is just
as present, and more commonly presents women only in relation to men, who are generally
the tragic heroes and wielders of power. A marriage is also a microcosm of the patriarchy:
throughout history it has been used as a way to own and control women, and in
Shakespeare’s time, a wife overstepping the boundaries of her role could result in various
social and legal punishments, including but not limited to “cucking” (being dunked
repeatedly in water), physical mutilation (cut ears, slashed notes, or branded cheeks), or, in
the theatre, usually death.

In each of these example plays, marriage is a key plot point, and though often in the original
texts it is used to present women as lacking in agency due to their reliance on the men who
own them, each of these productions reframes marriage and desire to allow a fresh
perspective on what marriage means for people of different genders. Each employs different
techniques to portray women in various new positions of power, thereby allowing the
audience to view societies that differ from their own (and therefore have the possibility to
excite imagination and scope of thought) while also providing female actors with the
opportunity to perform the roles of the wooers, not just the wooed, thus occasionally allowing
them more power on stage than in reality.

Hamlet
In the original text of Hamlet, marriage is used to imply alliance and duty, which is
particularly relevant when considering an Elizabethan woman’s duty to her husband. There
are two main female characters, Ophelia and Gertrude: one a young unmarried woman who
goes “mad” with grief and drowns herself, and one who is criminally implicated by her
marriage and dies seemingly by accident. While Ophelia and Hamlet are romantically
intertwined and it is suggested that their marriage might occur soon, their lack of official
union means that Ophelia is ultimately deferential to her father, and therefore forced to betray
Hamlet by renouncing her letters of affection on her father’s orders, resulting in Hamlet’s fit

11
Appendix A
 5

of misogynistic rage in which he proclaims “we will have no more marriages!”. The word
“marriage[]” here can also be considered a euphemism for the sexual union that traditionally
occurs after marriage, and echoes Hamlet’s disgust at his mother’s sexuality, a view that is
heightened by her second marriage and the deceit that Hamlet infers from this. Gertrude’s
“o’erhasty marriage” to Claudius has led Hamlet to believe that she was part of the king’s
murder (“A bloody deed . . . / As kill a king, and marry with his brother”), reflecting the
importance of marriage in deciding alliances, and the questions it asks of loyalty; Hamlet
feels that his mother owes alliance to him, and her marriage not only implies a betrayal of her
first husband, but also prevents her son from taking the throne. When Gertrude dies,
ultimately at the hands of Claudius’ “poison’d cup”, she cries “O my dear Hamlet” in her
final line, suggesting that her loyalty lies with Hamlet over her new husband, a somewhat
redeeming idea, and one which contributes to the overall ambiguity of her character’s
morality. Despite this, Hamlet repeatedly chastises his mother for her “incestuous” marriage
to Claudius, highlighting how her agency is limited by the men who surround her, even
despite her status as Queen.

In the Globe’s 2018 production, the only married couple in the play are not gender-swapped,
and instead it is Hamlet, Horatio, Ophelia, and Ophelia’s brother Laertes who are all cast
untraditionally, thus creating a noticeable generational gap, wherein the parents of these
characters do not disrupt perceptions of characters’ genders, but the younger generation do.
Though actor James Garnon, who played Claudius, suggests that this was probably not a
conscious choice, it has a palpable effect on the way order is presented in the play. As the
new monarch and his spouse fit closer to the audience’ expectations, there is a limit to how
far the forces of power are pushed away from their typical representation, and this reflects the
Globe’s ambition to see how far the suspension of disbelief can be taken without negatively
affecting the play and its original impact - in this case, Claudius and Gertrude’s recognisable
and socially-sturdy union keeps this to a relatively safe degree, while the “mad” youngsters
who are “sick at heart” (i.e. depressed) present less stable structures of gender and
relationships, fitting well with the themes of madness and existentialism that run throughout
the play. Furthermore, having a woman play Hamlet (even as a man) allows the performance
to be informed by different life experiences, and adds a new dimension to Hamlet’s complex
relationship with his mother, as well as providing the opportunity for female actors to inhabit
the male roles as they were originally written, making the production authentic in a way that
it would perhaps not be in a more deliberately political version.

