WBeatrice is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing. In the play, she is the niece of Leonato and the cousin of Hero. Atypically for romantic heroines of the sixteenth century, she is feisty and sharp-witted; these characteristics have led some scholars to label Beatrice a protofeminist character. During the play, she is tricked into falling in love with Benedick, a soldier with whom she has a "merry war".
WBianca is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's Othello (c. 1601–1604). She is Cassio's jealous lover. Despite her brief appearance on stage, Bianca plays a significant role in the progress of Iago's scheme to make Othello believe that his wife Desdemona is cheating on him with Cassio. Bianca is traditionally regarded as a courtesan, although this occupation is not specifically designated in the drama. The character was occasionally cut from performances in the 19th century on moral grounds. Bianca is not to be confused with Bianca Minola in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.
WBianca Minola is a character in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (c.1590–1594). She is the younger daughter of Baptista Minola and the sister of Kate, the "shrew" of the title. The lovely Bianca has several admirers in the play, but Baptista has refused to allow her to marry until his shrewish daughter Kate has found a husband. When Kate marries, Bianca is united with her lover, Lucentio. Theatrically, Bianca is the ingénue in Shrew and the female lead in the play's subplot.
WCatherine of Valois was the queen consort of England from 1420 until 1422. A daughter of Charles VI of France, she married Henry V of England, and gave birth to his heir Henry VI of England. Catherine's marriage was part of a plan to eventually place Henry V on the throne of France, and perhaps end what is now known as the Hundred Years' War, but although her son Henry VI was later crowned in Paris this ultimately failed.
WCelia is one of the important characters of Shakespeare's As You Like It.
WCleopatra VII Philopator was the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great. After the death of Cleopatra, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, marking the end of the second to last Hellenistic state and the age that had lasted since the reign of Alexander. Her native language was Koine Greek, and she was the only Ptolemaic ruler to learn the Egyptian language.
WCordelia is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's tragic play King Lear. Cordelia is the youngest of King Lear's three daughters, and his favourite. After her elderly father offers her the opportunity to profess her love to him in return for one third of the land in his kingdom, she refuses and is banished for the majority of the play.
WCressida is a character who appears in many Medieval and Renaissance retellings of the story of the Trojan War. She is a Trojan woman, the daughter of Calchas, a Greek seer. She falls in love with Troilus, the youngest son of King Priam, and pledges everlasting love, but when she is sent to the Greeks as part of a hostage exchange, she forms a liaison with the Greek warrior Diomedes. In later culture she becomes an archetype of a faithless lover.
WDesdemona is a character in William Shakespeare's play Othello. Shakespeare's Desdemona is a Venetian beauty who enrages and disappoints her father, a Venetian senator, when she elopes with Othello, a Moorish man several years her senior. When her husband is deployed to Cyprus in the service of the Republic of Venice, Desdemona accompanies him. There, her husband is manipulated by his ensign Iago into believing she is an adulteress, and, in the last act, she is murdered by her estranged spouse.
WEleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, was a mistress and the second wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. A convicted sorceress, her imprisonment for treasonable necromancy in 1441 was a cause célèbre.
WEmilia is a character in the tragedy Othello by William Shakespeare. The character's origin is traced to the 1565 tale, "Un capitano Moro" from Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi. There, the character is described as young and virtuous, is referred to simply as the ensign's wife, and becomes Desdemona's companion in Cyprus. In Shakespeare, she is named Emilia, is the wife of Othello's ensign, Iago, and is an attendant to Othello's wife, Desdemona. While considered a minor character in the drama, she has been portrayed by several notable actresses on film, with Joyce Redman receiving an Academy Award nomination for her performance.
WIn William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Gertrude is Hamlet's mother and Queen of Denmark. Her relationship with Hamlet is somewhat turbulent, since he resents her marrying her husband's brother Claudius after he murdered the king. Gertrude reveals no guilt in her marriage with Claudius after the recent murder of her husband, and Hamlet begins to show signs of jealousy towards Claudius. According to Hamlet, she scarcely mourned her husband's death before marrying Claudius.
