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Tina Packer Biography

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“If we divide human attributes into "masculine" and "feminine" and strengthen only those attributes that "belong" to that sex, we cut off half of ourselves from ourselves as human beings, condemned forever to search for our other half. The world is in desperate need of multilayered human beings with the voices, stamina, and insight to break through our current calcified ways of doing things, (...) The patriarchal structures of honor, shame, violence, and might is right, do as much harm to Hamlet, Edgar, Lear, and Coriolanus as they do to Ophelia, Desdemona, Lady Macduff (...) (...) To have feelings, intuitive flights of understanding, a desire to have knowledge of what is happening below the surface, to serve. These are often called "feminine" attributes, and it is true that many women in the plays possess them. But they also belong to Kent, Ferdinand, Florizel, Camillo, as well as the women. So they are not "feminine" attributes: they are human attributes.”

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Book:Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays
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“[...] The idea of honor in battle has been passed down for generations. It went from Greece to Rome, to the medieval world and the Crusades. It was beloved of Sir Philip Sidney, Essex and Southampton [...]. In many ways, the British Empire was founded on it [...] The idea came to a halt in the First World War [...] The poets, led by Wilfred Owen, told the truth about it "[...] The old lie : 'Dulce el decorum est pro patria mori'. [...]Henry IV Part I is a play with much "honor". Honor is its central theme. So let's examine Henry IV Part I for a moment, to understand the ingredients of "honor". [...] You will notice there are not many women in these plays [about honor]-and when they appear, they are usually whores or faifthful wives. Honor is not a woman's story[...] 'What is honour? A word', (...) a mere scutcheon" [says] Falstaff's iconoclasm and truthful vision about honor. {...]There are several things we can see in all this. The first is that war is a man´s game, it is intolerable, and the only way you can get people to do it is to make the alternative seem a hundred times worse [...] Therefore, valor must be glorified, if not deified. [...]”

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Book:Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays
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“Because women are such potent ingredients of men's imaginations, we see how much power men feel women have over them, and how women must be suppressed, defanged, or idealized in one way or another. How, with Eve, they are often thought to be the root of the evil in the world -which says more about the man or men who wrote that story than about Eve herself. Eve is curious and wants knowledge, not power over others. [...] Both onstage and offstage, women have two levels of understanding concerning how to behave -one, to behave the way men want them to behave and forget that what they want might be different; two, to find out how they really feel and decide whether or not they are going to act on it!”

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Book:Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays
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“Men and women in their very essence -in their souls if you wish- have natural parity. (...) This was a relatively new idea at the time [of Shakespeare]. It ran counter to the teaching in the Bible -Eve's being made out of Adam's rib to be his helpmate -which was the basis for the idea, held for so long, that women do not have souls of their own but are dependent on their fathers' and husbands' .”

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“[Talking about Rosalind in As You Like It] She disguises herself as a boy, drops all the covering inhibitions of "femininity", and really searches for her true self (...) Her disguise gives her the ability to find out about herself, what she really thinks and feels (...). And she can do all this freely, without having anyone in power tell her how women should or should not behave.(...)”

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“[Shakespeare realized that] Women are able to understand themselves better on a personal level and survive in the world if they dress in men's clothing, thus living underground, safe (...). The presence of women disguising themselves as men dictates that the play be a comedy; women remaining in their frocks, a tragedy. In four great tragedies -Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear- almost all the women die (...). How much the women have to adhere to the rules and regulations of their enviroment makes a large difference. Once Rosalind [disguised as a man in As You Like It] has run away from the court, she has no institutional structures to deal with. Ophelia [in her frocks] is surrounded tightly by institutional structures of family, court, and politics; only by going mad can be get out of it all.”

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“[Talking about Othello] His dying words are about the service he has done to the state -not what he has done to Desdemona. (...) He acknowledges not love but the power structure (...). Othello believes his fellow officer [Iago] rather than his wife, believes death is suitable punishment for infidelity (...). It makes me uneasy that we so easily state that Othello is a play about race. Race is one of its ingredients, but the most pervasive subject that Shakespeare is tackling is sexism. The two women [Desdemona and Emilia, Iago's wife] end up dead. Bianca, the third woman in the play, Cassio's mistress, ends up in jail for something she never did, and nobody bothers to get her out. Iago, the symbol of evil, remains alive. Brabantio, Desdemona's father, dies of a broken heart because of his daughter's disobedience. And everyone is very regretful about what has happened. But no one, other than Emilia, has pointed out that there is a terrible double standard, something rotten in the system itself.”

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“[Talking about ancient Greece](...) the great institutions (...) were created by older males who then trained younger males. They all had a strong homoerotic element. (...) This thereby increased the "rightness" of masculinity, never mind that half the world was feminine. That other half was also interested in philosophy, the arts, the law, religion, and athletics, but they had this other task -bringing children to term and nurturing them through the early years of their lives. And doing it again and again. Not that this gave status to women. On the contrary, the man's seed made the child. A woman was simply the receptacle provided by nature to carry the child until it was ready to come out. (...)”

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“He [Hamlet] sees ghosts and listens to dreams. And when his ghost father tells him that he (Hamlet Senior) was killed by his brother and asks Hamlet Junior to avenge his death, in the right, honorable way, Hamlet says yes, yes, yes, he'll do it. But somehow he never gets round to it. Not like the other two young men in the play. The Norwegian Prince Fortinbras(...) has made his life [!!] pursuing the honor that his father lost when Hamlet Senior beat him in single combat. (...). When the lord chamberlain,Polonius, is killed, his son, Laertes, returns to the court immediately, demanding restitution, (...). So there is no shortage of examples of how young men are expected to and do act in this world where honor demands an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. But Hamlet doesn't do it. Instead, he beats up on his girlfriend and he's cruel to his mother.”

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Book:Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays
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