This thesis evaluates competition in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, particularly the female characters’ competition and how it differs from and relates to the competition between men. The first chapter focuses on Katharina’s outwardly submissive actions and pays special attention to her critically problematic speech in Act 5. By analyzing the play’s treatment of female relationships, the thesis proposes that Katharina acts competitively, rather than submissively. The second chapter addresses male competition, particularly how competition molds the males’ relationships with each other and with the females. Although they compete separately, the each gender needs the other to give their competition purpose. By viewing the play’s gendered relationships as a form of competition, the thesis argues that the females do not merely serve as objects to the males’ triangulated desire, and instead have agency within the play.

In this thesis William Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of The Shrew is analyzed from a feminist perspective. It is argued that the female characters Katherina and Bianca are mainly constructed through language expressed by male characters as binary oppositions. By an act of deconstruction within the play, these images, or constructed representations, are adjusted and somewhat reversed in the end. In addition, it is shown how the Induction, an introductory part of the play, adds aspects of construction and deconstruction, which supports an ironic reading and a questioning of the constructed gender roles.

In this thesis, I will apply Michel Foucault¡¦s knowledge/power theory to discuss gender politics in two Renaissance plays ¡V Ben Jonson¡¦s Epicoene or The Silent Woman and William Shakespeare¡¦s The Taming of the Shrew. The first chapter aims to delineate Foucault¡¦s discursive discipline and its exertion in Renaissance male-female relations. According Foucault, discourses are functional and regulative: they powerfully frame sciences and knowledges that have effects upon our souls and actions. Thus, ¡¥truth¡¦, or the so-called ¡¥self-evident¡¦ and ¡¥commonsensical¡¦ empowers articulators to discipline and control others. Gender discourses in the name of masculine or feminine ¡¥nature¡¦ are similarly little more than instrument of domination. Precisely, the phallo-centrical discourse of Renaissance age empowers contemporary men by subjecting, or explicitly formulating and shaping the ¡¥feminine nature¡¦ of obedient silence. The patriarchal assessment codifies two genders -- one subordinate to the other -- as a key element in its patriarchal view of the social order, and buttressed its gendered division of power. In other words, what lies beneath the discourse is patriarchal consideration for male domination. As long as contemporary women keep silent, the normative power would enable their fathers and husbands to regulate ¡¥womanly conducts¡¦ of all occasions. Then, I would examine how Morose and Epicoene wield disciplinary power by setting up certain ¡¥behavior norms¡¦ in Epicoene. Morose¡¦s ¡¥truth¡¦ of having his family members hold their tongue and make signs has been internalized by Mute: Mute is hence drilled to self-discipline himself to answer the family head¡¦s questions in rigidly prescribed signs or gestures. Mute reifies the formidable outcome of silent conformity to ¡¥reality¡¦: he takes for granted the ¡¥natural¡¦ routine of body language. However, Morose¡¦s wife Epicoene keeps correcting Morose¡¦s mistakes to reinforce her version of ¡¥right¡¦ and ¡¥wrong¡¦. In order to rehabilitate Morose, Epicoene and other characters further label his insanity in public. The conclusion they draw results from the same complicity to put badness to Morose¡¦s ¡¥crazy¡¦ will to discourses and goodness to the ¡¥reasonable¡¦ tolerance of their opinions. In The Taming of the Shrew, Katherina is frightening to the Renaissance males equally because of her undisciplined behavior, or her automatic discourse and self-assertion. The male characters in the play try their best to eschew from Katherina so as to defend themselves against the fear that they will not be capable of keeping ¡¥domestic order¡¦. In one word, talkative women as Katherina are frightening to Renaissance men because of their threat to the original ¡¥orders¡¦. Petruchio hence invalidates Katherina¡¦s judgments ever since they first meet: the purpose of his deliberate pretense of misunderstanding her words is to grant her discourses no influence on him since disciplinary power lies in influencing others¡¦ deeds. He vanquishes resistance from Kate by making her conformable to his ¡¥knowledge¡¦¡Xfemale obedience to male domination. Katherina¡¦s new identity is thus constructed according to Petruchio¡¦s ¡¥rules¡¦: by labeling goodness to female obedience and badness to female transgression, he thus produces another Kate obedient to his intentions. From this aspect, the gender politics between Petruchio and Katherina is essentially a battle for discourse; disciplinary power lies in voicing and reinforcing particular ¡¥truths¡¦. In one word, systematic knowledges are never power-free, but quite the contrary.

To do justice to Shakespeare’s comprehensive moral and political thought this paper seeks to discover what we can learn from the political philosophy of his largely neglected comedy, Taming of the Shrew. Not only does this endeavor provide a valuable forgotten link within the critical analyses of the theorists, but it also corrects the various misinterpretations of the play among contemporary critics. I argue that the play surveys various key themes that are rooted in classical political philosophy – such as education, the problems of anger, and the dynamic between nature and convention – and takes into consideration how they apply to modern man. Shakespeare borrows Plato’s idea that eroticism is central to education and explicitly references Ovid’s love books to reexamine our conceptions about one’s formation of character, the proper standards for judging the ideal mate, and the effects of these issues on the stability of the community. I also submit an innovative explanation of the relation between the induction and the main plot. Taken together they exhibit a critique of the role of the poet and his art in modern civil society.

