The Taming of the Shrew (Vol. 31) | David Farley-Hills (essay date 1981)
David Farley-Hills (essay date 1981)
SOURCE: "Paradoxes and Problems: Shakespeare's Sceptical Comedy in The Taming of the Shrew," in The Comic in Renaissance Comedy, Barnes and Noble Books, 1981, pp. 160-78.
[In the following excerpt, Farley-Hills traces various sources of ambiguity in the play's treatment of the themes of male domination and female submissiveness.]
The range of Shakespearian comedy is remarkable. At one extreme there is the serenity of The Tempest, where benevolent comedy reaches out towards the divine; at the other the searing, cynical comedy of Troilus and Cressida, with its jaundiced view of two major centres of spiritual value for the Elizabethans, love and heroism, an extreme of denigratory satire. Shakespearian comedy, indeed, could by itself have been used to illustrate all the kinds of [Renaissance comedy] for between these extremes lie gradations of benevolence and satire that would serve to...
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