Shakespeare in Love Gender Quotes

Viola has a huge obstacle to becoming an actor, and it isn't her acting ability: it's that she is a woman. At the time, on all the stages in the world (or at least in London) all the players are merely men.

Viola makes a good point here. Can men playing women accurately portray the emotion of love? Maybe the reason no play has shown true love (cisheterosexual love at any rate)is because all the actors are men. Perhaps Romeo and Juliet isn't all that great—it's the fact that a real woman is on stage that makes it so powerful.

Here Viola orders her Nurse to disguise her as a man. We're not sure how anyone falls for it before she wears her fake facial hair, but many of the young men who play woman have feminine features anyway.