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cslewiscarroll:
Friendly reminder that in Troilus and Cressida Thersites calls Patroclus Achilles’ bitch and Achilles is like. Patroclus he means you
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cslewiscarroll:
Friendly reminder that in Troilus and Cressida Thersites calls Patroclus Achilles’ bitch and Achilles is like. Patroclus he means you
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mirroir:
adventures-of-a-strange-mind:
Phrases and idioms that we still use, which were coined by William Shakespeare.
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mirroir:
adventures-of-a-strange-mind:
Phrases and idioms that we still use, which were coined by William Shakespeare.
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theclockworkaesthete:
zforzelma:
ohdeargodwhy:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream [x]
What with the Mercutio/Romeo kiss from the other day I feel like I should have a tag specifically for “men kissing in Shakespeare plays even though it’s not in the text, but after 400 years of unresolved sexual tension it’s time.”
Asdfghjkl;:
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theclockworkaesthete:
zforzelma:
ohdeargodwhy:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream [x]
What with the Mercutio/Romeo kiss from the other day I feel like I should have a tag specifically for “men kissing in Shakespeare plays even though it’s not in the text, but after 400 years of unresolved sexual tension it’s time.”
Asdfghjkl;:
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copperbadge:
strangeselkie:
copperbadge:
kiralamouse:
gooseweasel:
If anyone tries to tell you that Shakespeare is stuffy or boring or highbrow, just remember that the word “nothing” was used in Elizabethan era slang as a euphemism for “vagina”.
Shakespeare has a play called “Much Ado About Nothing”, which you could basically read in modern slang as “Freaking Out Over Pussy”. And that’s pretty much exactly what happens in the play.
It’s also a pun with a third meaning. There’s the sex sense of much ado about “nothing”, there’s the obvious sense that people today see, and then there’s the fact that in Shakespeare’s day, “nothing” was pronounced pretty much the same as “noting”, which was a term used for gossip. So, “Flamewar Over Rumors” works as a title interpretation, too.
The reason we call Shakespeare a genius is that he can make a pussy joke in the same exact words he uses to make biting social commentary about letting unverified gossip take over the discourse.
So like.
A truly accurate modern translation would be “I Cunt Believe He Said That”?
@copperbadge YOU GO AND SIT AMONG THE MUSTARDS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE DONE
I truly feel the ghost of Shakespeare has never been more proud of me.
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copperbadge:
strangeselkie:
copperbadge:
kiralamouse:
gooseweasel:
If anyone tries to tell you that Shakespeare is stuffy or boring or highbrow, just remember that the word “nothing” was used in Elizabethan era slang as a euphemism for “vagina”.
Shakespeare has a play called “Much Ado About Nothing”, which you could basically read in modern slang as “Freaking Out Over Pussy”. And that’s pretty much exactly what happens in the play.
It’s also a pun with a third meaning. There’s the sex sense of much ado about “nothing”, there’s the obvious sense that people today see, and then there’s the fact that in Shakespeare’s day, “nothing” was pronounced pretty much the same as “noting”, which was a term used for gossip. So, “Flamewar Over Rumors” works as a title interpretation, too.
The reason we call Shakespeare a genius is that he can make a pussy joke in the same exact words he uses to make biting social commentary about letting unverified gossip take over the discourse.
So like.
A truly accurate modern translation would be “I Cunt Believe He Said That”?
@copperbadge YOU GO AND SIT AMONG THE MUSTARDS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE DONE
I truly feel the ghost of Shakespeare has never been more proud of me.
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“Aufidius feels more passion for [Coriolanus] than he did for his bride on their wedding night. Once more, this is rhetoric, not sexual invitation. Yet the line between them is a thin one, as Aufidius’s servants note, perceiving the way their master flirts with his guest at the dinner table: “our general himself makes a mistress of him, … and turns up the white o'th’ eye to his discourse” (4.5.193-195). The deepest passions of generals are for their colleagues, and perhaps even for their enemies. To see this performed and articulated in Coriolanus is to have further light shed on the complex erotics of Othello.”
- Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All (via atreides)
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“Aufidius feels more passion for [Coriolanus] than he did for his bride on their wedding night. Once more, this is rhetoric, not sexual invitation. Yet the line between them is a thin one, as Aufidius’s servants note, perceiving the way their master flirts with his guest at the dinner table: “our general himself makes a mistress of him, … and turns up the white o'th’ eye to his discourse” (4.5.193-195). The deepest passions of generals are for their colleagues, and perhaps even for their enemies. To see this performed and articulated in Coriolanus is to have further light shed on the complex erotics of Othello.”
- Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All (via atreides)
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shephaestion:
midcenturymodern:
great homophobic victorian literary critic minds think exactly alike (sonnet 20, for reference)
not just the victorians either; George Steevens refused to edit any of the sonnets for his 1793 edition of Shakespeare’s complete works because he said sonnet 20 was “impossible to read without an equal mixture of disgust and indignation”
and then James Boswell in 1823 said none of the sonnets were actually written to a man because any REAL ‘distinguished nobleman’ would have been enraged and offended by all the “encomiums on his beauty, and the fondling expressions” appropriate only to a “cocker’d silken wanton” e.g. ‘these couldn’t be written to a man bc no real man would tolerate being called beautiful’ which, nice
of course they had plenty of precedent going way back…ol’ John Benson was infamously changing masculine pronouns in the sonnets to feminine ones waaay back in 1640, BUT sonnet 20 is uniquely annoying and terrible for homophobes bc no amount of pronoun swapping or “well men used to talk flowery to each other in The Old Days” can make a poem that says ‘if u didn’t have a dick we’d be married’ not queer
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shephaestion:
midcenturymodern:
great homophobic victorian literary critic minds think exactly alike (sonnet 20, for reference)
not just the victorians either; George Steevens refused to edit any of the sonnets for his 1793 edition of Shakespeare’s complete works because he said sonnet 20 was “impossible to read without an equal mixture of disgust and indignation”
and then James Boswell in 1823 said none of the sonnets were actually written to a man because any REAL ‘distinguished nobleman’ would have been enraged and offended by all the “encomiums on his beauty, and the fondling expressions” appropriate only to a “cocker’d silken wanton” e.g. ‘these couldn’t be written to a man bc no real man would tolerate being called beautiful’ which, nice
of course they had plenty of precedent going way back…ol’ John Benson was infamously changing masculine pronouns in the sonnets to feminine ones waaay back in 1640, BUT sonnet 20 is uniquely annoying and terrible for homophobes bc no amount of pronoun swapping or “well men used to talk flowery to each other in The Old Days” can make a poem that says ‘if u didn’t have a dick we’d be married’ not queer
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philomaela:
Stay, Roman brethren! Gracious conqueror, Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed, A mother’s tears in passion for her son: And if thy sons were ever dear to thee, O, think my son to be as dear to me! Sufficeth not that we are brought to Rome, to beautify thy triumphs and return, captive to thee and to thy Roman yoke, But must my sons be slaughter’d in the streets, for valiant doings in their country’s cause? O, if to fight for king and commonweal were piety in thine, it is in these. Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood! Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods? Draw near them then in being merciful. Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge. Thrice noble Titus, spare my first-born son!
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philomaela:
Stay, Roman brethren! Gracious conqueror, Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed, A mother’s tears in passion for her son: And if thy sons were ever dear to thee, O, think my son to be as dear to me! Sufficeth not that we are brought to Rome, to beautify thy triumphs and return, captive to thee and to thy Roman yoke, But must my sons be slaughter’d in the streets, for valiant doings in their country’s cause? O, if to fight for king and commonweal were piety in thine, it is in these. Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood! Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods? Draw near them then in being merciful. Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge. Thrice noble Titus, spare my first-born son!
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speciesbarocus:
Antigone is burying her brother Polynices by throwing ashes in the air.
Antigone is played by Aenne Schwarz at the Burgtheater, Vienna.
> Photo by Christian Michelides (2015).
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speciesbarocus:
Antigone is burying her brother Polynices by throwing ashes in the air.
Antigone is played by Aenne Schwarz at the Burgtheater, Vienna.
> Photo by Christian Michelides (2015).
