On the character Bianca in Taming of the Shrew
She does have a mind, but she's outwardly, at any rate, very obedient. She does what her daddy wants her to do,; everybody courts her and she reacts suitably. And in fact she runs off with a man she wants to marry, but it's all a projection ... Shakespeare doesn't even know women properly.
There were lots of pamphlets at the time saying "Can you beat your wife? Is it alright to beat your wife?" And the answer was, "Yes, it's alright to beat your wife, but don't kill them."
On the play with a more sophisticated female character
It's really quite astounding because — Romeo and Juliet. There's a huge break between those early plays where the women are more one dimensional or perhaps two-[dimensional]. Suddenly, in one huge leap, not only does [Juliet] have equal billing in the title, but ... we follow the insight to her character, how she feels, how she thinks. She's just as courageous as Romeo. [Shakespeare] doesn't turn away from how difficult it is for women, but as far as her courage is concerned, it's equal to Romeo's.
"Whether they're women creating love in the world or whether they're women creating pain and suffering in the world, he never steps back from their full humanity as human beings."
- Tina Packer, on Shakespeare's later works
And he never goes back from that ... from there after. Whether the women are disguised as men or whether they're in their women's dresses, or whether they're women creating love in the world or whether they're women creating pain and suffering in the world, he never steps back from their full humanity as human beings.
On why she thinks Shakespeare's understanding of women changed
I think he was a great artist. And he was a great artist who wrote about human beings all the time. You can have a great artist like Wagner who writes great emotions, but is a horrible human being, but for Shakespeare he was writing about what does it mean to be a human being.
And I think because he was a great artist, he was deeply in touch with his own feminine side. And as he did that he began to see more and more, not just the bind the women had been in, but how those attributes, the creative attributes, and the way in which women saw the world, could be the way we could stop all of this violence.
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