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Charles Brooks (essay date summer 1960)

SOURCE: Brooks, Charles. “Shakespeare's Romantic Shrews.” Shakespeare Quarterly 11, no. 3 (summer 1960): 351-56.

[In the following essay, Brooks compares Adriana in The Comedy of Errors to Kate in The Taming of the Shrew.]

The domineering wife has been a popular literary figure from Xantippe to Lichty's battle-axes. She has a male counterpart in the tyrannous husband, unreasonable masculine brutality being as much disapproved, at least in Christian civilizations, as feminine wilfulness; but the shrew is a more familiar character than the tyrannous husband, possibly because she not only behaves abnormally, as he does, but also violates our sense of order. While he overasserts a right, she overturns a hierarchy which men like to feel is divinely sanctioned. So men delight to laugh at the shrew or to see her justly disconcerted, and they smile with approval at her opposite number, the tender...

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1. Introduction
2. Criticism: Overviews And General Studies
   1. Robert S. Miola (essay date 1997)
   2. Charles Whitworth (essay date 2002)
3. Criticism: Character Studies
   1. Charles Brooks (essay date summer 1960)
   2. Wolfgang Riehle (essay date 1990)
4. Criticism: Production Reviews
   1. D. J. R. Bruckner (review date 14 July 2000)
   2. Michael Phillips (review date 26 March 2001)
   3. Don Shirley (review date 9 July 2001)
   4. Don Shirley (review date 9 July 2001)
   5. Douglas E. Green (review date spring/summer 2003)
5. Criticism: Themes
   1. Douglas Green (essay date 1995)
   2. Martine Van Elk (essay date 2003)
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright