In 1854, French novelist Alexander Dumas offered the advice: to find out why a man act strange, cherchez la femme—find the woman—that is causing it. The sentiment, however, is not new, and it would be unsurprising to find that Dumas takes it from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In Hamlet is the constant theme of women being the key cause of disasters that face Hamlet and other characters. Though much of Shakespeare’s contemporaries probably shared in such sexisms, Hamlet is unique in that it is also rife with…
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