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This thesis explores prescriptive literature and conduct books, specifically The Book of Homilies, and how these prescriptions manifest in Shakespeare’s work. This text examines the depictions of marital relationships and argues that the actions of husbands in two of Shakespeare’s comedies, The Taming of the Shrew and The Merchant of Venice, deviate from prescriptive ideals that homilies deem proper for the husband-and-wife relationship. Through the combination of new historicism and gender criticism, this thesis suggests that Katherine and Portia use submission to gain agency in moments when they seem to have none while showing that the men do not fulfill their husbandly duties. This dynamic demonstrates that submission did not mean subordination, and men in these plays do not totally recognize the agency women have despite the larger scheme of patriarchal power still existing.

The Taming of the Shrew is an early comedy that exposes the oddities we take for granted: curious conventions, wild assumptions, gender roles, relationships, social status, fashion, and everything else we know so defectively. The given circumstances of the script and Petruchio are specific in choice, yet broad in interpretation. Petruchio, the catalyst behind Katherine’s character arc, needed to not only be believable in his ways, but likeable by the audience. This thesis examines the process required to successfully develop and bring to life the character of Petruchio to our modern audience. It includes historical background information on William Shakespeare and the origins of the play itself, Sanford Meisner’s Techniques (moment-to-moment analysis & actioning) and Konstantin Stanislavski’s system are included with the scored actor’s script, journals recorded by the actor to verify his victories and defeats during the six-week production process and critiques to support the success of the production.

William Shakespeare's play, The Taming of the Shrew has a varied and interesting stage history. Beginning with Fletcher's The Tamer Tarn'd (1633), a sequel to Shakespeare, there have been many adaptations of the plot in farce, opera and poetic drama, including an American musical comedy. This thesis will follow the stage history of The Taming of the Shrew, focussing on the dramatic development and treatment of the heroine, Katherine. Shakespeare's shrew, Katherine, is much more than a traditional shrew stereotype. Her dramatic presentation in language and action has enough depth and subtlety to provoke much conflicting criticism and interpretation. What motivates her anger? Why is she physically abusive? Is she subdued, tamed or reeducated? Enough clues are present in the play to provide for interesting debate. The first part of the thesis is concerned with examining Shakespeare's dramatic concept of the shrew to establish the scope and range of Katherine's personality and her response to Petruchio's taming tricks. In later versions of the play, the character of Katherine receives a variety of dramatic treatments. Some playwrights reduce Katherine's dramatic function to a mere outline. Others accentuate her physically abusive and sharp-tongued qualities. Yet another variation is a softening of the shrewish disposition to allow for a sentimental treatment of shrew conditioning. The dramatic vigour of the shrew character is constant, but variations in plot, language and thematic idea result in very different and entertaining shrew types. This stage history of The Taming of the Shrew as it relates to the heroine, Katherine, includes an analysis of the following plays. The Tamer Tarn'd (1633), a sequel by John Fletcher serves to comment on Shakespeare's Kate by direct allusion and by dramatic contrast. Sauny the Scot (1667) is a bastardised Restoration version in which the shrew is a farcical stereotype who must suffer extensive physical humiliation for her excessive displays of nastiness. Catherine and Petruohio (1756) is David Garrick's miniature version of Shakespeare which stresses the farce, simplifying the play and the dramatic impact of Catherine. John Tobin's The Honeymoon (1805) is a poetic attempt to re-create The Shrew. The heroine in this play suffers the sin of pride, but is won over to domesticity and humility by love and rural surroundings provided by a gentle tamer. The thesis also considers the nineteenth century attempts to revive the Shakespeare original which struggled unsuccessfully with the popularity of the Garrick version. Some of the musical adaptations of The Shrew provide a rich variety of shrew heroines in very different settings. Included are a ballad opera, A Cure for a Scold (1735), a German opera by Hermann Goetz, The Taming of the Shrew (1878), and a modern musical comedy version, Kiss Me Kate (1948). These adaptations and variant versions provide a veritable school of Katherines. The streak of genius in Shakespeare's dramatic idea of a shrew, who, even in the realm of farce is seen as a human being with the capacity to feel, change and grow, becomes very strongly apparent as Shakespeare's Kate is measured against the shrew heroines in these derivative plays. The contrasting shrew types, though interesting and pleasing in their own way, never quite acquire the stature, poise, wit, intelligence and humour which characterise Shakespeare's attractive Kate. For Kate's civilising and learning encounter with Petruchio is not the brutalising, punitive or subjugating ritual of tradition; amidst the slapstick of farce, Kate, with her Petruchio, provides a unique variation of the shrew heroine. She is not conquered. She changes herself. This is her distinction and her strength and the mark of Shakespeare's human touch. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Teen Shakespeare films have largely been dismissed as films which “dumb down” Shakespeare’s original texts and which are marketed in a manipulative way in order to sell teens fantasies that appeal to them. Among the most popular and recognizable actresses of this genre is Julia Stiles, known for her leading roles in 10 Things I Hate About You, O, and Hamlet. Several scholars have critiqued Stiles’s films for the ways that they depict feminism and American teen girlhood. In this thesis, I argue that Stiles’s films present a spectrum of, an admittedly limited, feminism that becomes increasingly more progressive. By exploring Stiles’s portrayal of feminism in these films, the hope is to move away from the idea of teen Shakespeare films as merely dumbed down versions of the plays and to, instead, move towards an understanding of the political and social role of this generic category.