Is Shakespeare apparently on the women's side?

QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION

Is Costard the bumpkin the best actor in the Mask of the Worthies?
Why? Why is Jaquenetta the least and Moth the most discomfitted of the
third group of characters?

Dowden says the women of the Play "have not the entire advantage on
their side." What do they lack? He also says, to bear this out, that
"Berowne is yet a larger nature than the Princess or Rosaline." What
has this to do with their relative advantage in the Play itself, as
Shakespeare shows it?

Who are the critics of the falseness of artifice in the Play? Is
Berowne on the women's side in the criticism which gives them their
advantage?


VIII

THE MORAL OF THE PLAY

Is there a moral against the current educational methods and the
affectations social and literary of Shakespeare's time? The monastic
and aristocratic elements in education considered as opposed to the
progress of Women and the People. Show the general conditions of
education prevailing after the Middle Ages, and the new spirit of the
Renascence making itself felt, also the degree in which this appears