The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew is perhaps the most directly marriage-focussed play in
Shakespeare’s folio. Its exploration of life after marriage (unusual for a “comedy”), and its
didactic message of a wife’s duties to her husband, have caused much anxiety over how it
should be categorised and the ways in which it should be performed; thus, it is commonly
referred to as a “problem play”.12 Some directors have recently chosen to present a more
light-hearted version in which Katherine and Petruchio’s marriage is a secret alliance and a
joke which the audience is in on; she is presented as only ostensibly tamed, as opposed to
being abused into real, fear-based submission.13 Re-framed or re-cast versions of this play are
therefore very common, and can provide thought-provoking interpretations of the text that
make it more relevant to today’s society.

12
Takçan, 2007
13
Dolan, 1996
 6

In the text itself, marriage is used as the framework for all action: the financial bartering that
occurs before the marriages demonstrates the lack of autonomy the women have within their
narrow prescribed social roles, and the extent to which their futures depend on their worth as
a wife, which is ultimately defined by their dowries and behaviours. Their futures are chosen
solely by their fathers, and they have little-to-no say in the matter. One visible benefit of
Katherine’s “shrewish” behaviour is that she seems to get more agency over her engagement
than her younger, perfectly deferential sister Bianca. Kate’s sharp, witty tongue and
shameless self-assertions are enough to scare off any potential suitors whom she does not
favour, regardless of what her father thinks, and it is not until Petruchio demonstrates his
ability to match her wit that she is stunned to a point of speechlessness, thereby being
manipulated out of her agency.

In the RSC production, the stark vision of women holding all the money and power is
completely at odds with the Patriarchal world outside of the theatre. The director and
assistant director, in their Director’s Commentary, highlighted the difference that this might
create in the audience’s perception of the world, suggesting that seeing women argue over
money so boldly (rather than the men we are conditioned to see) illuminates further the gross
materialism of society and of men’s roles, as well as the extent to which men control
capital.14 Additionally, the depiction of men as property of their wives (through marriage) is
an image that entirely undermines the absorbed understandings of gender within the
audience, allowing this politically-problematic play to continue to be produced in ways that
are thoughtful and creative, justified by the company’s resolve to challenge audiences’
preconceptions.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream fits clearly into the category of comedy, its magical, chaotic
and queer fairy forest setting allowing sexuality and gender to appear fluid. By the end, there
are four married couples: Theseus and Hippolyta, Demetrius and Helena, Lysander and
Hermia, and of course Oberon and Titania, who are the Fairy King and Queen, and are
therefore also equivalent to Duke Theseus and Queen Hippolyta in terms of their social class.
While desire is a prominent theme in the middle acts, marriage is the initial and closing focus
of the play: the opening line mentions the “nuptial hour” of the Duke of Athens and
Hippolyta, which does not occur until Act IV, when, “in the temple by and by with [them]”,
the “two or three lords and ladies” who form the younger couples are “eternally . . . knit”.
The fact that the play is framed with marriage suggests that it is the guiding force of all
internal action, and highlights its importance both as a political event and as a celebration of
restored order after the emotional conflicts of the middle action. Marriage is used further in
this opening scene to show the lack of agency that women have in terms of their marriage
choices. Theseus is taking Hippolyta for his wife after beating her in battle, thus marrying her
against her will, and relinquishing her of her power as Queen of the Amazons (a Greek
mythological society consisting only of women).15 This marriage therefore joins their two
kingdoms together under Theseus’ rule, highlighting the political relevance of marriage,
whilst also presenting (originally) the most powerful woman, as entirely powerless, through
the union into which she is being forced. Shortly after this, nobleman Egeus “complain[s]” to
Theseus of the young man Lysander, who has “bewitched the bosom of [his] child”, a phrase
which suggests that she is incapable of choosing for herself. Egeus has decided that his
daughter should marry Demetrius, his vision of “a worthy gentleman”, however Lysander has

