SHAKESPEARE is my Homeboy

Contradicting Shakespeare

The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare's most controversial comedies. To Shakespeare's audience, the play was simply part of a wider comic tradition. Frances E. Dolan describes the play as part of "a tenacious popular tradition of depicting domestic violence as funny" (Dolan 244). However, to a contemporary audience, many would find this Renaissance play about an unruly woman "tamed" by her husband through lack of sleep, lack of food and other abuses, in order to fit his definition of a socially acceptable wife to be "politically incorrect" or even barbaric. Yet, the play has continually been reinterpreted and argued over by critics, and remounted in productions all over the world. In this paper, I will explore how feminist critics have changed the debate and understanding of The Taming of the Shrew over the past twenty-five years, through articulating and exploring a difficult series of contradictions between the cultural assumptions of the Renaissance and our own twenty-first century contemporary society.

Over the past several years, due to the growth and development in the field of feminism within literary and renaissance studies, the critical debate about The Taming of the Shrew has been revolutionized. Many of the contemporary feminist critics have focused on the issue of Katherina, specifically her role, and the role of women within the power structures of Renaissance England. Issues about violence towards women, gender and marriage roles, the use of language and rhetoric, as well as social and cultural stereotypes of the Renaissance have all been examined in the recent critical debate. The "traditional" assumptions about the play have been largely called into question. For example, the arguments which critics traditionally made, citing the "author's intent" in order to justify the violence and misogyny in the play have been virtually discredited in recent years in favor of a critical debate about the roots of such attitudes, and their permeation throughout the literature and culture of Renaissance England. Over the past fifteen years, feminists have explored the text from a variety of new perspectives, using theories, such as Marxist, structuralist, new historicist, and cultural theory in order to further the debate about Shakespeare's problematic play.

Deconstructing Shakespeare - The Contribution of Kate McLuskie

One of the most influential articles in the debate about The Taming of the Shrew in the last thirty years was Kate McLuskie's 1977 article "Feminist Deconstruction: The Example of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew." McLuskie introduced a new way of "coming to terms" with a problematic misogynistic text like Shrew within a feminist aesthetic. In her article, she discusses some of the social and historical factors that influenced Shakespeare's thought, while at the same time arguing for a method of feminist deconstruction to examine his works.

Rather than dismissing the more problematic elements of the play, McLuskie's approach sets out to bring these difficult issues to the forefront of a critical debate. McLuskie described such a task as follows: "The process of deconstruction, whether in criticism or performance, engages the audience with a text in a variety of ways so that its contradictions become explicit and the articulations between its historical position and those of the audience become dynamically apparent." (McLuskie 39)

In the context of her article, McLuskie highlights cultural factors which affected Shakespeare: such the literary tradition which he inherited: "the querrelle des femmes, either vilified women as the daughters of Eve….or elevated them into the tradition of holy, patient and self-sacrificing virginity" (McLuskie 34). Yet, according to McLuskie, the conflict for feminist critics is addressing those views in Shakespeare that are an "embarrassment to liberal democratic sensibilities and are accordingly nervously dismissed as an unfortunate relic of the thought of his age" (McLuskie 34).

McLuskie's article has had a lasting impact that has refashioned the debate about The Taming of the Shrew over the years since its publication. More important than explaining the cultural traditions which seem foreign to contemporary sensibilities, McLuskie urges critics to look at the ideology behind those differences. "For what is at issue is not the cruelty and kindness of Petruchio's methods, the willingness or otherwise of Kate's submission; it is the ideological assumptions which lie behind the notion of taming itself" (McLuskie 35-36)

Sympathetic Petruchio -Early Views on Shrew

Despite the explicit mistreatment of Katherine throughout the play, much of the critical debate prior to McLuskie was sympathetic to Petruchio, and the comic intent of Shakespeare. In her introduction to The Taming of the Shrew in the 1974 Riverside Shakespeare edition, Anne Barton argues that, despite his behavior, Petruchio "comes over far less as an aggressive male out to bully a refractory wife into total submission than he does a man who genuinely prizes Katherina and, by exploiting an age old and basic antagonism between the sexes, maneuvers her into an understanding of his nature, and also her own. (Barton quoted in Evans 106).

