Exploring Gender Relations via Shakespeare: Students’ perspectives on Shakespeare’s life

In this article, we discuss the application of feminist theory and criticism in the teaching of Shakespeare in higher education institutions and consider biographical approaches to Shakespeare as instructive for pedagogic engagements with students. We present an analysis of students’ responses to a short YouTube video about Shakespeare’s life used in a second-year English course for pre-service teachers at a South African university. The design and implementation of the course was informed by feminist Shakespeare criticism and theory which challenges the misogynistic attitudes and patriarchal ideologies embedded in Shakespeare’s works, as well as the sexist images of women appearing in many of his plays and poems. The analysis of students’ responses to Shakespeare’s life reveals that students found him to be an absent and a fugitive father and husband as well as a misogynist. Students nevertheless expressed sympathy for Shakespeare, which was neither dismissive nor defensive of his absenteeism and sexism. We argue therefore that the students’ responses echoed feminist interventions that counter the masculinist perspectives dominant in many biographical studies of Shakespeare.