Claus-P. Buechmann
English Department
Gustavus Adolphus College
St. Peter, MN 56082-1498
Tel.: 507.933.7394; 507.931.1549(Home)
E-Mail: cpb@gac.edu
Web: http://www.gac.edu/~cpb/MMLAShrew.html
M/Mla Annual Meeting: Chicago, IL--Nov. 6-8, 1997

Session: Shakespeare in the Classroom

Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrewas a Comedy of Marriage, not Courtship.

Much like its thematic focus, love in marriage, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrewis a

comedy beset by controversy. I believe that thematic preoccupation is both unique among

Shakespeare's comic plays and may explain much of what has made the play notorious in our

time. By contrast, in all of his popular romantic comedies Shakespeare places the courtship game

at center stage, taking his protagonists to at least within sight of the altar, but not further:

Rosalind and Orlando in As You Like It, Viola and Orsino in Twelfth Night, and Benedick and

Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothingare the primary courting couples who also dominate both

plot and action of their respective dramas. Note, I am placing Rosalind and Viola ahead of their

would-be mates, as the two young women are decidedly more in control of the direction, the

pace, and the resolution of the wooing negotiations in those two idyllic comedies. In naming

Benedick before Beatrice, I am following a tradition that started at least as far back as the

Restoration period, when a version of the play truncated to not much more than the scenes

involving those two reluctant amorists began to dominate the stage. I am inclined to suspect that

the order of naming them may have as much to do with a traditional Western bias concerning

who should take the lead in the romantic ritual as it does with the social and personal behavior

projected by the two equally aggressive--in public posturing--and apprehensive--in private

meditation--personaewe witness in this urban(e) comedy. Some might wish to argue that

Beatrice, when she answers Benedick's Petrarchan verbal hyperbole with her chilling "Kill

Claudio" challenge, takes the lead in Much Adoas well. None of these heroines, however, is

established as an heir to the distant Madonna dominating the courtly love tradition, which

accommodated the double cult of the spiritual and the secular lady as the source of all

blessings--at least for men: "The noble heart always to Love repaireth!" Nor are they the

offsprings of Shakespeare's own Venus, of Venus & Adonis, who bodies forth a burlesquing

inversion of stereotypical male desires.

By contrast, in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, though its main plot may profitably

be regarded as a rough precursor to the Benedick and Beatrice flyting, there should be no

question about who is in control in the battle of the sexes in the main plot, in spite of Katerina

cpb@gac.edu

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M/MLA, 1997