SOURCE: "Human Affiliation and the Wedge of Gender," in The Art of Loving: Female Subjectivity and Male Discursive Traditions in Shakespeare's Tragedies, University of Delaware Press, 1992, pp. 120-26.

In the following essay, Gajowski argues that in Shakespeare's love tragedies, Shakespeare emphasizes the humanity common among male and female characters, despite culturally enforced conceptions of gender roles. Gajowski focuses on the characteristics of the female protagonists in these plays and the nature of their love for the male protagonists.

Only connect . . .

—E. M. Forster, Howards End

The love tragedies offer Shakespeare the opportunity to explore in gender relationships the paradox of men and women as distinct from one another in their masculinity and femininity, yet connected to one another in their common humanity. And he insists on the common humanity connecting the sexes despite the wedge driven between them by cultural constructions of gender. "The problem appears to be...