14
Audibert, 2019
15
myShakespeare, 2020
 7

“turned her obedience, which is due to [her father],/ To stubborn harshness”, and the only
course of action following this is to “dispose of her/ . . . either to [Demetrius]/Or to her
death”. The extent of this punishment for disobedience, which may be avoided if she instead
“endure[s] the livery of a nun”, exemplifies the rigidity of women’s roles in Shakespeare’s
Athens, and the significance of marriage in determining their futures.

In the Bridge Theatre’s production, not only are Oberon and Titania’s roles switched,
presenting the audience with a subtle reversal of power that is not so visually gender-creative,
but also the roles of Oberon and Titania are doubled by the actors who play Theseus and
Hippolyta. Because in this production Titania and Hippolyta are visually similar, and Titania
is the ruler of her marriage, it could be argued that women are presented with more agency
than they have in the original text, and that the starkly-contrasting juxtaposition of the two
characters’ situations emphasises Titania’s power and Hippolyta’s powerlessness, thereby
providing not only a profound image of a captured woman, but also allowing the audience to
be awed by a woman who unashamedly fulfils the role of the jealous manipulator, and speaks
lines that were originally written for a man, thus usurping his character, while also turning the
affair that is initially between Titania and Nick Bottom to an (even more) queer encounter,
now between the Fairy King and an ass-faced man. This is not where the queerness stops in
this production: the director has capitalised on the fluidity of desire that this play is known
for, and added two extra kisses to the script, between both Demetrius and Lysander, and
Helena and Hermia. This choice demonstrates the ways in which gender-creativity can
overlap with exploration of sexuality on stage, and, along with Puck’s palpably effeminate,
genderqueer presentation, adds a dimension of queerness to the production that is singularly
innovative in its interpretation of Shakespeare, and ultimately creates an atmosphere of
acceptance and playfulness that clearly demonstrates the progress that has been made towards
openness and equality for those of all genders and sexualities.

Theme II: Gender and Power

Introduction
Throughout history, men have been in power. Though this may initially seem to refer to
distinct positions of political or directorial power, the second-wave feminism movement of
the 1960s made it clear that “the personal is political”, i.e. that the Patriarchy affects all areas
of life, including within the domestic sphere, where Shakespeare’s women were usually
depicted. It is also significant that Shakespeare was writing from within a Patriarchy, a
context which clearly shaped his work, particularly the events and people he chose to write
about - only 16% of all the characters in his canon are women.16 One distinct way in which
Shakespeare’s women are disempowered is through their deaths - though he wrote several
groundbreaking female characters who were clever and bold, and expressed their frustration
at the social roles they had to adhere to, any character like this would usually be either killed
or married off by the end, as it was customary to have a restoration of order and this could
not be achieved without rebalancing the power structures.17

Furthermore, each female character’s storyline depends firmly on their social status. Class
and gender are the two most visible determiners of power amongst Shakespeare’s characters,
and commonly, lower-class female characters seem to have somewhat more power to be
independent or sexual, due to the lower risk of losing social status through their behaviour.

16
TEDx Talks, 2020
17
Jamieson, 2020
 8

Conversely, women in positions of political power are often distrusted by Shakespeare, being
presented with different kinds of questionable morals. For example, Lady Macbeth, who
schemes, manipulates her husband, openly rejects her “sex”, and in return is rewarded with
first “a mind diseased”, and finally death.18

By using gender-creative casting in these productions, each director not only subverts power
structures in innovative ways, providing newness to plays that have been performed many
times, but also they make them more relevant to current events and debates, allowing
Shakespeare’s social commentary to come through more effectively and making audience
members question the lenses with which they view society, and the normality that they have
unconsciously accepted. Seeing theatre like this therefore provides greater entertainment to
audiences by allowing them to escape the Patriarchal, class-bound world in which they live,
and view inversions of power not just as Shakespeare wrote them, but also with casting
which provides opportunities for female actors to explore what it might be like to command a
whole kingdom, or simply take up more space, roles which women are often barred from
even in today’s society.

