In defense of Shakespeare's Daughters
When students find out that:
Shakespeare has no living descendants (and that's why we don't have to ask "Which Shakespeare?" like we do with the Bach family),
That he did have a son, once, but that boy died when he was only ten years old, and
That son was named "Hamnet" (not a typo, BTW)
Those students who go on to become Shakespearean scholars can get a bit obsessed when it comes to themes of fathers, sons, and grief (particularly in that one play about a Prince of Denmark).
So I'd like to take this time to point out that Shakespeare was also the father to two daughters: his firstborn, Susanna, and Judith, Hamnet's twin sister.
And to help me make the point that the Father/Daughter relationship was important to him, and not just a consolation prize, here's a few of the plays that hinge on it (an incomplete list):
The Tempest: a father and daughter as the only humans on a tropical island.
Romeo and Juliet: The tragedy unfolds with exponential speed when Juliet's father decides that she must marry Tybolt immediately.
Much ado About Nothing: The comedy almost becomes a tragedy when Leonato rejects his daughter during the wedding ceremony.
The Winter's Tale: In the first half of the play, the jealous king rejects his infant daughter, wrongly thinking she is a bastard. In the second half of the play, we see the daughter as a teenager, and her relationship with her adoptive father, a shepherd; the play is resolved when she returns home, with her adoptive father, to her birth father.
Hamlet: Let's face it -- the whole play gets mired in schemes, secrets, and second guesses until Ophelia's response to her father's death unleashes a flood of action.
Merry Wives of Windsor: the "B Plot" is all about how the young adult daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Page successfully schemes to marry the young man she actually loves, instead of either of the arranged marriages her parents are hoping for.
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