The concept of power, as one of humanity's obsessions, has been (re)conceptualized by theorists in social sciences throughout the history. Power basically refers to ‘power over’ (or distributive power) and ‘power to’ (or collective power). However, J. K. Galbraith, a Harvard economist, classifies three types of power: compensatory, condign, and conditioned power, stemming from personality, property, or organization. According to Michael Mann, one of the most influential sociologists of the recent decades, social power derives from four, main sources: meaning systems, material resources, physical violence and administrative infrastructure accompanying four basic types of social power: ideological, economic, military and political. The present research investigated the models of power (or their relative positions to the power) exercised or shared by three female figures, say, Antigone, Lady Macbeth and Portia in Antigone, Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice, respectively. In light of this, the study opted for the theoretical frameworks of Galbraith, Mann and Foucault. The research showed that it seems that women try to exercise the conditioned and political powers through their personalities, meaning systems and one or a combination of dramaturgical resources of power such as dress, rhetoric, music, rituals, and ceremonials to exercise power in their surrounding power networks.