Hamlet
As Hamlet is perhaps more of a political play than it is a domestic one, power is already a
key theme, and it is arguably Hamlet’s feelings of powerlessness, grief, and insecurity that
emasculate him, presenting him as weak, emotional, and therefore more stereotypically
feminine. As a tragic hero, it is often said that it is his inability to take action, i.e. his self-
doubt and indecision, that form his tragic flaw19, and therefore it could be said that it is this
false masculinity that leads to his demise.

Alongside this, perhaps the most obvious way to view gender and power in this play is
through the women and the little power that they have. Gertrude and Ophelia speak a total of
9% of the lines in Hamlet, so it is difficult to form full critical perspectives on either of
them20, however both of them are subject to Hamlet’s misogyny at various points in the play,
and eventually die as an indirect result of his actions, emphasising their disempowerment and
casting them firmly as tragic victims of an unforgiving and violent Patriarchy.

The play begins shortly after the King’s death, therefore the power structures are already
disrupted and haunted by the deception that pervades the play, and thus it can be argued that
the gender-creative casting in this production suits well the atmosphere of chaos, madness
and secrecy that is already established by the text. By casting a woman as Hamlet, this
production not only highlights the aspects of the character that are more stereotypically
feminine, thereby potentially allowing Hamlet’s existential questioning and deeply human
difficulties to have a greater, or newer, impact on the [female members of the] audience, but
also it provides a visual representation of a woman in a powerful position (even though she is
playing the character as a man). This also means that female actors can feel individually
empowered by the roles that they play, and the impression they can make on audience
members through their art.

Though the scenes between Hamlet and Ophelia have the risk of coming across as amusing,
especially when Hamlet crudely references the “nothing” that “lie[s] between [her] legs” and
Ophelia is being played by a man, actor James Garnon impresses the importance of souls
18
Jamieson, 2020
19
McNair, 2021
20
TEDx Talks, 2020
 9

above genders in Shakespeare’s work, and how if the character has female genitalia, then
what does it matter about the body of the actor beyond the character portrayal they are
delivering? Similarly, one viewer expressed that at that point in the play they were not
thinking about this incongruence, but were instead engrossed in the action21, ultimately
suggesting that the production did its job at experimenting with casting without taking away
from the play, if not adding to it.

The Taming of the Shrew

The power structures of society are integral to the plot of the Taming of the Shrew, and it is
largely through domestic relationships that they are expressed. Though Katherine is
ultimately tamed, and only presented in the framework of marriage, she is still a significant
role, and represented to the Elizabethans a daringly bold and witty woman who unashamedly
transgressed the boundaries that were in place for her, a depiction that could only be justified
on stage if it was refuted by the end. Despite that Katherine’s gracefulness is restored,
Bianca’s disobedience in the final scene raises questions about the consistency of female
deference, suggesting that though Bianca was considered most “fair and virtuous” to all the
suitors, she ultimately claims more power in marriage than her sister, whose “scolding
tongue” is ruthlessly “tamed”. It is also thought that22, though the final message of the play is
a speech about how women must yield to their husbands, Shakespeare may still have been
progressive in his presentation of domestic relationships, as he depicts a shrew-taming
through no direct violence or public humiliation (as was common practise at the time23), but
instead through language and other forms of abuse that are private. The private vs public
nature of Katherine and Petruchio’s relationship has also been debated24, with some
suggesting that, even at the end, they have an understanding “twixt [them] twain” how she
should behave “being alone” and “in company”; i.e. they conform to societal standards and
power structures in public, but engage in playful cooperation when alone. Kate’s eventual
submission to Petruchio’s “gamesome” follies can be seen as a realisation of the benefit of
playing along with Petruchio’s games, as it allows her to live in relative comfort within the
Patriarchal culture, while still being entertained by the “meeting” of their “two raging fires”
of wit.25

