Women as Instigators of Tragedy in the Works of William Shakespeare

Women as Instigators of Tragedy in the Works of Shakespeare

It is the very error of the moon;

She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,

And makes men mad. (Othello 5.2.112-14)

The moon is often seen in literature as an allegory for love, virtue, and chastity. In Shakespeare's comedies, especially, the moon is personified as Diana, the Roman goddess of chastity. In these comedies, the foolish antics of lovers (literally, "lunatics") usually occur under the auspices of the chaste goddess, the lovers behaving like hounds about her feet that snap at each other in competition for her bounty. The moon as allegory for the lunacy of romance helps us understand Shakespeare's view of romance. In the tragedies, however, the moon can represent many things at once: Diana, the goddess of Chastity; the cyclical nature of Fortune; and Hecuba, the witch of insanity. These figures, as their names suggest, are feminine. The tragic heroes often refer to their wives as the moon. The wives are often seen as possessing, at different times, elements of the various associations with the moon. I assert that, by examining the several allegories of the moon to the principal women of the tragedies, we can see the multiplicity of Shakespeare's attitude toward women. Often in the tragedies, the moon serves as the allegory for the changeability of fortune, the fickleness of women, and--as a result--the cause of madness. For this paper, I will systematically show the various allegories of the moon present in several tragedies. Then I will show how the multiplicity of these allegories is similar to the multiplicity of the principal women of the tragedies.

Several principal women of the tragedies are ...

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...ators of the downfall of the heroes. Would the heroes have come to such a tragic end without the women? By noting the references to the women as formerly chaste, now inconstant, and always fickle, I argue that they are the cause of the madness of the heroes. Othello kills his wife because he believes her to have cuckolded him, resulting not only her death, but the death of his comrades and himself. Lady MacBeth urges her husband to kill Duncan. Because of his love for Cleopatra, Anthony meets a tragic end. Similar to the moon's ability to make men mad, the wives make the tragic heroes mad. Othello, as this paper's epigraph suggests, would certainly agree.

Works Cited

Hankins, John Erskine. Backgrounds of Shakespeare's Thought. Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Book, 1978.

Shakespeare, William. Othello. Ed. Alvin Kernan. New York: Signet, 1963.