| Description | Character |
|---|
| A novice nun who pretends to sleep with Angelo to save her brother from execution. | |
| Wrongly accused of infidelity by her husband, Leontes, she is thought to be dead until the final act. | |
| Wrongly accused of infidelity by her husband, she is strangled in the final act. | |
| Unlike her two sisters, she refuses to flatter her father in return for a larger inheritance. | |
| She married one of the great Shakespearean villains, despite him having killed her father and late husband. | |
| This shipwrecked heroine pretends to be a boy and is later confused with her twin brother, Sebastian. | |
| An ambitious woman who eventually becomes Queen of Scotland. | |
| The taller of two best friends, she runs away to the forest after being banished from the court by her uncle, the usurping Duke. | |
| The shorter of two best friends, she runs away to the forest after her cousin is banished by her uncle, and takes on the name Aliena. | |
| The taller of two best friends, she runs away to the forest with Demetrius. | |
| The shorter of two best friends, she runs away to the forest with Lysander. | |
| She disguises herself as a lawyer to save her love, Bassanio. | |
| This witty woman finally falls in love with her favorite sparring partner after falling victim to a trick played by her cousin, Hero. | |
| Until she decides to marry, her younger sister Bianca is forbidden to do so. | |
| Daughter of the Lord Chamberlain, she drowns herself in a brook. | |
| Her husband ignores her advice--as well as that of a soothsayer--and ends up murdered by one of his closest friends. | |
| Brought up on an island, the only human she remembers seeing is her father. | |
| The daughter of Calchas, this Trojan woman falls in love with the son of Priam. | |
| She is two weeks shy of her 14th birthday at the beginning of the play, as her nurse well remembers. | |
| In mourning for her dead brother and father, she spurns a lovelorn Duke, only to fall in love with her young page (who is actually a woman masquerading as a man!). | |
| The chaste wife of an exiled husband, she runs away to a forest AND drinks fake poison to avoid plots by the nefarious Iachimo. | |
| The conquering Queen of the Goths, she (unknowingly) eats her own sons in a pie. | |
| She marries her late husband's brother--while her ghostly husband haunts her son. | |
| Queen of the Fairies, she falls in love with an ass. | |
| She has two emperors for lovers, reigns over a great kingdom, and commits suicide by snake. | |