WGoneril is a character in William Shakespeare's tragic play King Lear (1605). She is the eldest of King Lear's three daughters. Along with her sister Regan, Goneril is considered a villain, obsessed with power and overthrowing her elderly father as ruler of the kingdom of Britain.
WHelena is a fictional character and one of the four young lovers – Demetrius, Lysander, Hermia and Helena – featured in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream.
WHermia is a fictional character from Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. She is a girl of ancient Athens named for Hermes, the Greek god of trade.
WIn Classical Greek mythology, Hippolyta, or Hippolyte "was a daughter of Ares and Otrera, queen of the Amazons, and a sister of Antiope and Melanippe. She wore, as an emblem of her dignity, a girdle given to her by her father." Hippolyta figures prominently in the myths of both Heracles and Theseus. The myths about her are varied enough that they may therefore be about several different women. The name Hippolyta comes from Greek roots meaning "horse" and "let loose".
WImogen is the daughter of King Cymbeline in Shakespeare's play Cymbeline. She was described by William Hazlitt as "perhaps the most tender and the most artless" of all Shakespeare's women.
WJessica is the daughter of Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. In the play, she elopes with Lorenzo, a penniless Christian, and a chest of her father's money, eventually ending up in Portia and Bassanio's household. In the play's dramatic structure, Jessica is a minor but pivotal role. Her actions motivate Shylock's vengeful insistence on his "pound of flesh" from Antonio; her relationships with Lorenzo and Shylock serves as a mirror and contrast to Portia's with Bassanio and with her father; her conversion to Christianity is the end of Shylock's line's adherence to the Jewish faith.
WJuliet Capulet is the female protagonist in William Shakespeare's romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet. A 13-year-old girl, Juliet is the only daughter of the patriarch of the House of Capulet. She falls in love with the male protagonist Romeo, a member of the House of Montague, with which the Capulets have a blood feud. The story has a long history that precedes Shakespeare himself.
WKatherina (Kate) Minola is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew. Referred to in the play as the titular "shrew" and the "ingenue", the play focuses on Katherina's "taming" by Petruchio into a more conventional role of a "good" wife. She is the elder daughter of Baptista Minola and the sister of Bianca Minola.
WLady Macbeth is a leading character in William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth (c.1603–1607). As the wife of the play's tragic hero, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth goads her husband into committing regicide, after which she becomes queen of Scotland. She dies off-stage in the last act, an apparent suicide.
WLady Macduff is a character in William Shakespeare's Macbeth. She is married to Lord Macduff, the Thane of Fife. Her appearance in the play is brief: she and her son are introduced in Act IV Scene II, a climactic scene that ends with both of them being murdered on Macbeth's orders. Though Lady Macduff's appearance is limited to this scene, her role in the play is quite significant. Later playwrights, William Davenant especially, expanded her role in adaptation and in performance.
WMargaret of Anjou was the Queen of England and nominally Queen of France by marriage to King Henry VI from 1445 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471. Born in the Duchy of Lorraine into the House of Valois-Anjou, Margaret was the second eldest daughter of René, King of Naples, and Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine.
WMaria is a fictional character in the play Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. She is a servant in Olivia's household. Maria is shown to have a friendly relationship with Sir Toby Belch, and exhibits a witty attitude. Maria also forges a love letter to Malvolio which results in Malvolio being confined to a dark room.
WMariana is an 1851 oil-on-panel painting by John Everett Millais. The image depicts the solitary Mariana from William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, as retold in Tennyson's 1830 poem "Mariana". The painting is regarded as an example of Millais's "precision, attention to detail, and stellar ability as a colorist". It has been held by Tate Britain since 1999.
WMiranda is one of the principal characters of William Shakespeare's The Tempest. She is the only female character to appear on stage.
WThe Nurse is a major character in William Shakespeare's classic drama Romeo and Juliet. She is the personal servant, guardian of Juliet Capulet, and has been since Juliet was born. She had a daughter named Susan who died in infancy, and then became wetnurse to Juliet. As the primary person to like, she is therefore Juliet's foremost confidante. She is very important to Juliet's life.