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vieillesoul:
penfairy:
The reason I hate the “Shakespeare didn’t actually write Shakespeare” theories so much is they seem to be inherently rooted in taking his works away from ordinary people. “The son of a glovemaker could never have written these plays! Surely only an Aristocratic Intellectual, like the Earl of Oxford, could be responsible!“
Honestly fuck off. Shakespeare was one of us. His plays were written for the masses. He was an ordinary man who captured the voice of the people and the depths of their emotions. We credit Shakespeare with making up words and phrases, but who’s to say he wasn’t writing down what he heard on the streets? "But something as complex as Hamlet could never have been written by Shakespeare! It must have been the work of a nobleman!” Well guess what, not only did he write it, but he wrote it because that’s what his audience liked. The hordes of ordinary people consumed his deeply philosophical play about a young man musing over life and death and sin and they LOVED it.
Shakespeare was a crowd-pleaser and an entertainer, and reason his work is so beautiful and poetic and philosophical (as well as bloody and sexual!) is because he was responding to popular demand. Most people attending the theatre were illiterate; they consumed literature by listening, and this is one of the reasons why playwrights utilised iambic pentameter and rhyming schemes. Their dialogue is poetry, and it’s beautiful to listen to. The first time Romeo and Juliet meet, their shared dialogue creates a sonnet. Imagine a commoner sitting in the crowd listening to that, and it hits him like an arrow, wow, listen to the way these characters speak, this is love at first sight.
Shakespeare was an ordinary man, and the beauty and complexity of his works were fuelled largely by the appetite of ordinary people. Although plays could be written and performed for the aristocracy, it was the hordes at the theatres that one had to keep happy. This modern obsession with putting him on a pedestal and trying to make him high culture or inaccessible to ordinary people is just gross. This upstart crow will always be one of us, and his work will always be for us.
Just to add on a bit, I was an English major, and I remember once in college, my linguist professor was discussing Shakespeare, and how he created new words. She said that linguists have studied the languages of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, and they’ve basically come to the conclusion that Shakespeare didn’t invent these new words, at all. They theorize that he actually picked up these words from young women who would use them, as slang speech. Slang speech in these centuries can be found in letters young women wrote to each other, with the slang coming from them shortening words, in order to write faster. Of course, women’s ways of talking have constantly been looked down upon throughout society, but here’s an article from Smithsonian, discussing the fact that young women throughout history have shaped language, and continue to do so. They say that what holds men back (men trail by about a generation) is the fact that they make fun of the way in which women talk.
http://ift.tt/1Ketv59
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vieillesoul:
penfairy:
The reason I hate the “Shakespeare didn’t actually write Shakespeare” theories so much is they seem to be inherently rooted in taking his works away from ordinary people. “The son of a glovemaker could never have written these plays! Surely only an Aristocratic Intellectual, like the Earl of Oxford, could be responsible!“
Honestly fuck off. Shakespeare was one of us. His plays were written for the masses. He was an ordinary man who captured the voice of the people and the depths of their emotions. We credit Shakespeare with making up words and phrases, but who’s to say he wasn’t writing down what he heard on the streets? "But something as complex as Hamlet could never have been written by Shakespeare! It must have been the work of a nobleman!” Well guess what, not only did he write it, but he wrote it because that’s what his audience liked. The hordes of ordinary people consumed his deeply philosophical play about a young man musing over life and death and sin and they LOVED it.
Shakespeare was a crowd-pleaser and an entertainer, and reason his work is so beautiful and poetic and philosophical (as well as bloody and sexual!) is because he was responding to popular demand. Most people attending the theatre were illiterate; they consumed literature by listening, and this is one of the reasons why playwrights utilised iambic pentameter and rhyming schemes. Their dialogue is poetry, and it’s beautiful to listen to. The first time Romeo and Juliet meet, their shared dialogue creates a sonnet. Imagine a commoner sitting in the crowd listening to that, and it hits him like an arrow, wow, listen to the way these characters speak, this is love at first sight.
Shakespeare was an ordinary man, and the beauty and complexity of his works were fuelled largely by the appetite of ordinary people. Although plays could be written and performed for the aristocracy, it was the hordes at the theatres that one had to keep happy. This modern obsession with putting him on a pedestal and trying to make him high culture or inaccessible to ordinary people is just gross. This upstart crow will always be one of us, and his work will always be for us.
