This paper discusses women in three Shakespearean plays as presented in the film versions. These include Kenneth Branagh’s `Much Ado about Nothing`, Trevor Dunn’s Twelfth Night, and Baz Luhrman’s `Romeo and Juliet`.
This paper explains that women play almost every conceivable role in Shakespeare’s plays; however, women cannot be the hero. The author points out that Shakespeare’s plays treat women as a piece of `goods`, not worth having if they are not virgins, which was the attitude of the time in which the plays were written. The paper relates that Shakespeare symbolizes Juliet’s youth in a display of numerological virtuosity designed to impress upon his audience and readers her unreadiness for adulthood and its attendant complexities.
In Much Ado About Nothing the kind of love that Shakespeare chooses to display is the more realistic kind of love that is displayed more often in society around us. This is shown in the couple of Benedick and Beatrice. These two quick wits are constantly bickering and at each other’s throats, until they are tricked by their friends into each believe the other loves them. At this, all of their criticisms of love and claims to remain unmarried until death go right out the window. Suddenly, they are seized by a desire to be with each other, and their true feelings come out. It shows how love actually works in real life.