The �power behind the throne� is a worn-out stereotype. From classic literature like Les Liaisons Dangereuses, in which the Marquise de Merteuil gleefully manipulates the sophisticated Vicomte de Valmont, to more modern instances like the brilliantly, unabashedly dangerous, manipulative, and even feared Sheri Palmer (of Fox�s hit show �24�), literature and the arts are full of women who manipulate men for their own ends. In fact, far more common than women on thrones, in literature and perhaps even in history, are those behind thrones–the powerful females who in spite of gender and of not being directly possessed of ruling privileges manage to control and to hold in thrall the male kings of their times. Though this stereotype, like most, probably contains more than a grain of truth, the women of Shakespeare�s plays take the idea of female power in a male-dominated system a step further by making the women in question not only powerful, but actual wielders of their influence in a very specific medieval mode: that of Niccolo Machiavelli.
Machiavelli, a 16th century Italian aristocrat. was witness to the statesmanship of such luminaries as Cesare Borgia and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, and brought the precepts he formulated from his experiences to his most famous treatise, The Prince. Written to help its author �get in good� with the local ruling bodies of the time, The Prince, with it�s exploration of the characteristics of effectively powerful rulers, went on to influence generations of Renaissance thought on leadership and power.
The Essay on Power And Women In Literature Macbeth The Scarlet Letter My Antonia
... the impact that she had on him. Frequently in literature women are depicted as powerful individuals that alter either the characters or total ... is too soft to take the direct route to the throne (Dominic 256). Furthermore, she realizes that Macbeth is too full ... of the vigor and forcefulness of Lady Macbeth. Likewise, the power of women is illustrated in The Scarlet Letter, wherein the vitality ...
Shakespeare�s notions of history, as displayed in his plays Richard II and Richard III, deal not only with the oft-noticed Machiavellian tendencies of the kings themselves, but directly with those kings being surrounded, influenced, and manipulated by Machiavellian women who understand power dynamics.
Machiavelli says that �a prince must be shrewd enough to avoid the public disgrace of those vices that would lose him his state� , and in Richard II, the Duchess of Gloucester displays her knowledge and embodiment of this principle. Exhorting John of Gaunt, her brother in law, to kill the men who murdered her husband, she says that�: [Gaunt] dost consent/In some large measure to [his] father’s death/In that thou seest thy wretched brother die.� . Furthermore, she informs Gaunt, �In suff�ring thus thy brother to be slaughter’d/Thou show�st the naked pathway to thy life/Teaching stern murder how to butcher thee� . Here, she is attempting to instruct him away from the public disgrace, as Machiavelli would put it, of the vice of weakness. By condoning the murder of his brother, the Duchess says, Gaunt is not only disgracing himself publicly, but showing himself weak, and thus open to assassination attempts. Though the Duchess, of course, doesn�t know that Gaunt thinks the king himself is privy to the death of her husband (the Duke of Gloucester), and thus doesn�t have the whole story, she is shown directly espousing Machiavelli�s principle. When she says, in the same scene, that �That which in mean men we intitle patience/Is pale cold cowardice in noble breasts� , she speaks to Machiavelli�s contention that a prince has a responsibility to be better and braver than the common man. Indeed, as Machiavelli says, �what makes a prince contemptible is being considered�effeminate, cowardly, or indecisive� , and the Duchess of Gloucester in this scene is written by Shakespeare as woman deeply aware of this Machiavellian idea. Here, then, she (unlike, perhaps, Gaunt) is anything but effeminate, cowardly, or indecisive. She herself demonstrates, by urging Gaunt to action, the sort of qualities Machiavelli finds desirable in a prince or other ruler.
The Essay on The Power Of A Woman
The Power of a Woman The familiar saying 'Behind every great man is an even greater woman' can certainly hold true in many cases. A woman may very well be the driving force behind any successful man. However, a woman can also use her strong influence in a negative way. This can be seen in Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth is the evil force behind Macbeth's cruelty and evil doings. In Shakespeare's ...
Even the depressed Queen Isabel, whose role in Richard II is mostly to speak of her foreboding that something terrible will happen to her husband, displays Machiavellian characteristics in Act IV, scene iv, where she, walking with her ladies, encounters an old gardener and his servants. Though they are not nobles, she assumes they will talk of affairs of state, and accordingly hides herself and her ladies in waiting so that she can hear what they have to say. Here, she is, as Machiavelli would perhaps put it, �playing the fox�. By the wily expedient of hiding herself so as to listen to the opinions of commoners, Isabel is keeping an eye on affairs of state. Machiavelli says that if one studies what he calls modern history, one sees many examples of �how the man succeeded best who knew best how to play the fox� , , Hiding herself is perhaps an unethical action on the part of Queen Isabel, but one of which Machiavelli would approve, as he believes that �as [men] are a sad lot and keep no faith with [a ruler]� , it is perfectly fine to break their trust (by, for example, listening in on their private conversations, as Isabel does).