As this play is all about male power, Justin Audibert’s decision to set it in an imagined
Matriarchy had a large impact on the way power was depicted. Most notable was the use of
costuming to represent this (see Fig. 1, 2, 3, 4): each character had a wig26 made for them,
with the designers using elabtorate jewel-studded updos for the high-status women, and long
thin hair for Bianco, while Kate’s hair was very short. Similarly, the women’s dresses took
up lots of space, their wide hip and shoulder pads giving them physical dominance over the
men, who wore floral doublets and pantaloon-style Italian breeches. Though this method of
gender identification uses masculine and feminine stereotypes, arguably reinforcing them
rather than challenging them, this created an entirely new visual for the play, and provided an
interesting dynamic for the audience, especially during lines such as “why are our bodies soft
and weak and smooth”, which reportedly got a laugh from the audience.27 The directors also
reflected in their commentary the elements of comedy in the play and how the gender-swap

21
Appendix A, 2021
22
CiRCE Podcast Network, 2021
23
Dolan, 1996
24
Audibert, 2019
25
Novy, 1979
26
Royal Shakespeare Company, 2019
27
Appendix B
 10

affected these, suggesting that there were moments when the audience laughed and then
immediately questioned their laughter, thereby making them more aware of their internal
prejudices, a key strategy for progress towards gender equality.

Figure 1: Kate pins Bianco to the ground, threatening her (2,1). Figure 2: Publicity shot of all the female cast members in their costumes.

Figure 3 (left): Petruchia (Claire Price) in her costume: a heavy, padded and detailed dress, with a wild and bejewelled wig.
Figure 4 (right): Petruchia and Bianco in the wooing scene (2,1)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there is a third dimension to power beyond class and
gender, and that is the fairy class, who exploit humans for fun with their magical abilities,
and exist parallel to the Athenians, which is emphasised in this production by the doubling of
the ruling couples. In the original text, Oberon commands Puck to “fetch [him] this herb” of
“love-in-idleness”, which he then uses to take revenge on Titania for “cross[ing] her
 11

Oberon”, making her “pursue . . . with the soul of love”, the first “creature” she looks upon.
Though the fairy world is presented as perhaps working with different hierarchies and
different methods of punishment, it is clear that Titania has offended the social order by
taking the young page for herself and disobeying her husband. Ranking below the fairy king
and queen are the Athenians, who find themselves somewhat free from the strict orders of
Athens while in the forest. Helena, who laments that “her sex . . . cannot fight for love, as
men may do/ . . . [for they] were not made to woo”, also confesses that she is “draw[n]” to
Demetrius, and that “leave [him his] power to draw,/ And [she] shall have no power to follow
[him]”. These direct references to power suggest that love is a stronger power than her will,
or even his, as she will not obey his requests to “pursue [him] not”.