Marjorie Garber in her1974 book, Dream in Shakespeare, argues that the play should be interpreted as a light-hearted comedy. She bases her argument on the structure of the play as evidence of Shakespeare's comic intent. Garber argues that the opening Christopher Sly scenes (also called the induction or framing scenes) serves to frame the play as a comedy. "The frame performs the important task of distancing the later action, and of insuring a lightness of tone- significant in view of the real abuse to which Kate is subjected by Petruchio" (Garber 28).

Prior to McLuskie, most critics "came to terms" with Katherina and her taming by discussing the play as a battle of the sexes. Critics such as Barton and Garber, as evident from the quotes above, tended to diminish some of the more problematic aspects of the plot and characters, most importantly those associated with the mistreatment of Katherine. Many "traditional" critics in the Shrew debate discussed the play as a farce. Robert B. Heilman's 1966 article "The Taming Untamed, or The Return of the Shrew" is a leading example of this type of argument (Detmer 274). Yet, despite these earlier readings of the play, since McLuskie's ground-breaking article, many feminist critics in recent years have come to very different conclusions in the Shrew debate.

Constance Jordan in her book, Renaissance Feminism (1990), is part of a trend which would continue throughout the entire decade of uncovering historical texts in order to trace and discuss the feminist debate (or as she also calls "the pro-woman argument" (Jordan 2) within in Renaissance. Jordan examines several historical texts from throughout France, England and Italy in the 16th and 17th century including histories, conduct books, treatises on government, letters, popular and courtly dialogues and prose romances. In her opening chapter entitled, "The Terms of the Debate" Jordan cites much of the literature (including the Bible and Aristotle's Biology), which seemed to support the abuse of women and the patriarchal power structure within the Renaissance.

While Jordan's book does not specifically discuss The Taming of the Shrew, much of her ideas and historical evidence would become very influential on feminist readings of some of the problems associated with Shakespeare's play. "Because the male, exemplifying the rational element, is superior to the female, exemplifying the passionate element, it is natural, Aristotle writes in the Politics, that he rule, and she be ruled" (Jordan 32). It could be argued that this historical evidence might be particularly relevant to the Renaissance assumptions about marriage condoned within Shakespeare's play.

Jordan cites another passage of historical evidence to understand the Elizabethan assumptions different from our own. For example, in the play, Petruchio starves his wife until she agrees to behave and submit to his will. As he says, "She ate no meat today, nor none shall eat" (IV, ii, 166). He expresses his purpose: "And thus I'll kill her mad and headstrong humor" (IV, ii, 178). Jordan cites historical religious documents from the Renaissance to support similar behavior from husbands of unruly wives. Bartholomeus Battus' Christian Man's Closet was a book of religious instruction, published in 1581. In it, Battus teaches that a wife is to be underfed so that she will not feel lust. "Let her not eate openly. Let her eate so that she may always be an hungered" (Battus cited in Jordan 215-16). Thus, as we see from the two examples above, Jordan's book can be very useful according to McLuskie's model of deconstruction, in order to more closely examine the differences in religious assumptions between the Renaissance and our own generation, and to explore the questions of why such ideologies developed and perpetuated.

From a historical standpoint, some critics have argued that Shakespeare's Shrew can be seen as an improvement from an earlier physically abusive shrew taming tradition. Contemporary critics, such as Emily Detmer, point out that Petruchio never actually physically beats his wife, as part of the taming ritual (Detmer 274). Anne Barton, in The Riverside Shakespeare, argues "by comparison with the husband who binds his erring spouse, (and) beats her…Petruchio-although no Romeo- is almost a model of intelligence and humanity" (Barton quoted in Evans, 106). In Barton's quote, we see another example of the differences in ideology that McLuskie is interested in exploring. By describing Petruchio as a "model of intelligence and humanity," Barton is clearly arguing from the Renaissance male perspective. Yet, as McLuskie would point out, by today's standards, Petruchio's behavior would be viewed as exactly the opposite.

