"Unruly women," "outlaws," "the
female Wild," "the Other": these are some of the
provocative terms used by feminist scholars in recent years to
refer to Shakespeare's heroines. They have helped us to take a
fresh look at these characters while we are reevaluating the
position of women within our own society. But are Shakespeare's
women really unruly? It would be anachronistic to
believe that he created rebellious feminists in an age that had
never heard the term. Nevertheless, writing many of his plays
with Elizabeth I on the throne, Shakespeare created heroines who
operate in, rebel against, attempt to rule, or are crushed by a
social structure largely determined by men.
With another queen on the throne in nineteenth-century
Britain, both women and Shakespeare were idealized. During Queen
Victoria's reign (1837-1901), editions of Shakespeare were
produced especially with the female reader or listener in mind.
Any passage "that might wound a feminine sense of
delicacy" was cut.
Books about Shakespeare's heroines, illustrated with their
portraits, were used to disseminate ideas of good moral behavior
among young women. Mary Cowden Clarke imagined stories about the
heroines before they enter their plays in Girlhood of
Shakespeare's Heroines. The book deals with subjects such as
sexual assault and postpartem depression that were not readily
discussed by mothers of the period. Just as many of the heroines
reveal strong personalities in the plays, so many Victorian women
were not "Angels in the house," as the poet Coventry
Patmore called them. 
The front page of this news magazine for women shows how the
nineteenth century reimagined Shakespeare's heroines in the image
of their own Queen. Here in this scene showing Lady Capulet
sitting by Juliet's bed as performed at the Theatre Royal Covent
Garden, Juliet's features mirror the face of the young Victoria
on the paper's masthead, while Lady Capulet looks like the widow
Victoria was to become. 
The American actresses, sisters Charlotte and Susan Cushman,
premiered as Romeo and Juliet at the Haymarket Theatre, London in
1846. Their success is indicated by the fact that they played
these parts over twenty times. Not all reviewers were
complimentary, however. One reviewer satirized:"Miss
Romeo,--or rather,--Miss Cushman as Romeo, has appeared this week
at the Haymarket. The curiosity is not a novelty...Why should not
Mr. Charles Kean play Juliet?" 
Rosalind has been a favorite role for actresses from Peg
Woffington in the eighteenth century to Katherine Hepburn in our
own. Audiences, especially in earlier centuries, enjoyed seeing
women wear a man's doublet and hose, and actresses enjoyed
Rosalind's liveliness and wit. These two hand-colored inexpensive
prints of Mrs. Johnston and Miss Walstein as Rosalind were made
for a popular audience in the early nineteenth century. Mrs.
Johnston was herself an "unruly" woman. After fifteen
years of marriage and six children, she struck out on her own in
1811, went through affairs with three other men (always climbing
the social ladder), and retired from the stage around 1816. 
Lady Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's most "unruly" women, was difficult for the proper Victorian age to assimilate. Generally, they took one of two stances towards her, either placing her in the distant past of the "barbarous" Middle Ages, or seeing her as a Victorian wife, whose ambitions were all for her husband but who was discarded by him after his success, fell into madness, and suffered a lonely death. This picture by the popular artist Kenny Meadows shows Lady Macbeth with the rosebud mouth and fine features of a Victorian young lady, only the frowning brows and clenched dagger indicating her firm purpose.
Cleopatra was the other problematic heroine for the Victorians
who had to confront her blatant sensuality in an age that valued
women's modesty. The French actress Sarah Bernhardt performed the
role both in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and in
an extravaganza of costume and scenery created for her by Sardou.
Gold and Fizdale, in their recent biography of Bernhardt, recount
an incident from the London production: "After watching
Sarah as Cleopatra, lasciviously entwined in her lover's arms, an
elderly dowager was heard to say:' How unlike, how very
unlike the home life of our own dear queen'."
The image of Cleopatra changed drastically during the course of the nineteenth century. This early image by Kenny Meadows from 1839 shows her with arms seductively raised, but fully clothed and corseted like the proper Victorian woman.
By the end of the century, John W. Waterhouse creates this
splendid Cleopatra, gazing out from under sultry eyebrows, as she
lounges easily on a leopard skin. Uncorseted and bra-less, she is
the dangerous, seductive, woman of the fin-de-siècle
. Her figure looks forward to the New Woman, already
agitating for university degrees, women's suffrage, and a place
in the work force. 
Every period sees something of its own interests in Shakespeare's plays and characters; the Victorians were no exception, nor are we today. It is gratifying to recognize that Shakespeare dramatized many faces of womanhood -- her "infinite variety"-- for his time and for every age since.