Though there is little gender-creativity within the casting or portrayal of the Athenians, the
comedy of their mismatched and fluid desires is perhaps emphasised by the atmosphere of
queerness that results from the depictions of Puck and of the ruling couple. Puck, whose
mischievous spirit often makes him an audience favourite, was characterised as a camp fairy
sprite who often directly addressed the audience, asserting his power over them with rude,
unscripted imperatives, especially when moving through the standing crowd. The use of
Theatre in the Round to stage it emphasised the audience’s social inferiority to the magical
characters, which was also highlighted by the proxemics of height; the fairies often hang
from high acrobatic ribbons to watch the Athenians and their follies. Furthermore, the
transformation of Bottom’s and Titania’s love affair to Bottom’s and Oberon’s, while
progressive in that it depicts queerness on stage (and in powerful roles), had a comedic effect
that must be interrogated. It has been speculated that the reaction to this scene was somewhat
encouraged by the production, thereby suggesting that the gay nature of the affair was
perhaps exploited for comedic effect rather than with a serious intention to diversify the
Shakespearean stage and the stories it can tell. Despite this, ultimately the theatre is for
entertainment, and the overall effect of the gender-creative casting was clearly one of
progressiveness, and created an atmosphere of joy and fluidity in love and gender that can
ultimately be seen as reflecting the progress that has been made towards equality in the
theatre.

Figure 5: Titania exercises her power over Puck, ordering him to find the flower (2,1).
 12

Theme III: Gender and Setting

Introduction
While gender and setting may seem an unlikely combination, setting can apply to a number
of things besides location, and is especially relevant when considering creative or innovative
productions such as the three used as examples here. Setting may reference location, time,
historical context, theatre, power structures; anything in the background that affects the
foreground action. As setting can be used to criticise social structures, it can also be used to
enforce and reflect them, including those that entail gender inequality such as Patriarchy.

Shakespeare’s unconventional and non-naturalistic settings (usually outside of England, or

fictional altogether) allowed him to engage with popular stereotypes, and to superficially
distance his social commentary from his audience, thereby giving him greater license to
criticise or invent. Similarly, setting can be used in modern productions to make the work
applicable to modern events or debates, and therefore to reflect progress towards gender
equality. The creative use of setting in each of these productions, in intersection with creative
casting decisions, furthers the new realities that are suggested in each play, thereby
challenging and transporting the audience, which in turn effects progress towards gender
equality by demonstrating new worlds in which the accepted inequalities are disrupted.

Hamlet
The original text of Hamlet is set in Elsinor castle, on the eastern coast of Denmark, which
was at this time known as a place of military fortitude and power.28 The threat of invasion
from neighbouring countries is essential to the plot, which ends with the Norwegian prince
Fortinbras storming the castle and taking control. The threat of invasion also contributes to
Hamlet’s constant mood of anxious uncertainty; the recent death of the King has resulted in a
“buried Denmark”, wherein this place of military control has descended into disorder.
Because most of the scenes are set within the castle, often in bedchambers, there is a
continuous feeling of entrapment and observation, which is also furthered by the recurrence
of spying in the plot. This surveillance can also be linked to the obsessive observation of
female behaviour throughout history, and the lack of privacy that women often suffer from.29

Perhaps what is most significant about setting in this production is its location at
Shakespeare’s Globe theatre. Because this is a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre built in
1599 by Shakespeare’s company30, there is very little set to indicate location (especially in
this production, which was palpably non-naturalistic), therefore much of the setting must be
imagined by the audience, as in the early 1600s. Because so much suspension of disbelief is
already being utilised, the gender-creative casting decisions have somewhat less impact on
the play, as they are just another element of non-naturalism that the company can use to
challenge the audience’s imagination. Furthermore, this method of gender-creative casting in
which all the characters are played as written (i.e. not as the gender of the actor) can be
considered the most historically accurate, as it corresponds closely to how Shakespeare’s
productions would have been cast: with Ophelia played by a young man. Though this may
then make it the least controversial of the productions, it does allow female actors to play
male parts exactly as they were written, and sometimes also for more jokes to emerge from
the text: Shakespeare’s Globe has also done a few productions authentic to Shakespeare’s,
with all the parts played by men, and as Shakespeare wrote directly for his company and their
28
Sparknotes, 2009
29
TEDx, Talks, 2020
30
Wikipedia, 2017
 13

circumstances, there are many jokes that get lost in modern, gender-congruent versions,
especially in plays that have gender-swaps within the plot, such as Twelfth Night. Therefore
it can be said that this production is progressive in a similar way to Shakespeare’s original
productions, or at least shows progress in a different way to other modern versions, however
it still provides unique opportunities to female actors, and showcases their talents on a stage
that demands highly talented performers to capture the audience’s belief.

