Abstract
Power is seductive, and fantasies of power affect both men and women, who are sometimes willing to do anything in order to achieve or retain it. The paper looks at how such a modern transmediation as manga renders powerful femininity in two of Shakespeare’s great tragedies, namely Hamlet and Macbeth. The paper aims to discuss the ways in which the emotive behaviour of both female protagonists eventually makes them inappropriate for the power roles they assume as wives, queens and mothers.