Just to add on a bit, I was an English major, and I remember once in college, my linguist professor was discussing Shakespeare, and how he created new words. She said that linguists have studied the languages of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, and they’ve basically come to the conclusion that Shakespeare didn’t invent these new words, at all. They theorize that he actually picked up these words from young women who would use them, as slang speech. Slang speech in these centuries can be found in letters young women wrote to each other, with the slang coming from them shortening words, in order to write faster. Of course, women’s ways of talking have constantly been looked down upon throughout society, but here’s an article from Smithsonian, discussing the fact that young women throughout history have shaped language, and continue to do so. They say that what holds men back (men trail by about a generation) is the fact that they make fun of the way in which women talk.
http://ift.tt/1Ketv59
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fdostoevsky:
Favorite Lit Quotes
Macbeth, Shakespeare
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fdostoevsky:
Favorite Lit Quotes
Macbeth, Shakespeare
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bemusedlybespectacled:
strange-goodfellows:
lilybaud:
gayleontologists:
i can’t stop fucking thinking about my english prof talking about the queer historical significance of the word “sweet” as a deliberate indicator of homosexual love and how that relates to both edward ii and gaveston, as well as hamlet and horatio. so, because shakespeare was likely totally knowledgeable about codes that queer men were using (cos like duh obvs), the inclusion of “sweet prince” at the end of hamlet is in all likelihood a completely deliberate indication that hamlet and horatio were in love
i’m???? so gay for literature and history lmao
my good sweet honey lord????
I WROTE A WHOLE PAPER ON THIS SHIT IN DOCTOR FAUSTUS HIT ME UP LITERALLY ANY TIME YO.
“goodnight, you gay fuck”
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bemusedlybespectacled:
strange-goodfellows:
lilybaud:
gayleontologists:
i can’t stop fucking thinking about my english prof talking about the queer historical significance of the word “sweet” as a deliberate indicator of homosexual love and how that relates to both edward ii and gaveston, as well as hamlet and horatio. so, because shakespeare was likely totally knowledgeable about codes that queer men were using (cos like duh obvs), the inclusion of “sweet prince” at the end of hamlet is in all likelihood a completely deliberate indication that hamlet and horatio were in love
i’m???? so gay for literature and history lmao
my good sweet honey lord????
I WROTE A WHOLE PAPER ON THIS SHIT IN DOCTOR FAUSTUS HIT ME UP LITERALLY ANY TIME YO.
“goodnight, you gay fuck”
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argonauticae:
jstor:
dark-haired-hamlet:
I can’t BELIEVE I haven’t plugged this yet, because it’s so legit.
@jstor just sealed itself in my heart as the coolest resource ever by combining my two greatest loves - Digital Humanities and Shakespeare - to create an AMAZING site called Understanding Shakespeare.
It works like this (hold on to your seats, this is so cool):
Say you reach a line in a Shakespeare play where there’s a reference or symbol you don’t understand and/or would like to know more about. Usually, it would take a substantial amount of time to figure out the meaning, find the key theme, search through research databases, and maybe hit something that references your line.
But no longer!
Because with Understanding Shakespeare, you can go to the line and look at all the scholarship published on JSTOR that features or references to it! Oh my god!!!
An example:
So I really love Richard II’s “graves, worms, and epitaphs” speech, it’s one of my very favorites, and I’d love to learn more about it and the symbols of death and historical references contained within it. So I go to the line in Richard II:
Click on the first line and voila! There’s a ton of articles that quote this line, and several of them look really interesting and relevant!
So whether you’re looking for more information on a line for research or performance understanding, or you just like being sucked down the addictive rabbit hole of reading JSTOR articles all afternoon (me), Understanding Shakespeare is AWESOME and a resource you should totally take advantage of.
OK friends - reblogging this again because I just talked to our Labs team (who made Understanding Shakespeare) and they are recreating this resource with other authors/texts and want to hear from you! What work do you want to see this replicated for? Any authors where this would help your research??? Let me know by reblogging and leaving a comment.
@dark-haired-hamlet @dukeofbookingham
h! o! m! e! r!
argonauticae:
jstor:
dark-haired-hamlet:
I can’t BELIEVE I haven’t plugged this yet, because it’s so legit.
@jstor just sealed itself in my heart as the coolest resource ever by combining my two greatest loves - Digital Humanities and Shakespeare - to create an AMAZING site called Understanding Shakespeare.
