Looking at the authorship of women in Shakespeare's earlier plays contrasted with their authorship in his later ones gives an interesting glimpse into the difference of his earlier and later heroines, as well as a tantalizing glimpse at a change in the man himself. Shakespeare's earliest heroines find power in the use of words: they write the future to take back the power pillaged from them by the men in the plays. Lavinia in Titus Andronicus finds authorship (and ultimately her only moment of power) in writing the names of her mutilators in the dirt. Richard III's Margaret leads the women of the play into a realm of power through their ability to curse the men. And Katharine in Henry V practices her English and uses her small knowledge of it to pull from Hal a confession of his own bumbling ability with language.
But somewhere along the way, the power of Shakespeare's women changes. As early as Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare planted the seed of the later physicality of women's power. Indeed, his later heroines rely less on the inactive power of words and more on the proactive power of reinvention of the self through costume. In Love's Labour's Lost, the women dupe the men by switching trinkets so that the men "woo but the sign of she." But it is not until later in his career that this power is fully recognized. Rosalind takes it to the extreme in As You Like It, rewriting the play and controlling destinies (both hers and Orlando's as well as that of Phoebe and Touchstone) through her costume. Merchant of Venice's Portia uses the power of words to rewrite the ending of a tragedy, but she does so in male costume. Without her disguise, her argument would have remained unheard by the court and the rings (and her subsequent power over her husband) would have remained (literally) in his hands.
And it is perhaps here that we find the late Shakespeare, one more cynical and more sensitive to the patriarchal arrangement of power. Shakespeare's sentiment towards women's authorship seems to have changed; in his later years, he seems to have stopped believing that women could merely use language to find power. The older and arguably wiser Bard recognizes that in order for society to hear them, women must first become men. This does not strip them of their power, but strips society of its fairness. In the end, Shakespeare seems to have realized the predicament of women in a patriarchal society: Portia didn't need to become a man to use language; she needed to become one for the men to hear her. Thus the logic of women must be disguised as men's in order for it to be applied, and Shakespeare not only recognizes this in his later plays, he focuses on it, pulling from himself a feminist critique of his society.
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