Quotes by Tina Packer

[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 mans seed made the child. A woman was simply the receptacle provided by nature to carry the child until it was ready to come out. (...)

[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.(...)

[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, Iagos wife] end up dead. Bianca, the third woman in the play, Cassios 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, Desdemonas father, dies of a broken heart because of his daughters 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.

[Shakespeare realized that] Women are able to understand themselves better on a personal level and survive in the world if they dress in mens 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.

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, hell 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 doesnt do it. Instead, he beats up on his girlfriend and hes cruel to his mother.

He [Shakespeare] was a wordsmith who loved to act and to see things from many points of view.(...) His genius lay in being able to see all sides of an argument.

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.

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 -Eves being made out of Adams 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 .

She [Cressida] knows it is mens sexual desire that makes women angels before they have been able to possess them; once possessed, women are things [Troilus and Cressida I.2, 225-28, 233-34].

The Roman Empire, born out the Roman Republic, with its ideas of democracy among a certain group of wealthy men (no vote for men without land -as with our Founding Fathers- and certainly no vote for women and slaves. Why are democracies built on top of one form of slavery or another?)