The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew is set in Padua, Italy, where there is a very strict class hierarchy
and certain social rules, for example what can be worn to a wedding (which Petruchio breaks,
humiliating Katherine (see Fig.6)).31 It is this social context that forms the rules of marriages
and even the requirement for Katherine to be tamed at all. This play is perhaps more difficult
to set in another background because of how important 1590s society is to the plot, however
it was adapted into a teenage high-school rom-com in the 90’s, 10 Things I Hate About You,
which inevitably does not follow the exact story, possibly in an attempt to alleviate some of
the problematic elements of the text. Nevertheless, given the progress towards gender
equality that has been made in the 23 years since this film, it seems unlikely that it would be
produced today, as it is still full of sexist stereotypes.

Why then, should Shakespeare’s Shrew be allowed on the modern stage? Given its long-time
status as a “problem play” which is difficult to decipher, it can be seen as one of
Shakespeare’s most interesting plays, and one most ripe for creative casting decisions.
Described by the RSC as “the ultimate battle of the sexes . . . turned on its head” and a
“radical take on Shakespeare’s fierce and energetic comedy of gender”, this production used
the setting of an “imagined 1590s Matriarchy” to provoke and entertain audiences with a
transgressive spectacle that had never yet been seen. The extent to which the director exploits
stereotypes (and imagination) in this version (through costuming etc.) fully cements the idea
that these women are comfortable and accepted in their power, a concept that does not yet
match today’s reality, even in countries where women have more power. At the current rate,
gender equality in the highest positions of power will not be reached for another 130 years, so
putting a Matriarchy on stage provides a vision of what fully self-assured women can look
like, thereby claiming the power to widen the scopes of the audience’s imaginations. While
this fictional world by no means represents gender equality, its total subversion of a world
that was (and is, in some places,) real, arguably justifies its presentations of gender and
makes them all the more necessary.

A key question regarding setting in this play is always whether or not to keep the
“Induction”, which is a preface to the play and occurs before Act One in the script. The
Taming of the Shrew is therefore originally a “play within a play”, however the framing
narrative is never returned to after it begins. The RSC’s decision to cut the induction, which
depicts a lower-class man (Christopher Sly) who falls asleep drunk and is subsequently
tricked into believing he is a Lord, functions in several ways. The induction is often said to
set up the canvas for the class transgressions that occur in the main action32, most notably
when lower-class Tranio dresses up as his master to allow his master to go undercover as a
tutor and woo Bianca; in the Induction, the real Lord’s servants dress up as characters in
order to trick Sly. To cut this preface, then, not only removes the distance of the audience to
the shrew-taming action, thus increasing its verisimilitude (which is arguably more important

31
Sparknotes, 2009
32
Dolan, 1996
 14

in this imagined setting), but it also removes a sequence that emphasises the importance of
class, allowing the issues of gender hierarchy to be viewed more obtrusively.

Figure 6: Petruchia arrives late to her wedding, and in men's clothing, i.e. the clothing that will be the most humiliating for
Katherine. She then refuses to allow Bianco to stay for the Banquet, instead forcefully dragging him off to her home, which
is the setting for most of the “taming”.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This play has two main settings, and each of them represents something different. In Athens
(the city associated with Athena, Greek Goddess of War and Wisdom), a war has just ended,
and the city is coming out of its misery to celebrate the union with the losing kingdom,
through the marriage of their two leaders. For the young couples, Athens is a place where
they have no free love, and their futures are dictated by their seniors, causing them to escape
to the wood. Ironically, they have little control over their love in the there either: though the
fairy-filled forest is much more a place of fluidity and chaos (partly due to the feuding of the
King and Queen), the Athenians are subject to the fairies entertainments, and their desires are
taken away from them completely by Cupid’s magic flower. In the forest, the presence of the
supernatural supersedes human ideas of class and gender, allowing magic to be the driving
force rather than politics.

