Lament for the Women of Shakespeare

Third wife, widowed wife, dead in a willow wife,

warring, willing, used to be cool wife.

 

Daughter as barter, puppet, or lover,

wise when disguised as a man ranked above her.

 

Lovelorn, too jealous, in love with an ass,

dropped her vocation for the first man who asked.

 

With child, motherless child, bastard, child bride,

raped, stabbed, poisoned, dead by suicide.

 

Gravely guilty, jailed and hung,

smothered and smothering, with neither hands nor tongue.

 

Fed her dead sons and then fed to the beasts,

drowning in suitors or drowning in sea.

 

I understand now about role models, Jane:

Prosperity’s not found in internet fame.

 

The choice is quite clear once you search your heart:

The best woman to be is dead from the start.

This poem is a response to the 2016 BBC article, “Be Cleopatra not a Kardashian, girls advised,” in which Jane Lunnon, the head of Wimbledon High School (a private girls’ day school in South West London), was quoted:

 

"Young women should model themselves on Shakespeare's heroines instead of reality stars… Look at Rosalind, look at Beatrice, look at Viola, the capacity in challenge and dilemma and pain, to love, to be vivacious, to be resourceful, to be resilient – they embody it so vividly, and that is a really powerful message. It's not that terrible things happen to them, it's how they respond."

 

This poem references the plights of 35 Shakespeare heroines, detailed below:

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1. Desdemona, Othello

2. Fulvia, Antony & Cleopatra

3. Queen Gertrude, Hamlet

4. Ophelia, Hamlet

5. Cleopatra, Antony & Cleopatra

6. Lady Macbeth, Macbeth

7. Virgilia, Coriolanus

8. Katherine, Taming of the Shrew

9. Hermia, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

10. Portia, The Merchant of Venice

11. King Antioch's unnamed daughter/lover, Pericles

12. Jessica, The Merchant of Venice

13. Rosalind, As You Like It

14. Viola, Twelfth Night

15. Imogen, Cymbeline

16. Julia, The Two Gentlemen of Verona

17. Helena, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

18. Goneril, King Lear

19. Regan, King Lear

20. Titania, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

21. Isabella, Measure for Measure

22. Juliet, Measure for Measure

23. Cordelia, King Lear

24. Marina, Pericles

25. Miranda, The Tempest

26. Beatrice, Much Ado About Nothing

27. Hero, Much Ado About Nothing

28. Celia, As You Like It

29. Perdita, The Winter’s Tale

30. Juliet, Romeo & Juliet

31. Lavinia, Titus Andronicus

32. Emilia, Othello

33. Tamora, Titus Andronicus

34. Portia, Julius Caesar

35. Sycorax, The Tempest