‘To be, or not to be?’ 

That is the question, still so relevant to the debates of philosophers, existentialists, literary critics, poets, artists and the like of today’s 21st century world. 

Known as the Bard of Avon, England’s National Poet, and the most infamous English playwright, William Shakespeare has many honorifics, but began life in a small town named Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. Born to presumably illiterate parents, he is extensively regarded as the best writer in the English language. Mere days ago, on the 26th of April, Shakespeare would have turned 458 years old, and three days earlier, and the world was celebrating the 406th anniversary of his death. 

A dramatist and poet, he was the world’s nonpareil of the 16th century- and indeed, to this day, contemporaries still marvel at the relevance of his works’ natures: just seven years after his death, his fellow English playwright Ben Johnson, who wrote famed works such as The Alchemist, remarked that Shakespeare’s work was ‘not of an age, but for all time.’ Still, despite the wealth of knowledge about his immortalised oeuvres, modern academics know very little about the man himself- not his likeness nor his disposition nor his political stance. Perhaps this is the sagacity of Shakespeare: he can be everything, and yet nothing, his characters, thus, acting as representatives for what we can only assume to be his opinions, ethics, and beliefs. 

The Twelfth Night’s Feste, for instance, serves as a proxy for his enigmatic author as the omniscient fool who speaks in riddles and rhymes, and yet has a deeper perception of the human character than anyone could have imagined. Indeed, it is only the fool once more who can outwit the astute Prince Hamlet, whose satirical diction and shrewdness had defeated any prior verbal sparring partner thus far. 

But what many find most intriguing is his variable portrayal of female characters, especially within his more notorious plays. From the ardent, young Juliet, whom love recasts into an emboldened woman, to the conniving Lady Macbeth, who warns contemporary readers of what happens if a woman gets too much power, to Viola, who disguises herself as a man in order to gain entry to Orsino’s court and enjoy the liberties of the male gender, to the gentle Cordelia, who shows her father a true daughter’s love only for him to die of a broken heart: Shakespeare’s understanding of what it was to be a woman developed significantly over the course of his plays. 

Compared to some of his earlier plays, such as The Taming of the Shrew, where the unfortunate victim of the ‘taming’, Kate is essentially beaten back and worn into submission, three years into his writing career, other plays such as Much Ado About Nothing, or the Twelfth Night, praise the verbal keenness, eloquence and intellect of some of their respective female leads, Beatrice and Viola, a quality vehemently commended today.

The difference is noticeable: both Kate and Beatrice are being wooed, and yet, whereas sparks fly between Beatrice and Benedick verbally, the conflict between Kate and Petruchio becomes physical. And, of course, Beatrice and Benedick’s marriage is a happy one, but Kate and Petruchio’s poses a series of issues- though, of course, this perception depends wholly on the audience’s contemporary views (several centuries ago, there may have been fewer problems with this). 

Harneet Sangha, who has recently revisited Twelfth Night, commented that “I think that, for example, Viola’s higher level of wit and strong sense of rationality make her quite a remarkable female role within the play. Although gender stereotypes do still appear in the play, more often than not Viola proves herself to be as much of a man as any in Illyria, and in many times, more.”  

Typically, the approval of Shakespearen women tends to fall in line with how they delineate aspects and moments of femininity: Imogen from Cymbeline was popular in the century because of her fidelity, but as she incurs the wrath of her father by marrying a man not of his choosing, she resorts to disguising as a man, much like Viola in Twelfth Night, or Portia, from The Merchant of Venice, or Rosalind, from As You Like It. In fact, by cross-dressing his characters, Shakespeare allows female characters the freedom of expression in a society that previously would have been restrictive for women, letting them be taken seriously, though in the end they always end up in conventional marriages- our modern ideal of exact gender equality still remains inconceptualised in the 16th century.   

But still, by allowing his female characters to manipulate their own fortunes and futures, Shakespeare is alluding that women are smarter, wittier and more credible than they are acknowledged for in Elizabethan England, and it is for this reason- and many, many more- that we still celebrate Shakespeare and his strikingly relevant, prescient writings.