Women images in Shakespeare's comedies

I. Introduction

1.1 General characteristics of the work

Before making the investigation in our qualification work we should give some notions on its organization structure.

1. Theme of qualification work.

The theme of my qualification work sounds as following: “Women images in Shakespeare’s comedies” I have chosen this theme as in my opinion the role of a Woman in society is difficult to overestimate and it was Shakespeare who first took the role of women in high rank among the writors of Middle Age literary Reneissanse in Great Britain. And in comedies it is most obviously showed all the opositions of a woman’s character.

2. Actuality of the theme.

The real actual character is based on the thesis that all Shakespeare’s works remain up-to-day even though they had been writen more than three centuries ago! They do not only teach us all the best features of a women’s character but also shows us the worst which we, women, have. All these, both good and evil, we still have. One more actual character lies in purely linguistic features:The Great Bard introduced more than 10000 new English words and not in the last degree it concerns the adjectives which Shakespeare used when characterizing women in his comedies.

3. The tasks and aims of the work.

Before the beginning of writing our qualification work we set the following tasks and aims before ourselves:

1. To analyze the moral values shown in the plays.

2. To investigate the peculiarities of feminine characterization in Shakespeare’s comedies.

3. To analyze the nature of authors approach to women characters in different stages of his life.

4. To show the ways how the heroes are related to each other by finding out oppositions and correspondences between men and women.

4. The novelty of the work.

We consider that the novelty of the work is revealed in new materials of the linguists which were published in the Internet.

5. Practical significance of the work.

In our opinion the practical significance of our work is hard to be overvalued. This work reflects modern trends in linguistics and we hope it would serve as a good manual for those who wants to master modern English language by classical language of William Shakespeare.

6. Ways of scientific investigation used within the work.

The main method for compiling our work is the method of comparative analysis, translation method and the method of statistical research.

7. Fields of amplification.

The present work might find a good way of implying in the following spheres:

1. In High Schools and scientific circles of linguistic kind it can be successfully used by teachers and philologists as modern material for writing research works dealing with William Shakespeare

2. It can be used by teachers of schools, lyceums and colleges by teachers of English as a practical manual for teaching english literature.

3. It can be useful for everyone who wants to enlarge his/her knowledge in English.

8. Linguists worked with the theme.

As the base for our qualification work we used the works of a distinguished Russian linguists Dmitry Urnov and the noted British philologist Alfred Bates[1].

9. Content of the work.

The present qualification work consists of four parts: introduction, the main part, conclusion and bibliography. It also includes the appendix where some interesting Internet materials, tables, schemes and illustrative thematic materials were gathered. Within the introduction part, which includes two items we gave the brief description of our qualification work (the first item) and gave general notion of the life and creative heritage of William Shakespeare. The main part of our qualification work includes ten thematic items. There we discussed such problems as the role of women in Shakespeare’s tragedies, the tratment om women in such significant tragedies as “Hamlet”, “Othello” and “Antony and Cleopatra”. We also discussed the peculiar femine characters as Ophelia, Gertruda and Juliet. Moreover, some supporting women parts in Shakespeare’s tragedies which are not so well-known were taken into consideration in the main part. To this part we refered the images of Nurse in “Romeo and Juliet”, Cornelia and Cymbeline. In conclusion to our qualification work we studied the problem of understanding texts of Shakespeare as the language of the latter is not always clear for modern readers. In the very end of the work we gave the bibliography list of authors, the works of whom we used when compiling the present qualification work. In bibliography part we mentioned more than 20 sources of which were used while compiling the present work. It includes linguistic books and articles dealing with the theme, a number of used dictionaries and encyclopedias and also some internet sources. Appendices to our work include some interesting information on Shakespeare and his works.