The Post-McLuskie Debate: Coming to Terms with and Exploring Contradiction in The Taming of the Shrew

In 1996, Frances E. Dolan published one of the leading books about The Taming of the Shrew from the feminist deconstructionist perspective. Dolan's book, The Taming of the Shrew: Texts and Contexts, explores issues such as marriage, domestic violence and the shrew taming tradition in entertainment from the Renaissance period through the historical texts which supported those attitudes and assumptions. As it's title suggests, Dolan's book tries to better understand Shrew within the historical and social context that it was written. "However we interpret Katherine's shrewishness," Dolan writes, "reading Shakespeare's play against other texts reveals that the play, like most other depictions of shrews, is full of resistant, disorderly self-assertions, not just outspokenness" (Dolan 14). Dolan's book is extremely useful to the feminist arguments, and has been referred to by almost every critic in the Shrew debate since its publication. Further, Dolan is able to successfully further McLuskie's purpose by providing the historical documents for scholars to debate and deconstruct the play within a feminist context.

In her introduction, Dolan writes that she hopes that her collection of historical texts will "help to clarify the issues at stake in various critical debates and reveal critics' assumptions" (Dolan 2). Further, she writes that "Reading The Taming of the Shrew against other texts does not resolve conflict by providing authoritative or definitive answers; often, this process emphasizes contradictions, opening up rather than flattening out complexities" (Dolan 2). Dolan seems to echo back to McLuskie's article, and her definition of feminist deconstruction which "engages the audience with the text in a variety of ways so that its contradictions become explicit and the articulations between its historical position and those of the audience become dynamically apparent." (McLuskie 39).

Dolan and Jordan take a very similar approach to McLuskie. Unlike the traditional critics, these women highlight the major differences between Renaissance and today in order to understand and explore those differences more fully. Critics since then have explored specific contradictions apparent to our generation such as violence towards women, or attitudes toward marriage. While following McLuskie's model, they have also applied contemporary theories to better understand Shakespeare's play within a contemporary context.

In her 1996 article, "Household Kates, Domesticating Commodities in The Taming of the Shrew," critic Natasha Korda examines Katherina's role within the play from a Marxist perspective. Korda argues that Katherina is a threat to Petruchio because she is a threat to the order of things within her status as a commodity. It is "her unvendibility as a commodity on the marriage market that creates the dramatic dilemma to be solved by the taming narrative" (Korda 116). According to Korda, it is the threat of Katherina in an economic sense (as a commodity) which leads to Petruchio's abuse and taming within the play.

Emily Detmer in her article "Civilizing Subordination: Domestic Violence and The Taming of the Shrew" (1997) furthers the debate about abuse and violence within the play. Detmer uses contemporary psychological research to better understand the play from a contemporary perspective. While it may be seen as more "civililized" behavior than earlier shrew tamings, Detmer argues that Petruchio's behavior is abusive nonetheless, and questions whether this (non physical) abuse is indeed better for women (Detmer 293). As Detmer points out, the contemporary definition of abuse has broadened beyond physical abuse, but also includes verbal, and emotional abuse: "it encompasses a range of behaviors that includes intimidation, isolation, threats, emotional abuse, economic manipulation, and sexual assault" (Detmer 283). Many of these are abuses experienced by Katherina during the course of the play.

In trying to explain Katherina's controversial "taming" scene in V ii, Detmer introduces a discussion of the "Stockholm Syndrome" in which "hostages appear to submit, rather than resist their captors" (Detmer 284). Through a thorough analysis of the syndrome, Detmer shows how Katherina's treatment is similar to that of a hostage. Ultimately, Detmer shows how Katherina "must bond with her abuser in order to survive" (Detmer 287). Detmer's interpretation, of Katherine as an abuse victim and hostage survivor, illustrates how the critical debate about Shrew has been revolutionized in the last several years. This type of thought is greatly different from the traditional renaissance thinking about women's role, or a woman's place in society. Within this context, it is also hard for a contemporary audience to interpret the play as farce, or its characters as harmless and comical.

