William Shakespeare once said “Women may fall when there’s no strength in men”. In Shakespeare’s era, males were “superior” to women, who were considered helpless. In Shakespeare’s tragedies, a feminist perspective can be portrayed through love, sacrifice, and in the wake of death. Within many of Shakespeare’s plays, it is seen how a woman sacrifices herself because of her love for a man after his tragic death. In just three of Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and Macbeth this is very clearly displayed. In these plays, independent, superior women, who have either come from a powerful family or have personally held their own power, put themselves secondary when it comes to men. They forget about their own lives because they feel as though a man’s love is what gives their life purpose and when he is gone, they have none. This paper will show how a feminist perspective can be demonstrated throughout Shakespeare’s tragedies. One way it can be shown is through love. Another way to show a feminist perspective is in sacrifice, and lastly, in the wake of death. Tragedy can be defined as an event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress (Dictionary.com), which is the basis for most of William Shakespeare’s plays. Feminist can be defined as advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men (Dictionary.com). Perspective can be defined as the state of one's ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful interrelationship (Dictionary.com). Sacrifice can be defined as to surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else; to make a sacrifice or offering of (Dictionary.com). Love is defined as a feeling of warm personal
attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend; a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person (Dictionary.com). And lastly, death can be defined as the act of dying; the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism (Dictionary.com).

In many of Shakespeare’s plays, a feminist perspective can be portrayed through love. “All Shakespeare’s women, being essentially women, either love or have loved, or are capable of loving; but Juliet is love itself. The passion in her state of being, and out of it she has no existence. It is the soul within her soul; the pulse within her heart; the life-blood along her veins”(Jameson). The most well known of Shakespeare’s plays is Romeo and Juliet, in this play Juliet is a girl from a very powerful family. She instantly falls in love with Romeo, a boy from
another very powerful family who also happened to be the rivals of her family. No matter how different their worlds are, or how much their families forbid them to see each other, their love grows stronger. At one point, they actually go behind their families’ wishes and get married without their knowledge. Juliet has so much passion for the love that she and Romeo share that she would do anything for him; she believes that he is her reason for living.

Love can also be portrayed from a feminist perspective in Shakespeare’s play Antony and Cleopatra. In this play, Cleopatra is a very powerful Egyptian Queen who falls in love with Antony who is one of three rulers of the Roman Empire. After his wife dies, Antony reluctantly agrees to marry one of the other ruler’s sister. “…the messenger arrives from Rome with the tidings of Antony’s marriage with Octavia. She perceives at once with quickness that all is not well, and she hastens to anticipate the worst, that she may have the pleasure of being disappointed. Her impatience to know what she fears to learn, the vivacity with which she gradually works herself up into a state of excitement, and at a length into fury…”(Jameson).
When Cleopatra learns of this, she like any other woman in the same situation instantaneously becomes full of rage and jealousy. But soon after, she regains confidence in herself and is sure she will once again be reunited with Antony. Throughout the play, they do things that make the other mad, but they always forgive on another because they love each other so much.

Another play of Shakespeare’s that love can be seen from a feminist perspective is Macbeth. In this play, Lady Macbeth is open to anything in order to see her husband succeed, even murder. Even thought she knows that murder is wrong, the selflessness she exhibits shows her true love for Macbeth. She puts the idea of murder into his head in order for him to become king. “She is ambitious less for herself than for her husband… she wishes to see her husband on the throne and to place the scepter within his grasp” (Jameson). Although Lady Macbeth goes to such extremes for her husband, it literally makes her crazy. She eventually commits suicide because she has nightmares about blood on her hands. The blood on her hands in the nightmares symbolize the guilt she feels about coercing her husband to kill someone. “Her insanity and consequent death have no bearing on the course of the tragedy and she is in no sense a tragic heroine” (Swisher 48).

In many of Shakespeare’s plays, a feminist perspective can also be portrayed through sacrifice. The women that Shakespeare gives life to in his plays sacrifice part of who they are in order to be with a man. “Shakespeare often uses a silent female character in the portrayal of love, whether it is the silent dejection of an unrequited lover or the wife so angry with her husband that she will not speak to him. Conversely, a silent female character could also suggest loving devotion to a husband...on the other hand, the silence of women is not so happily rewarded or easily understood… rather because they may be prevented from expressing their love”(Rovine). This, being prevented from showing their love for a man, can be seen in Romeo and Juliet. Because of the fact that their two families were rivals, Juliet was forbidden to confess her love for Romeo. Especially after Rome killed her cousin and he was banned from Verona, there was no possible way she could ever succumb to her true feelings. “Very often silence is a condition forced upon women because the opposite alternative, speech is not sufficient to express their deep feelings towards their family, state or husband” (Rovine).

