This is not to say that Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra are not splendid dramatic roles and that their focus should be altered to unbalance their plays. It is to say that women should be aware of how women and men are subtly influenced by selections made by men which suggest that we live in a world where men naturally predominate. There is little natural about a world where a woman must be foreshortened to fit. A woman who has to say that she is not a woman in order to act decisively and consistently is having words put in her mouth. Audiences need to know that dominant assumptions about what women should be affected their role portrayal, and that even these assumptions varied across the period of Shakespeare's writing.
Young audiences add to their awareness of gender roles with every play they study.
Performances revivify the plays each time, making significant choices and changes. One must ask why women have been regarded as primarily sexual beings and men as some kind of norm. Societies survived and expanded, and the whole prospered on the servitude and devotion of women. Petruchio did his bit, as did Isabella's Duke, so that protectionism was the right end and repository for women's identity and role. This book is copyright.