From a linguistic and rhetorical perspective, many feminist critics today argue about Katherina's subversive role within the play, and within her marriage. Lynda Boose, and Gail Kern Paster have furthered this debate by showing how "unruly" female speech was increasingly criminalized and demonized by religious and civil authorities. Examples of this can be found in Lynda E. Boose's article, "Scolding Bridles and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman's Unruly Member" and Gail Kern Paster's book Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern Drama.

Within The Taming of the Shrew, the issue of subversiveness has been debated in terms of Katherine's final speech, and whether it is a genuine submission to Petruchio, or a submissive act of defiance. In her highly controversial final monologue, Katherina says:

I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey. (V, ii, 165-168)

She further says:

Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband's foot,
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease. (V, ii, 180-184)

According to Lisa Hopkins, in her book The Shakespearean Marriage: Merry Wives and Heavy Husbands (1998), Katherina has subverted the definition of taming through her speech at the end of the play. "Even in her meekness, she is not meek. Katherine may have been tamed, but she has very pointedly, not been silenced; indeed she has just been given the longest speech in the play" (Hopkins 42). Hopkins also points out examples of how Katherina subverts the typical submissive female gender role: "What Kate says is irreproachable; but the very fact that she does say it, at such length, and in public too, is, however licensed by her husband, at one level at least, subversive" (Hopkins 42). Hopkins further argues that Katherina is not "tamed" but rather has learned the rules of the game. "Kate is not really crushed, but has simply learned the code of public conformity" (Hopkins 41).

In her 2003 article, "Affective Resistance: Performing Passivity and Playing A-Part in The Taming of the Shrew" Holly A. Crocker also addresses the debate about Katherina's final speech and her subversive role in the play. Crocker argues that Katherina's speech of submission is an insincere "affect of submission," and she addresses the issue of "taming" by analyzing the rhetoric within the play. "Without winking at the audience, Katherine shows that female submission must be a performance, because her autonomy derives from redirecting agency through the guise of passivity" (Crocker 144). Crocker further argues how language and gender roles are intertwined in Shakespeare's play. Petruchio "transforms Katherine's behavior by making her perception of the world accord with that which he specifies" (Crocker 147). Crocker argues how Katherine is an agent who is subject to Petruchio's definitions, and the patriarchal social expectations. Petruchio not only defines her status as shrew, but also the acceptable and unacceptable behavior to which she must conform.

Ultimately, as Crocker points out, there is a question of whether Katherina is truly tamed at the end of the play. "Katherine's speech exposes the agency involved in passivity, and by reifying the masculine rhetoric that seeks to inscribe her, she blurs the division of power meant to separate the genders" (Crocker 156).

One critic has argued that Petruchio's linguistic and rhetorical control over Katherina should been seen as an admirable quality. Tita French Baulin, in her article, "Petruchio the Sophist and Language as Creation in The Taming of the Shrew" (1989) comes to very different conclusions about Katherina's attitude toward Petruchio's control. Baumlin argues that "Petruchio ultimately changes (Kate's) sense of self, creating a new more functional persona" (Baumlin 237) through the power of his rhetoric. In making her argument, Baumlin cites the theories of the ancient Greek sophist Georgias of Leontini to explore the skills and merits of Petruchio's behavior. From the ancient Greek perspective of Georgias, Petruchio's behavior within the play shows skill and merit, and success within that model. Georgias' theory states that "identity is not a single pure essence, but a harmony of contraries" (Baumlin 245). Through his rhetoric and persuasion, Baumlin argues that Petruchio demonstrates the ability of language and rhetoric to shape Kate's identity and truth according to the Georgian model. "Petruchio reconstructs Katherina's disagreeable statements into mild expressions of agreement, her approvals into complaints, denying her any effectiveness of language at all" (Baumlin 247).

Through supporting Petruchio's controlling use of language over Katherina, Baumlin draws some very different conclusions from many other recent critics. For example, she discusses Kate's relation to Petruchio as "not a sad image of lifeless surrender to male dominance, but a spirit of flirtatious fun that will generate a rich creativity in this marriage grounded upon self-respect, mutual respect, and proper care" (Baumlin 251).

