The Comedy of Errors (Vol. 34) - Gender Issues
GENDER ISSUES
T. W. Baldwin (essay date 1962)
SOURCE: "Three Homilies in The Comedy of Errors," in Essays on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama in Honor of Hardin Craig, edited by Richard Hosley, University of Missouri Press, 1962, pp. 137-47.
[In this essay, Baldwin discusses three speeches concerning the different moral standards applied to men and women in The Comedy of Errors.]
1. Luciana's Homily on the 'Subjection' of the Wife's 'Stubborn Will,' 2.1.7-25
In The Comedy of Errors, Luciana is trying to impress upon her impatient sister the Christian duty of a wife, as stated typically in "An Homelie of the state of Matrimonie": wives "relinquish the lybertie of their owne rule" (Certayn Sermons or Homilies, ed. 1587, sig. 2G7). Luciana had said, "A man is Master of his libertie" (2.1.7). This Adriana resents: "Why should their libertie then ours be more?" (10).
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