Another way that sacrifice is seen in Shakespeare’s tragedies is when the women suppressed their own dreams and desires for the dreams and desires of the men they love. “…a sort of unconsciousness of her own mental superiority, which she betrays rather than asserts, as interesting in itself as it is most admirably conceived and delineated”(Jameson). Lady Macbeth forfeited her aspirations for herself in order to help her husband achieve his goal of obtaining the throne even though she wanted the same thing for herself. Together they plot out how they re going to commit this murder and how they are going to get away with it. After they kill the king, its almost like a never ending chain of people they have to plot to kill in order to make sure that the throne is not taken back. Even though “She remains Shakespeare’s most terrifying female figure” (Swisher 48), she still remains selfless in order to help her husband. “Usually women are presented in domestic relationships, and their silence helps to define those relationships, either with their parents, husbands or lovers… what we find in Shakespeare’s plays seems to be a refraction of society where men are expected to be aggressive in action and word and women are expected to be submissive and reticent” (Rovine).

Sacrifice is also seen in Shakespeare’s tragedy, Antony and Cleopatra. “But although Cleopatra talks of dying “after the high Roman fashion, “ she fears what she most desires, and cannot perform with simplicity what costs her such an effort. That extreme physical cowardice which was so strong a trait in her historical character, which led to the defeat of Actium, which made her delay the execution of a fatal resolve till she had “tried conclusions infinite of easy ways to die” (Jameson). The ending to this play is very similar to that of Romeo and Juliet.
Cleopatra sends word that she is dead in order to protect herself. When Antony learns about this he is distraught. He wants to forever be with his queen; therefore he commits suicide by falling on his own sword. She is then taken captive by Caesar and while in captivity kills herself with the use of poisonous snakes. After she died, she was buried next to Antony, and forever they will be together. This shows how a woman sacrifices herself for the love a man who has passed.
Lastly, a feminist perspective can be seen in Shakespeare’s tragedies in the wake of death. In two of Shakespeare’s plays, Antony and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet, the man commits suicide because he believes the woman is dead. “Defeated and believing Cleopatra dead through suicide he seeks to regain his manly virtue and Roman identity” (Kahn). This explains how Antony feels when he thinks his queen is dead. Then Cleopatra kills herself because she feels as though she won’t be able to live without him. “Cherishing a vision of the men they love at their best, have died to perpetuate it…heroines spur on the men who survive them to a glory of self-delivery…while Cleopatra encompasses both the ultimate death and the glorification. In an important anticipation of the matriarchal final romances, Antony’s fourth-act death leave to Cleopatra the heretofore masculine prerogatives of the fifth”(Berggren).

In Romeo and Juliet, their love is so strong that they are willing to die for each other, and they do. “Romeo and Juliet must die: their destiny is fulfilled: they have quaffed off the cup of life, with all its infinite joys and agonies, in one intoxication draught. What have they to do more upon this Earth? Young, innocent, loving and beloved, they descend together into the tomb...Romeo and Juliet are pictures lovely in death as in life…; all pain is lost in tenderness and poetic beauty of the picture” (Jameson). This has the same ending as that of Antony and Cleopatra, the man believes the woman he loves is dead, so he kills himself, and then she kills herself because she believes she is unable to live without his love. “Romeo and Juliet were predestined to fall in love and kill themselves; ‘fatal lions’ suggests that their fate had been decided from the moment of conception. They are ‘star-cross’d’, so their destiny does not rest with any decision they may or may not take. The influences on them are external, so there is no inherent fault in either of their characters to explain their path to death” (Swisher 42).

In Macbeth a feminist perspective in death in a little different than it is in Antony and Cleopatra or Romeo and Juliet. Although Lady Macbeth does commit suicide, it is not because she is stricken with grief because her husband has died. She ends her life because she is having terrible nightmares and she is continuously sleepwalking because she subconsciously feels guilty. The reason for her guilt is because she convinced her husband to kill the king so that he may retrieve the crown. She did not intend for there to be so many deaths attached to this one. In order to insure the crown, they had to keep killing men, who may have gotten in the way. “Her insanity and consequent death have no bearing on the course of the tragedy and she is in no sense a tragic heroine. Because her nature is or such unmitigated evil, neither are we able to feel sympathy for her on a personal level” (Swisher 48).

In conclusion, in Shakespeare’s tragedies, a feminist perspective can be portrayed through love, sacrifice, and in the wake of death. This paper showed how a feminist perspective can be demonstrated throughout Shakespeare’s tragedies. In just three of Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and Macbeth this is very clearly displayed. In the era of Shakespeare, women were considered to be inferior to men, therefore they were thought of to be weak. But in some cases, such as Macbeth they were considered evil. “Moreover, women in tragedy seem to split into two basic types: victims or monsters, “good” or “evil” (Berggren). Although in most of Shakespeare’s plays, most women were considered victims, there was the small portions that were considered monsters, such as Lady Macbeth. But even though she was considered “terrifying”, she still loved and sacrificed part of herself for a man. And the same goes for Juliet and Cleopatra. These three women are independent and powerful, and yet, they still are completely unselfish when it comes to the men they loved. William Shakespeare once said “A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart.”