By examining Shakespeares treatment of familial ties in his plays The Life and Death of King John and The Winters Tale, we can see how his attitudes and opinions towards family relationships evolved. In King John (written between 1594 and 1596), Shakespeare adopts what was then a fairly conventional attitude towards family relationships: his characters never question the highly patriarchal family hierarchy. They also assume that the majority of wives will be unfaithful, simply because they are femalehowever, they take the charge of adultery rather lightly. By contrast, in The Winters Tale (written between 1610 and 1611), he adopts a much more progressive, feminist view of family relationships. Women have a higher standing and more power in The Winters Tale than they do in King John. Also, Shakespeare mocks and punishes husbands that assume their wives are unfaithful without sound evidence. In both plays, he criticizes power-based and political relationships, albeit in two very different ways. In all probability, Shakespeares increasingly radical thinking changed Elizabethan society.The family relationships in King John are unquestionably male-dominated. All of the men have some sort of power over their female relatives. Constances life is ded⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪⨪&...