It works like this (hold on to your seats, this is so cool):
Say you reach a line in a Shakespeare play where there’s a reference or symbol you don’t understand and/or would like to know more about. Usually, it would take a substantial amount of time to figure out the meaning, find the key theme, search through research databases, and maybe hit something that references your line.
But no longer!
Because with Understanding Shakespeare, you can go to the line and look at all the scholarship published on JSTOR that features or references to it! Oh my god!!!
An example:
So I really love Richard II’s “graves, worms, and epitaphs” speech, it’s one of my very favorites, and I’d love to learn more about it and the symbols of death and historical references contained within it. So I go to the line in Richard II:
Click on the first line and voila! There’s a ton of articles that quote this line, and several of them look really interesting and relevant!
So whether you’re looking for more information on a line for research or performance understanding, or you just like being sucked down the addictive rabbit hole of reading JSTOR articles all afternoon (me), Understanding Shakespeare is AWESOME and a resource you should totally take advantage of.
OK friends - reblogging this again because I just talked to our Labs team (who made Understanding Shakespeare) and they are recreating this resource with other authors/texts and want to hear from you! What work do you want to see this replicated for? Any authors where this would help your research??? Let me know by reblogging and leaving a comment.
@dark-haired-hamlet @dukeofbookingham
h! o! m! e! r!
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penfairy:
zetsubouloli:
penfairy:
Women have more power and agency in Shakespeare’s comedies than in his tragedies, and usually there are more of them with more speaking time, so I’m pretty sure what Shakespeare’s saying is “men ruin everything” because everyone fucking dies when men are in charge but when women are in charge you get married and live happily ever after
I think you’re reading too far into things, kiddo.
Take a break from your women’s studies major and get some fresh air.
Right. Well, I’m a historian, so allow me to elaborate.
One of the most important aspects of the Puritan/Protestant revolution (in the 1590’s in particular) was the foregrounding of marriage as the most appropriate way of life. It often comes as a surprise when people learn this, but Puritans took an absolutely positive view of sexuality within the context of marriage. Clergy were encouraged to lead by example and marry and have children, as opposed to Catholic clergy who prized virginity above all else. Through his comedies, Shakespeare was promoting this new way of life which had never been promoted before. The dogma, thanks to the church, had always been “durr hburr women are evil sex is bad celibacy is your ticket to salvation.” All that changed in Shakespeare’s time, and thanks to him we get a view of the world where marriage, women, and sexuality are in fact the key to salvation.
The difference between the structure of a comedy and a tragedy is that the former is cyclical, and the latter a downward curve. Comedies weren’t stupid fun about the lighter side of life. The definition of a comedy was not a funny play. They were plays that began in turmoil and ended in reconciliation and renewal. They showed the audience the path to salvation, with the comic ending of a happy marriage leaving the promise of societal regeneration intact. Meanwhile, in the tragedies, there is no such promise of regeneration or salvation. The characters destroy themselves. The world in which they live is not sustainable. It leads to a dead end, with no promise of new life.
And so, in comedies, the women are the movers and shakers. They get things done. They move the machinery of the plot along. In tragedies, though women have an important part to play, they are often morally bankrupt as compared to the women of comedies, or if they are morally sound, they are disenfranchised and ignored, and refused the chance to contribute to the society in which they live. Let’s look at some examples.
In Romeo and Juliet, the play ends in tragedy because no-one listens to Juliet. Her father and Paris both insist they know what’s right for her, and they refuse to listen to her pleas for clemency. Juliet begs them – screams, cries, manipulates, tells them outright I cannot marry, just wait a week before you make me marry Paris, just a week, please and they ignore her, and force her into increasingly desperate straits, until at last the two young lovers kill themselves. The message? This violent, hate-filled patriarchal world is unsustainable. The promise of regeneration is cut down with the deaths of these children. Compare to Othello. This is the most horrifying and intimate tragedy of all, with the climax taking place in a bedroom as a husband smothers his young wife. The tragedy here could easily have been averted if Othello had listened to Desdemona and Emilia instead of Iago. The message? This society, built on racism and misogyny and martial, masculine honour, is unsustainable, and cannot regenerate itself. The very horror of it lies in the murder of two wives.