In this production, the rigidity of Athens is evoked by a Handmaid’s-Tale-style image

wherein the first scene shows Hippolyta standing in a glass case labelled “Queen of the
Amazons”, almost like an exhibit. She and all the Athenians wear austere, quasi-religious
garb; wimples and long black coats. This Athens is a pious, pleasureless and repressive
society33 until the arrival of Puck, who is clad in beglittered jeans and a decaled T-shirt, arms
laden with rainbow wristbands and tattoos - a clear representation of the contrast between the
two settings from which the characters come, and the presence of gender roles in each.

This production is also set using bits of stage which are raised and lowered for different
scenes, thereby emphasising the dimension of height, which is often used to differentiate

33
Tripney, 2019
 15

between the fairies, most of whom are acrobats hanging on silks from the ceiling, and the
Athenians, who walk only on the ground. This also allows the magic characters to observe
the humans as if invisible, again differentiating between the two worlds and how fixed their
realities are.

Conclusion

Ultimately, though it is inevitably impossible to uncover the exact intentions and effects of a
modern Shakespeare production, there is no doubt that they can be used constructively to
both effect and reflect progress towards gender equality. Through these director’s
presentations of marriage and power, and their use of setting, each of these productions
provides visual and intellectual exploration of gender and gender roles, commenting on
society and providing escape through live theatre in ways that are innovative and creative.

The presence of more women on stage, in what is still a heavily male-dominated industry,
shows how the theatre is becoming a more inclusive place, especially when compared to the
theatre in Shakespeare’s time. The resolve of Shakespeare’s Globe to cast every show as 50%
men and 50% women is giving women the chance to play the roles as they were written,
thereby presenting a strong advocacy within the industry for allowing Shakespeare to be
performed in all its non-naturalistic glory, with any body able to inhabit any character,
regardless of gender. Similarly, though in a much more direct way, the RSC’s Matriarchy
allowed women to fulfil roles in which they can command others, but as women, thereby
taking up more space as women – both roles which are difficult for women to inhabit, even in
today’s society. This production demonstrates to modern audience members, who likely still
have subconscious bias against women, that women can have the same complexity of thought
as men, and can deliver the same characters with equal human understanding and nuance,
ultimately leading to better, more progressive, representation of women on stage.

Having men playing women and vice versa also allows for performances which are informed
by different life experiences to what is seen in traditionally-cast productions. This adds to the
element of newness, and the public fascination with the productions, thereby increasing
society’s engagement with the themes and gender presentations within each play. As it is now
over four hundred years since the plays were written, each has been performed thousands of
times, and directors are constantly looking for new ways to adapt and reframe the plays to
make them more popular, innovative, and politically relevant. If Shakespeare is going to
remain important in a cultural sphere inundated with new, more progressive writing, it feels
almost necessary to justify this importance with creative versions that actively combat the
evident racism and sexism contained within the plays.

The depiction of societies wildly different from our own, be it the fairy-filled forest where
those in power are proudly queer, or the Italian Matriarchy that imposes Elizabethan
women’s social boundaries on men, clearly affects audience members in terms of how they
see and interpret gender roles. Audience members of The Taming of the Shrew described it as
“provocative”, “innovative” and “thought-provoking”34, highlighting how theatre can be used
to engage audience members with the issues in our society, and to help them conceive of
worlds where the Heteropatriarchy is not strict and immutable, but malleable and easily
overcome. These productions ultimately confirm the idea that theatre, like all art, has the

34
Royal Shakespeare Company, 2019
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power to broaden imaginations and change minds, thereby effecting progress towards gender
equality by changing the way we think as a society.

[7093 words]