The paper discusses feminist criticism within the contemporary Western Shakespeare studies. A short history of this direction in the literary criticism from its emergence and development in the context of the 20th-century political feminist movement is regarded. A review of the main tendencies in the works of feminist researchers devoted to Shakespeare studies, their methods and approaches to the textual analysis of Shakespeare's plays is presented. Special attention is payed to the reading of Shakespeare's plays from gender systems research perspectives on the characters types, interpretation of the relations between men and women dominated by the patriarchal society system in which Shakespeare's heroes live and act.