How about Hamlet? Ophelia is a disempowered character, but if Hamlet had listened to her, and not mistreated her, and if her father hadn’t controlled every aspect of her life, then perhaps she wouldn’t have committed suicide. The final scene of carnage is prompted by Laertes and Hamlet furiously grappling over her corpse. When Ophelia dies, any chance of reconciliation dies with her. The world collapses in on itself. This society is unsustainable. King Lear – we all know that this is prompted by Cordelia’s silence, her unwillingness to bend the knee and flatter in the face of tyranny. It is Lear’s disproportionate response to this that sets off the tragedy, and we get a play that is about entropy, aging and the destruction of the social order.
There are exceptions to the rule. I’m sure a lot of you are crying out “but Lady Macbeth!” and it’s a good point. However, in terms of raw power, neither Lady Macbeth nor the witches are as powerful as they appear. The only power they possess is the ability to influence Macbeth; but ultimately it is Macbeth’s own ambition that prompts him to murder Duncan, and it is he who escalates the situation while Lady Macbeth suffers a breakdown. In this case you have women who are allowed to influence the play, but do so for the worse; they fail to be the good moral compasses needed. Goneril, Regan and Gertrude are similarly comparable; they possess a measure of power, but do not use it for good, and again society cannot renew itself.
Now we come to the comedies, where women do have the most control over the plot. The most powerful example is Rosalind in As You Like It. She pulls the strings in every avenue of the plot, and it is thanks to her control that reconciliation is achieved at the end, and all end up happily married. Much Ado About Nothing pivots around a woman’s anger over the abuse of her innocent cousin. If the men were left in charge in this play, no-one would be married at the end, and it would certainly end in tragedy. But Beatrice stands up and rails against men for their cruel conduct towards women and says that famous, spine-tingling line - oh God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace. And Benedick, her suitor, listens to her. He realises that his misogynistic view of the world is wrong and he takes steps to change it. He challenges his male friends for their conduct, parts company with the prince, and by doing this he wins his lady’s hand. The entire happy ending is dependent on the men realising that they must trust, love and respect women. Now it is a society that is worthy of being perpetuated. Regeneration and salvation lies in equality between the sexes and the love husbands and wives cherish for each other. The Merry Wives of Windsor - here we have men learning to trust and respect their wives, Flastaff learning his lesson for trying to seduce married women, and a daughter tricking everyone so she can marry the man she truly loves. A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The turmoil begins because three men are trying to force Hermia to marry someone she does not love, and Helena has been cruelly mistreated. At the end, happiness and harmony comes when the women are allowed to marry the men of their choosing, and it is these marriages that are blessed by the fairies.
What of the romances? In The Tempest, Prospero holds the power, but it is Miranda who is the key to salvation and a happy ending. Without his daughter, it is likely Prospero would have turned into a murderous revenger. The Winter’s Tale sees Leontes destroy himself through his own jealousy. The king becomes a vicious tyrant because he is cruel to his own wife and children, and this breach of faith in suspecting his wife of adultery almost brings ruin to his entire kingdom. Only by obeying the sensible Emilia does Leontes have a chance of achieving redemption, and the pure trust and love that exists between Perdita and Florizel redeems the mistakes of the old generation and leads to a happy ending. Cymbeline? Imogen is wronged, and it is through her love and forgiveness that redemption is achieved at the end. In all of these plays, without the influence of the women there is no happy ending.
The message is clear. Without a woman’s consent and co-operation in living together and bringing up a family, there is turmoil. Equality between the sexes and trust between husbands and wives alone will bring happiness and harmony, not only to the family unit, but to society as a whole. The Taming of the Shrew rears its ugly head as a counter-example, for here a happy ending is dependent on a woman’s absolute subservience and obedience even in the face of abuse. But this is one of Shakespeare’s early plays (and a rip-off of an older comedy called The Taming of a Shrew) and it is interesting to look at how the reception of this play changed as values evolved in this society.
As early as 1611 The Shrew was adapted by the writer John Fletcher in a play called The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed. It is both a sequel and an imitation, and it chronicles Petruchio’s search for a second wife after his disastrous marriage with Katherine (whose taming had been temporary) ended with her death. In Fletcher’s version, the men are outfoxed by the women and Petruchio is ‘tamed’ by his new wife. It ends with a rather uplifting epilogue that claims the play aimed:
To teach both sexes due equality
And as they stand bound, to love mutually.
