What is the importance of women in Shakespeare's plays?

This, as you are probably aware, is quite a large topic,
one that books, in fact, have been written about.  A book I would recommend for more
detailed research on this question is As She Likes It:  Shakespeare's Unruly
Women by Penny Gay for Routledge Press.

Here are
a few general observations to get you
started:

• Shakespeare worked in a theatrical
  world in which women did not perform onstage.  The use of boys and men to play the
  female characters affected Shakespeare's creation of his female characters, many of
  which are strong and quite masculine in their natures.  Shakespeare, we can assume, took
  inspiration from the underlying real masculinity of the actors playing these strong
  female characters -- characters like Lady Macbeth, Juliet, Beatrice in Much
  Ado, Kate in Taming of the Shrew and
  Cleopatra.


• There are female characters in Shakespeare's
  plays who are important to the story, but who do not have, relative to the male
  characters in the plays, a very prominent speaking part.  Hero in Much
  Ado, Desdemona in Othello and Ophelia in
  Hamlet fall into this category.  These characters are onstage in
  many scenes in which they say very little and are important to consider in that they
  represent, for the most part, the more traditional females from Shakespeare's
  society.


• The women in Shakespeare's plays have had a
  profound effect on characters who have come after them in literature. Also, we still,
  today in 2010, can see many of these characters performed and feel a strong connection
  to and understanding of the situations and feelings of these women.  This speaks to the
  breathtaking universality of the women created by
  Shakespeare.

Please follow the links below for
more discussion of and information about the importance of women in Shakespeare's
plays.