Roles of women during the Renaissance as seen in Shakespeare's Henry IV Shakespeare's works can be used as a window into Renaissance society. However, if you look through this window and do not leave behind the ideals of a modern society, the vision may be distorted and not be as pleasant as it was for Shakespeare's contemporaries. In I Henry IV, the female characters are not equally developed as the male ones; but their interaction, or lack thereof, describes the changing, yet somewhat stagnant, roles of women during the English Renaissance. In I Henry IV, the “themes of public and private life are brought together” (Speaight, 163). Elizabethan society was marked by gender separation, both publicly and privately. Lady Percy has no active role outside of Hotspur's private life. For Hotspur, a woman's world was "Playing with mammoths and tilting with lips (2.2.91), a gentle and helpless occupation that did not mix with the male domain of "bloody noses and cracked crowns" (2.2. 92) Although women writing in this period claimed that women are “tender, soft and beautiful, its mental diffusion corresponds accordingly; she is gentle, compliant, and virtuous" (Sowernam, 43), women of the higher social classes began to question their inferiority to men as a result of the new emphasis on education for women. The increased exposure to biblical influences and classics among Renaissance women created paradoxical results: "Education was designed to fulfill specific private functions and responsibilities" (Travitsky, 5). "development of the home as a school of faith" ...... middle of the paper ...... obscene, rebellious and inconstant men and husbands divided into two parts. The first demonstrates the dignity and value of Women, for divine Testimonies. The second shows the esteem of the Enemy Sex, in ancient and Pagan times: everything this is acknowledged by the men themselves in their deeds, neither written by Ester Sowernam Maide, wife, nor Widdowe, yet in reality all, and therefore able to defend all London: Printed for Nicholas Bourne, 1617. STC 22974. University Microfilms Reel n . 1188.4. Spaight, Robert. Shakespeare: The Man and His Success. London: J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1977.5. Travitsky, Betty, ed. Women's Paradise: Writings of English Renaissance Women. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1981.6. Watson, Curtis Brown. Shakespeare and the Renaissance concept of honor. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960.