By performing an unethical but permissible Machiavellian action, Queen Isabel shows herself to be another of Shakespeare�s female characters who display great awareness of Machiavelli�s principles. Though at first glance a weak woman, left at home to fret over her husband, Isabel takes control of her surroundings as Machiavelli would have any ruler do. Here, again, Shakespeare shows us history as populated by Machiavellian women who are aware of what it takes to get and keep power.
In Richard III, as in Richard II, Shakespeare seems to be showing us history through the lens of womanly power that is anything but womanly in the traditional sense–rather than being merely the powers often afforded to women in their capacity �behind the throne�, the powers Shakespeare shows his female characters as having are Machiavellian–these women embody The Prince�s power. Early in the play, we see the power of Queen Margaret, who knows that, as Machiavelli put it, �to be feared is much safer than to be loved.� Though she does not have the conventional power she feels she deserves (since she thinks she is the rightful queen, but does not occupy the throne), Margaret wields considerable power through her curses, which frighten their noble listeners and objects. She curses her rival for queenship, Elizabeth, and says she hopes that �Long [will] die [Elizabeth�s] happy days before [her] death;/And, after many lengthen’d hours of grief�, she continues, �Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s queen�. Here, she shows the knowledge of the nobles around her which Machiavelli considers so important, and is thus able to speak preying on Elizabeth�s greatest fears: the death of her husband and children.
The Term Paper on William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and History
Literature often reflects the times it is written in. Often, great stories come from the events of the day or some oft-talked about idea or thought. History, society and culture can mostly be studied well through the literature of that specific period. Here, we take a comprehensive look into The Tempest, one of the last plays written by the England’s greatest William Shakespeare. Regarded as a ...
Another woman in Richard III is one who many scholars of women�s place and power in literature find problematic: Lady Anne. Daughter-in-law of one man Richard has killed, and widow of another, Anne is first seen cursing Richard as murderer, only to allow herself to be courted and seduced by him later in the scene. (She later ends up marrying him).
While many see Anne as a weak-willed woman as she goes from declaiming �Cursed be the hand that made these fatal holes!/Cursed be the heart that had the heart to do it!/Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence� , as she mourns over the bodies of her dead relatives to accepting them murderous Richard�s ring in only a few hundred lines, there is certainly an alternate reading to her actions. Faced with the ugly reality of Richard�s imminent rise to power, Anne does what is expedient. Machiavelli says that a successful ruler �has to have a mind ready to shift as the winds of fortune and the varying circumstances of life may dictate�he should not depart from good if he can hold to it, but he should be ready to enter on evil if he has to,� and Anne displays this quality of a successful ruler when she gives in to Richard�s suit despite her hatred for him and his deeds. While some read her capitulation as weak, it can also be seen, as in this reading, as pragmatic: here, Anne is a true Machiavellian woman: changeable in an instant as circumstances require for her own well-being.
Even a casual reader can see the Machiavellian characteristics of Richard III, for example, but the lens through which Shakespeare in particular views the British history he writes is a slightly more complex one. Shakespeare imbues not only selected male characters with the qualities that would be familiar to Renaissance thinkers and theatergoers as deriving from Machiavelli, he gives these characteristics to the women of his history plays as well. Perhaps Shakespeare incorporated such strong female characters as a paean to Elizabeth I, his sometime patron, who held the throne almost throughout Shakespeare�s life. By creating female characters who embody Machiavelli�s The Prince, Shakespeare could be seen as making a statement about the nature of women in British history–powerful in subtle ways even when, as in the story of Richard III, they are killed off, or, as in Richard II, nearly invisible. The women of Shakespeare�s history plays are strong ones, forcing readers and viewers both in Shakespeare�s times and now to consider the roles even of seemingly weak or minor women: truly the powers behind the British throne.
The Term Paper on Women in American History
Back in the 1930’s women’s suffrage had been approved and many thought that equality was finally gained between men and women. Although this law was passed, many women still faced criticism when trying to continue their education or find jobs. This was a time when the Great Depression started to put an enormous amount of pressure on people to find employment and provide for their families. When ...
Works Cited
Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Translated by Robert M. Adams. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Richard II in The Norton Shakespeare edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 943-1015. New York: W.W. Norton,1997.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Richard III in The Norton Shakespeare edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 507-601. New York: W.W. Norton,1997.