WOlivia is a fictional character from William Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, believed to have been written around 1600 or 1601. She is at the centre of the various plots, both the comedic and the romantic. She has various suitors.
WOphelia is a character in William Shakespeare's drama Hamlet. She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes and potential wife of Prince Hamlet, who, due to Hamlet's actions, ends up in a state of madness that ultimately leads to her drowning.
WPerdita is one of the heroines of William Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale. She is the daughter of Leontes, King of Sicilia, and his wife Hermione.
WPorcia, occasionally spelled "Portia", especially in 18th-century English literature, was a Roman woman who lived in the 1st century BC. She was the daughter of Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis and his first wife Atilia. She is best known for being the second wife of Marcus Junius Brutus, the most famous of Julius Caesar's assassins.
WPortia is a protagonist of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. A rich, beautiful, intelligent heiress of Belmont, she is bound by the lottery set forth in her father's will, which gives potential suitors the chance to choose among three caskets. If he chooses the right casket, he wins Portia's hand in marriage. If he chooses the incorrect casket, he must leave and never woo any other woman in marriage. She is shown to think little of various foreign noblemen of similar rank who are most likely to seek her hand in marriage and still less of two suitors who seem to attempt her father's assigned task. Instead she favours a young but impoverished Venetian noble, Bassanio, who is also a soldier and a scholar. Bassanio goes on to choose the right casket.
WMistress Nell Quickly is a fictional character who appears in several plays by William Shakespeare. She is an inn-keeper, who runs the Boar's Head Tavern, at which Sir John Falstaff and his disreputable cronies congregate.
WRegan is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's tragic play King Lear, named after a king of the Britons recorded by the medieval scribe Geoffrey of Monmouth.
WRosalind is the heroine and protagonist of the play As You Like It (1600) by William Shakespeare. In the play, she disguises herself as a shepherd named Ganymede. Many actors have portrayed Rosalind, including Elizabeth Bergner, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, Helen Mirren, Patti LuPone, Helen McCrory, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Adrian Lester.
WRosaline is a fictional character mentioned in William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet (1597). She is the niece of Lord Capulet. Although an unseen character, her role is important: Romeo's unrequited love for Rosaline leads him to try to catch a glimpse of her at a gathering hosted by the Capulet family, during which he first spots Juliet.
WSycorax is an unseen character in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest (1611). She is a vicious and powerful witch and the mother of Caliban, one of the few native inhabitants of the island on which Prospero, the hero of the play, is stranded.
WDorothy "Doll" Tearsheet is a fictional character who appears in Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part 2. She is a prostitute who frequents the Boar's Head Inn in Eastcheap. Doll is close friends with Mistress Quickly, the proprietress of the tavern, who procures her services for Falstaff.
WThe Three Witches, also known as the Weird Sisters or Wayward Sisters, are characters in William Shakespeare's play Macbeth. The witches eventually lead Macbeth to his demise, and hold a striking resemblance to the three Fates of classical mythology. Their origin lies in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland and Ireland. Other possible sources, aside from Shakespeare, include British folklore, contemporary treatises on witchcraft as King James VI of Scotland's Daemonologie, the Witch of Endor from the Bible, the Norns of Norse mythology, and ancient classical myths of the Fates: the Greek Moirai and the Roman Parcae.
WTitania is a character in William Shakespeare's 1595–1596 play A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the play, she is the queen of the fairies. Due to Shakespeare's influence, later fiction has often used the name "Titania" for fairy queen characters.
WViola is the protagonist of the play Twelfth Night, written by William Shakespeare.
WVirgilia is the wife of Coriolanus in William Shakespeare's play Coriolanus (1607–1610), in which same play Volumnia is his mother.
WVolumnia is a character in William Shakespeare's play Coriolanus, the mother of Caius Martius Coriolanus. She plays a large role in Coriolanus' life, encouraging him in his military success and urging him to seek political office. When the people of Rome put her son in exile and he joins their military enemies, she manages to persuade him not to besiege Rome and becomes a heroine to the city.