Shakespeare and WU-mester Event

This comic reminded me about what was discussed, were women purposefully left out, was it due to accessibility, and other things that prevented female writers from Shakespeare's time to be properly archived.

I understand why so many are hung up on Shakespeare having other people write/ help write his plays. He wrote a lot, surely he had some help, no human being could just write like that. It remind me of James Patterson, where you'll see a book of his in the store and then underneath this name is another name in about half the font size his name was.

It's the fact that women wrote/ helped write his plays that really gets me sometimes, especially with how misogynistic they can be. It makes me wonder what a play of his would turn out to be if it was co-written by a female author today, because that stuff doesn't fly anymore.

To tie this in with free-speech, I like to look at how we have evolved to make certain speech less okay to say. Racist things, sexist things, homophobic things, etc., all things that can be filed under "hate-speech". Shakespeare's plays definitely have their more problematic views from time to time and it's important that we think about them with a critical eye. We can't support this kind of speech anymore, it's not tolerated. So when we discuss these plays in class we always touch on the parts that are more or less not okay to just do.

This helps us recognize this kind of speech isn't okay, and if we are to speak like that we will have to deal with the consequences. When it comes to this time period, however, I get confused. I know as a woman that I don't care for sexism in stories, it just sucks, it isn't fun. I also know some people write things to be "realistic" or to vent about their experiences so sometimes more problematic topics pop up. I can't imagine a woman helping Shakespeare to do the latter but maybe she did. It makes me think a woman could have written the play and Shakespeare took it into his hands and added the misogyny or other things.

When it comes to these things I really wish we had more of those political papers from women in Shakespeare's time period (or even just reviews of this plays more easily accessible). Women are individuals and they are all going to think different things but even seeing just one would be better than none. Shakespeare was very influential and popular, but this presentation really opened my eyes to the fact that Shakespeare wasn't the only writer of his time. Other folks were writing while he was and they've been overshadowed by his weighty popularity. Just because he wrote enough to be popular doesn't mean everyone thought he was good. I would love to see a written review of a women just going off on Shakespeare and to see how much that may have affected her socially. For example, when people now say they don't like Marvel movies, or Harry Potter, or other big iconic stories, some people get a little hurt, as if that personally offends them. To get an opinion like that, from a woman about Shakespeare, would be a glorious thing to witness.