The Taming of the Shrew & Renaissance Culture

This study will discuss how Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew reflects the values and concerns of the Renaissance period and culture of which it is a part. The study will focus on the contrast between the Renaissance view that women are inferior to men, and the attitude and behavior of Kate which fly in the face of that view.

The Renaissance social structure was in part based on a philosophy of male superiority: "The tripartite ideal of women's chastity, silence, and obedience was proclaimed far and wide in early modern England" (229). Kate utterly shuns such ideals. She refuses to submit, believing herself to be equal or superior to any man. Her behavior puts her in disfavor with men, who call her a "devil," indicating the severity of her unorthodox ways.

The play establishes the Renaissance conviction with respect to the inferiority of women by showing that men reject the rambunctious Kate while they swarm all over her younger sister Bianca, who is the stereotypically submissive Renaissance woman.

In a complicated set of pretense, illusion and mistaken identity, Shakespeare advances his plot, but the major aim of the play remains the portrayal of the fate of this decidedly anti-Renaissance woman. If "Renaissance man" is a term for a man who is expert and creative in many fields, a "Renaissance woman" could be used to refer to a woman who quietly obeyed her man and remained thoroughly subservient to him. In most cultures the family is the basic building block

Related Essays

References Abel, Lionel. Metatheatre: A New View .... "Renaissance Family Politics and Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew." English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986) 86-100. Nicoll, Allardyce, ed. The Elizabethans. .... (1213 5 )

Shakespeare .... one finds his reactions to the nature of the Renaissance people." Although his .... that would make Kate's final speech in The Taming of the Shrew an embarrassing .... (3351 13 )

physically beaten into submission. This debate is preposterous, for there is only one conclusion we can draw today in reflecting on the portrait which Shakespeare's play paints of the Renaissance culture. The Renaissance was operated by men, including Shakespeare, who were frightened of strong women such as Kate, and because they could not live with such a woman, and could not let her live among them in all her glorious and obnoxious independence, they were forced to break her. Unless Kate is planning on butchering her husband after the play is over, Shakespeare has betrayed his character. It is not believable that she would be as pliant and, worse, as humorless as she is shown to have become in her last speech. After the breaking of Kate, Shakespeare has Hortensio declare "thou hast tamed a curst shrow," and Lucentio responds, "`Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so" (221). This could be said to imply that perhaps Kate is not truly tamed, or at least will not remain tamed long. This may be true, but it is small consolation for a reader who has come to appreciate Kate as the only character in that Renaissance portrait capable of thinking for herself and disdaining a society based on sexist fear. If Shakespeare by hi

Category: Literature - T