Question

How might Queen Elizabeth I, as England’s monarch, have affected Shakespeare’s portrayal of women in his works?
A.
Women have always had more rights than men, so there would have been no impact.
B.
Since England experienced tremendous success under Queen Elizabeth’s reign, Shakespeare may have given his female characters ambition and power to significantly impact his plays’ outcomes.
C.
Shakespeare avoided using women in his plays; all of his characters were male.
D.
Shakespeare refused to comment on Elizabethan society.

Answer 1

Man.. I did this last year I even took a test about this stuff..

Answer 2

Definitely not A

Answer 3

Elizabeth was a popular monarch and her reign colored England's world view. The optimism of the renaissance was magnified not only by her love and patronage of the arts which florished but also by her good fortune in foreign affairs.

Her popularity influenced Shakespeare's histories which painted the Tudor family in a positive light while portraying the House of York as less than legitimate. The play "Richard the Third" is a prime example of this in that Elizabeth's grandfather defeats evil Richard on Bosworth field.

Shakespeare was also kind to the Lancasters, the Tudor's forebears, in his "Henry" plays which were said to have delighted Elizabeth enough to request a sequel for the character of Falstaff.

Overall, Elizabeth influenced Shakespeare's TIME more directly than she did his work specifically. She fostered a society where an artist like Shakespeare, and MANY others, could not only survive but could flourish and bless future generations with outstanding work.

"The Elizabethan Age, then, was an Age of Discovery, of the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and the exploration of human nature itself. The basic assumptions underpinning feudalism/Scholasticism were openly challenged with the support of Elizabeth and, equally so, by her successor on the throne, James I. There was in all this an optimism about humanity and its future and an even greater optimism about the destiny of England in the world at large. Nevertheless, the Elizabethans also recognized that the course of history is problematic, that Fortune can undo even the greatest and most promising, as Shakespeare reveals in such plays as Antony & Cleopatra. More specifically, Shakespeare and his audiences were keenly aware of the prior century's prolonged bloodshed during the War of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York. Many Elizabethans, particularly the prosperous, feared the prospect of civil insurrection and the destruction of the commonwealth, whether as a result of an uprising from below or of usurpation at the top. Thus, whether or not we consider Shakespeare to have been a political conservative, his histories, tragedies and even his romances and comedies are slanted toward the restoration or maintenance of civil harmony and the status quo of legitimate rule. "

As far as the issues of anti-semitism goes Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and weren't allowed back until 1655. Elizabeth's own doctor, Rodrigo Lopez, a Portuguese Jew, was convicted of plotting against her and executed. This affair may have affected public opinion at that time as much as it affected Shakespeare who wrote "The Merchant of Venice" three years after the incident.
Here is something I got off the internet