A classic example of a female character that Shakespeare has given license to “act outside her role” as a woman (at least, until she is “appropriately” reined in at the end of the play) is the lady Olivia of Twelfth Night. When she falls in love with Viola disguised as the young page Cesario, she works hard to try to woo him, taking on the role of the hunter where she would normally be the hunted. This gives her incredible appeal as a strong and empowered woman, as does the fact that she has no real reason to reject the advances of the Duke Orsino– in fact she even admits that he’s quite handsome, saying that he is “of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;” (1.5.261) as well as “in dimension and the shape of nature / A gracious person” (1.5.263-264) but like Hermia of A Midsummer Night’s Dream when faced with the love of Demetrius, Olivia refuses to back down and submit to the man she doesn’t want. She is strong, and she rules over her household with an unquestioned hand, with servants at her beck and call and even her live-in uncle (an older, male relative, who by all accounts should be in charge) firmly under her thumb. Even while the strong, shipwreck surviving Viola, or the wise and dangerous lady Portia of Merchant of Venice are forced to go into disguise in order to protect themselves as they wade in among the dangers of the male world, Olivia steps forth undisguised and unchallenged, as firm against the tide of the misogynistic elements of society as the Elizabethan era’s own “Virgin Queen” was. Like Shakespeare’s Olivia, Elizabeth too stood as a pinnacle of female power, refusing all suitors as she sat at the helm of her nation (not just her household) with control over many older males, including members of the clergy and the military, unwilling to yield her power to any would-be king.

In the end however, despite all of Olivia’s power and feminine flame, despite all her similarities to the “Virgin Queen” who never fell to the wiles of suitors or ambitious men, the Lady of Illyria is easily undone, and her end is perhaps fitting for the eyes of an audience of Shakespeare’s era, reducing her to a mewling kitten-like shadow of her former self, one who cries out “What shall you ask of me that I’ll deny” (3.4 219) in the hopes of winning the love she now desperately seeks to see returned (instead of valiantly denying or hunting it.) It takes only the easy agreement of Viola’s brother Sebastian (who Olivia doesn’t really know at all when it comes right down to it) to reign her in and put her under the knuckles of male domination (where members of the audience at that time in history would probably argue she truly should be) as the wife of a penniless “gentleman” who is most certainly beneath her. Whether this is a veiled critique, stab, or worse– hope for the future inserted by Shakespeare in regards to the “Virgin Queen” and her refusal to marry, we can only guess, though I still think it bears mentioning as something to consider when we read Twelfth Night and witness first hand the way the mighty Olivia is brought low by a young man who, like so much refuse and dead seaweed, was found and brought into the city by an enemy of the ruling elite after he washed up on the shore of Illyria.

Another woman who bears mentioning as an empowered transcender of roles that is raised and torn down by the poetic machinations of our playwright is Shylock’s daughter Jessica, who shines brilliantly, if briefly, in the comedy entitled The Merchant of Venice. While Jessica is, like Olivia of Twelfth Night, very assertive when it comes to love, she takes her feminine power a step further and defies her father’s wishes outright, going so far as to forsake and rob him blind in the same moment that she turns her back on her entire faith. In this sense, she appears far stronger than Olivia, or more probably, simply more reckless, as she immediately gives over the power she has seized (and the male clothing she temporarily dons) when she submits to marrying the Christian gentleman Lorenzo and taking his faith as her own. Her rise and fall as a woman of strength and power is brilliant, but short-lived, and though the repercussions of her actions extend beyond the scope of the play and can only be guessed at, Shakespeare seems to indicate with lines like the candid warning of Lancelet Gobbo: “I fear you are damned both by / father and mother” (3.5.14-15) and the sad mood she acquires by the end of the play, that she will not be spared the dose of “comeuppance” an audience of Shakespeare’s time might feel she surely deserves.