The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed were staged back to back in 1633, and it was recorded that although Shakespeare’s Shrew was “liked”, Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed was “very well liked.” You heard it here folks; as early as 1633 audiences found Shakespeare’s message of total female submission uncomfortable, and they preferred John Fletcher’s interpretation and his message of equality between the sexes.
So yes. The message we can take away from Shakespeare is that a world in which women are powerless and cannot or do not contribute positively to society and family is unsustainable. Men, given the power and left to their own devices, will destroy themselves. But if men and women can work together and live in harmony, then the whole community has a chance at salvation, renewal and happiness.
penfairy:
zetsubouloli:
penfairy:
Women have more power and agency in Shakespeare’s comedies than in his tragedies, and usually there are more of them with more speaking time, so I’m pretty sure what Shakespeare’s saying is “men ruin everything” because everyone fucking dies when men are in charge but when women are in charge you get married and live happily ever after
I think you’re reading too far into things, kiddo.
Take a break from your women’s studies major and get some fresh air.
Right. Well, I’m a historian, so allow me to elaborate.
One of the most important aspects of the Puritan/Protestant revolution (in the 1590’s in particular) was the foregrounding of marriage as the most appropriate way of life. It often comes as a surprise when people learn this, but Puritans took an absolutely positive view of sexuality within the context of marriage. Clergy were encouraged to lead by example and marry and have children, as opposed to Catholic clergy who prized virginity above all else. Through his comedies, Shakespeare was promoting this new way of life which had never been promoted before. The dogma, thanks to the church, had always been “durr hburr women are evil sex is bad celibacy is your ticket to salvation.” All that changed in Shakespeare’s time, and thanks to him we get a view of the world where marriage, women, and sexuality are in fact the key to salvation.
The difference between the structure of a comedy and a tragedy is that the former is cyclical, and the latter a downward curve. Comedies weren’t stupid fun about the lighter side of life. The definition of a comedy was not a funny play. They were plays that began in turmoil and ended in reconciliation and renewal. They showed the audience the path to salvation, with the comic ending of a happy marriage leaving the promise of societal regeneration intact. Meanwhile, in the tragedies, there is no such promise of regeneration or salvation. The characters destroy themselves. The world in which they live is not sustainable. It leads to a dead end, with no promise of new life.
And so, in comedies, the women are the movers and shakers. They get things done. They move the machinery of the plot along. In tragedies, though women have an important part to play, they are often morally bankrupt as compared to the women of comedies, or if they are morally sound, they are disenfranchised and ignored, and refused the chance to contribute to the society in which they live. Let’s look at some examples.
In Romeo and Juliet, the play ends in tragedy because no-one listens to Juliet. Her father and Paris both insist they know what’s right for her, and they refuse to listen to her pleas for clemency. Juliet begs them – screams, cries, manipulates, tells them outright I cannot marry, just wait a week before you make me marry Paris, just a week, please and they ignore her, and force her into increasingly desperate straits, until at last the two young lovers kill themselves. The message? This violent, hate-filled patriarchal world is unsustainable. The promise of regeneration is cut down with the deaths of these children. Compare to Othello. This is the most horrifying and intimate tragedy of all, with the climax taking place in a bedroom as a husband smothers his young wife. The tragedy here could easily have been averted if Othello had listened to Desdemona and Emilia instead of Iago. The message? This society, built on racism and misogyny and martial, masculine honour, is unsustainable, and cannot regenerate itself. The very horror of it lies in the murder of two wives.
How about Hamlet? Ophelia is a disempowered character, but if Hamlet had listened to her, and not mistreated her, and if her father hadn’t controlled every aspect of her life, then perhaps she wouldn’t have committed suicide. The final scene of carnage is prompted by Laertes and Hamlet furiously grappling over her corpse. When Ophelia dies, any chance of reconciliation dies with her. The world collapses in on itself. This society is unsustainable. King Lear – we all know that this is prompted by Cordelia’s silence, her unwillingness to bend the knee and flatter in the face of tyranny. It is Lear’s disproportionate response to this that sets off the tragedy, and we get a play that is about entropy, aging and the destruction of the social order.