In the final analysis, Baumlin argues that "The Taming of the Shrew remains firmly at the optimistic extreme: Petruchio and Kate stand, harmoniously united, in testimony to the youthful playwright's conception of the beauty and world-building power of language in the hands of a skilled and magnanimous artist" (Baumlin 253). Using language theory, Baumlin seems to promote the positive qualities of Petruchio as a "sophistic virtuoso" (Baumlin 247). With her article, Baumlin thus sets another area of contradiction for modern feminists to debate and deconstruct according to the McLuskie model: ideas about the use of language and rhetoric in the Renaissance compared with today's society.

One of the most problematic elements of The Taming of the Shrew to a contemporary audience is Shakespeare's use of comedy in light of Petruchio's use of violence and abuse within the play. Marvin B. Krims in his 2002 article "Uncovering Hate in The Taming of the Shrew" tries to explore the dilemma that Shrew poses to a contemporary audience from a psychological perspective. One of the problems at the heart of the play for a contemporary audience is the issue of cruelty. Krims argues that, as a contemporary audience, (similar to Shakespeare's own audience) "we are quite capable of enjoying cruelty and need only to have it dressed up in comedic clothing to enjoy the fun" (Krims 53-54). Yet, Krims highlights the contradiction as follows: "the particular kind of cruelty represented in The Taming strikes an especially dissonant chord for modern audiences" (Krims 55). Krims tries to make sense of this contradiction by arguing that our reaction to the play, "helps us to comprehend and accept our own inner aggression, (and) we can better comprehend the aggression of Others, fictive and real" (Krims 57).

McLuskie concludes her article with a very interesting observation about the role of feminist criticism, which should continue to serve as a model for feminist critics in the future:

"The development of a feminist aesthetic involves not a re-selection of acceptable texts, but the constant effort to outline a theory which can deal with texts by men and women, from the great tradition or the canon of 'minor' works, from the classic and the avant garde, to create a materialist aesthetic which takes into account the dialectic between form, statement and changing cultural ideology (McLuskie 40).

The critical debate about The Taming of the Shrew over the past several years seems to be all about exploring contradictions. I would argue that "coming to terms" with the problems in this play is really about entering into a dialectic with contradictions that can never fully be reconciled with contemporary attitudes and awareness. Yet, we cannot ignore the contradictions in The Taming of the Shrew that are inherent in our evolving cultural ideology. Nor should the play be relegated to the status of an "unacceptable text." Rather, I believe that through literary and critical analysis, we, as critics, can continue to articulate and explore these differences, and their roots, in order that such harmful attitudes and assumptions might not continue to perpetuate.

Works Cited:

Baumlin, Tita French. "Petruchio the Sophist and Language as Creation in The Taming of the Shrew." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 29.2. (1989)

Boose, Lynda E. "Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman's Unruly Member." Shakespeare Quarterly. 42.2 (1991)

Crocker, Holly A. "Affective Resistance: Performing Passivity and Playing A-Part in The
Taming of the Shrew" Shakespeare Quarterly 54.2 (2003)

Detmer, Emily. "Civilizing Subordination: Domestic Violence and The Taming of the Shrew" Shakespeare Quarterly. 48.3 (1997)

Dolan, Frances, ed. The Taming of the Shrew: Texts and Contexts. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1996

Evans, G. Blakemore, ed. The Riverside Shakespeare. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974

Garber, Marjorie B. Dream in Shakespeare: From Metaphor to Metamorphosis. New Haven: Yale UP, 1974

Heilman, Robert B. "The Taming Untamed, or The Return of the Shrew" Modern Language Quarterly 27 (1966)

Hopkins, Lisa. The Shakespearean Marriage: Merry Wives and Heavy Husbands. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998

Jordan, Constance. Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1990.

Korda, Natasha. "Household Kates: Domesticating Commodities in The Taming of the
Shrew" Shakespeare Quarterly. 47.2 (1996)

Krims, Marvin B. "Uncovering Hate in The Taming of the Shrew." Sexuality and Culture. 6.2. (2002)

McLuskie, Kate. "Feminist Deconstruction: The Example of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew." Red Letters. 12.1. (1977)

Paster, Gail Kern. The Body Embarasssed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early
Modern Drama. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993