The Taming of the Shrew (Vol. 31) | Karen Newman (essay date 1986)
Karen Newman (essay date 1986)
SOURCE: "Renaissance Family Politics and Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, " in English Literary Renaissance, Vol. 16, No. 1, Winter, 1986, pp. 86-100.
[In the following essay, Newman argues that by emphasizing its own theatricality, The Taming of the Shrew subverts Elizabethan social and gender roles by revealing them to be "culturally constructed."]
WETHERDEN, Suffolk. Plough Monday, 1604. A drunken tanner, Nicholas Rosyer, staggers home from the ale-house. On arriving at his door, he is greeted by his wife with "dronken dogg, pisspott and other unseemly names." When Rosyer tried to come to bed to her, she "still raged against him and badd him out dronken dogg dronken pisspott." She struck him several times, clawed his face and arms, spit at him and beat him out of bed. Rosyer retreated, returned to the alehouse, and drank until he could hardly stand up. Shortly thereafter, Thomas...
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