The Bechdel Test is a measure of how male and female characters are portrayed in cinema and other media. A piece passes the Bechdel test if it:
a) has at least two women in it
b) who talk to each other about something besides a man.
That’s it. Pretty simple, right? Not a lot of contemporary media passes the Bechdel test, rather alarmingly. While I was working out proportions of male and female characters in Shakespeare, I got a number of questions about whether or not Shakespeare will pass. I went looking to see if anyone else had approached this question before. Someone has, but at the time of writing this, their website is down for maintenance.
I have already shown that all of Shakespeare’s plays have 2 or more female characters. But what about “talking to each other about something other than a man”?
I began by searching in WordHoard for all examples of characters with the gender of female who use the lemma form she. In essence I am doing this analysis backwards: I’m asking if there are female characters who talk about something other than a man, then seeing if plays which pass this aspect of the test also feature a female character talking to another female character. If a male character was referred to in some way in the window of +7 words left or right in a way indisputably linking the discussion about the female character to the male character, the play has failed this part of the test.
WordHoard highlights the place in the play where each instance of the lemma she appears; these examples can be cross-referenced by clicking each individual example to call them up in the context of the play by act and scene.
Titus Andronicus might pass the first part of the test, though:
These examples do not show any female character talking about another female character in explicit reference to a man. Male characters (lords) are alluded to, but I read them to not be directly implicated to the newborn baby the Nurse speaks to Aaron about – though you may disagree.
The first cull – do female characters in Shakespeare talk about something other than a man? – left me with the following plays:
Winter’s Tale, Pericles, Macbeth, 2 Henry 6, King John, 2 Henry 4, 1 Henry 6, Tempest, Henry 5, and I’m going to include Titus Andronicus.
1 Henry 4, Richard 2 and Julius Caesar had no examples of the lemma form she, so I will address them here as well.
The next question is “do female characters talk to other female characters in the play?”
Open Source Shakespeare allows you to isolate character’s speeches by name – and gives you the option to show cue speeches and the ability to see these speeches in the context of the play. They have been linked where appropriate.
The Winter’s Tale does not pass the test. Although Emilia and Paulina are talking to each other, they are talking about the king in Act 2 Scene 2.
Pericles does not pass the test: Leonine and Marina are talking to each other, but about Marina’s father (scroll up just slightly from where this link will take you) in Act 4 Scene 1.
Macbeth does not pass the test either, as The Gentlewoman talks about Lady Macbeth, but to the Doctor, who is presumably male, in Act 5 Scene I.
2 Henry 6 does not pass the test, as the female characters do not talk to each other.
King John does not pass, because of an interchange between Constance and Queen Elinor in Act 2 Scene I, in which they discuss John, Elinor’s son.
2 Henry 4 also does not pass, for two reasons: one, this interchange between Lady Northumberland and Lady Percy has them talking about the King in Act 2 Scene 3, and two, because of this interchange between Doll Tearsheet and Hostess Quickly from Act 2 Scene 4, in reference to Pistol.
1 Henry 6 does not pass the test because the female characters do not talk to each other.
The Tempest also does not pass the test because the female characters do not talk to each other. (I am considering Ariel a female character here; this is still very much up for debate, and this may automatically disqualify The Tempest overall.) Miranda and Ariel are not in conversation.
Henry V does pass the Bechdel Test, due to this discussion (in French) between Katherine and Alice from Act 3 Scene 4.
Titus Andronicus ultimately does not pass the test due to this conversation between Tamora, Lavinia and Bassanius in Act 2 Scene 3.
1 Henry 4 does not pass because the female characters do not talk to each other.
Julius Caesar does not pass because the female characters do not talk to each other.
By and large, Shakespeare does not pass the Bechdel test: but two plays do – and it’s not the plays I ever would have expected. However, I should point out I might be wrong here: like I said above, I did this backwards, by finding plays that had female characters talking without mentioning male characters, then checking to see if these plays did show two female characters in conversation. If you have a better solution for finding out if Shakespeare passes the Bechdel test, I am all ears!
Agarwal et al (2015) “Key Female Characters in Film Have More to Talk About Besides Men: Automating the Bechdel Test“. Human Language Technologies: The 2015 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the ACL, pp. 830–840, Denver, Colorado, May 31 – June 5, 2015.