There are exceptions to the rule. I’m sure a lot of you are crying out “but Lady Macbeth!” and it’s a good point. However, in terms of raw power, neither Lady Macbeth nor the witches are as powerful as they appear. The only power they possess is the ability to influence Macbeth; but ultimately it is Macbeth’s own ambition that prompts him to murder Duncan, and it is he who escalates the situation while Lady Macbeth suffers a breakdown. In this case you have women who are allowed to influence the play, but do so for the worse; they fail to be the good moral compasses needed. Goneril, Regan and Gertrude are similarly comparable; they possess a measure of power, but do not use it for good, and again society cannot renew itself.
Now we come to the comedies, where women do have the most control over the plot. The most powerful example is Rosalind in As You Like It. She pulls the strings in every avenue of the plot, and it is thanks to her control that reconciliation is achieved at the end, and all end up happily married. Much Ado About Nothing pivots around a woman’s anger over the abuse of her innocent cousin. If the men were left in charge in this play, no-one would be married at the end, and it would certainly end in tragedy. But Beatrice stands up and rails against men for their cruel conduct towards women and says that famous, spine-tingling line - oh God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace. And Benedick, her suitor, listens to her. He realises that his misogynistic view of the world is wrong and he takes steps to change it. He challenges his male friends for their conduct, parts company with the prince, and by doing this he wins his lady’s hand. The entire happy ending is dependent on the men realising that they must trust, love and respect women. Now it is a society that is worthy of being perpetuated. Regeneration and salvation lies in equality between the sexes and the love husbands and wives cherish for each other. The Merry Wives of Windsor - here we have men learning to trust and respect their wives, Flastaff learning his lesson for trying to seduce married women, and a daughter tricking everyone so she can marry the man she truly loves. A Midsummer Night’s Dream? The turmoil begins because three men are trying to force Hermia to marry someone she does not love, and Helena has been cruelly mistreated. At the end, happiness and harmony comes when the women are allowed to marry the men of their choosing, and it is these marriages that are blessed by the fairies.
What of the romances? In The Tempest, Prospero holds the power, but it is Miranda who is the key to salvation and a happy ending. Without his daughter, it is likely Prospero would have turned into a murderous revenger. The Winter’s Tale sees Leontes destroy himself through his own jealousy. The king becomes a vicious tyrant because he is cruel to his own wife and children, and this breach of faith in suspecting his wife of adultery almost brings ruin to his entire kingdom. Only by obeying the sensible Emilia does Leontes have a chance of achieving redemption, and the pure trust and love that exists between Perdita and Florizel redeems the mistakes of the old generation and leads to a happy ending. Cymbeline? Imogen is wronged, and it is through her love and forgiveness that redemption is achieved at the end. In all of these plays, without the influence of the women there is no happy ending.
The message is clear. Without a woman’s consent and co-operation in living together and bringing up a family, there is turmoil. Equality between the sexes and trust between husbands and wives alone will bring happiness and harmony, not only to the family unit, but to society as a whole. The Taming of the Shrew rears its ugly head as a counter-example, for here a happy ending is dependent on a woman’s absolute subservience and obedience even in the face of abuse. But this is one of Shakespeare’s early plays (and a rip-off of an older comedy called The Taming of a Shrew) and it is interesting to look at how the reception of this play changed as values evolved in this society.
As early as 1611 The Shrew was adapted by the writer John Fletcher in a play called The Woman’s Prize, or The Tamer Tamed. It is both a sequel and an imitation, and it chronicles Petruchio’s search for a second wife after his disastrous marriage with Katherine (whose taming had been temporary) ended with her death. In Fletcher’s version, the men are outfoxed by the women and Petruchio is ‘tamed’ by his new wife. It ends with a rather uplifting epilogue that claims the play aimed:
To teach both sexes due equality
And as they stand bound, to love mutually.
The Taming of the Shrew and The Tamer Tamed were staged back to back in 1633, and it was recorded that although Shakespeare’s Shrew was “liked”, Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed was “very well liked.” You heard it here folks; as early as 1633 audiences found Shakespeare’s message of total female submission uncomfortable, and they preferred John Fletcher’s interpretation and his message of equality between the sexes.
So yes. The message we can take away from Shakespeare is that a world in which women are powerless and cannot or do not contribute positively to society and family is unsustainable. Men, given the power and left to their own devices, will destroy themselves. But if men and women can work together and live in harmony, then the whole community has a chance at salvation, renewal and happiness.
