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 girl patiently and wholly devoted to serving her chosen male. It is not surprising that the shrew gets a hearing on Shakespeare's boards. But Shakespeare's shrews, Adriana in The Comedy of Errors and Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, are not merely fools or monsters. They are, like other Shakespearian characters, including the tender heroines who appear by their sides in these two plays, persons unsure of their own hearts, and their spirited conduct is akin to the spirited conduct of Shakespeare's best loved heroines.

Neither Adriana nor Kate is simply shrewish out of a desire to be shrewish. Each has a strong will. Adriana gives rein to her tongue when she finds her will thwarted—“My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will” (Errors [The Comedy of Errors] IV.ii.18)¹—and regrets her “venom clamors” (V.ii.69) when reprehended for them, though she does not relinquish her will a jot. Kate is equally strong willed; rather than conceal her anger and break her heart she “will be free / Even to the uttermost … in words” (Shrew [The Taming of the Shrew] IV.iii.78-79). Carried to the point to which they carry it, will becomes wilfulness, but properly controlled it is valuable to women. Their two submissive sisters, Luciana and Bianca, both prove capable of determined action. Adriana and Kate have just the wills we admire in Shakespeare's finer heroines; they need only to learn to control those wills as skillfully as Silvia, Rosalind, and Portia do.

Along with will goes intelligence. Both Adriana and Kate are admirably intelligent women. Adriana's intelligence is evident in her handling of her sister in their debate early in the play, when Luciana utters platitudes while Adriana states her case forcefully and convincingly; in her irresistible plea to the man she thinks her husband (although amazed, he lets her sweep him home with her); and in her masterful argument to the Duke at the end. Kate's intelligence is evident when she more than holds her own in her battle of wit with Petruchio and when she shows to her father that she is not fooled by Petruchio's bluff:

You have show'd a tender fatherly regard
To wish me wed to one half lunatic …
That thinks with oaths to face the matter out.

(Shrew II.i.288-291)

Their sisters, who show far less wit and imagination, are less valuable conquests. It is not surprising that women as sharp as Adriana and Kate cannot easily be submissive—they trust their own minds, and when they think they are right they follow their own wills. Kate makes the point explicit when she says, “I see a woman may be made a fool / If she had not a spirit to resist” (Shrew III.ii.222-223). She is determined to be nobody's fool, and her tongue is her best defense; since “men were deceivers ever”, the best way to protect herself from their deceit is to scare them off by her bitterness. Her instinct proves right; she can never be bound in marriage to an inferior man for whom her sense of her own worth would allow her to feel only contempt, for the inferior men are easily scared away; she can be submissive and happy only with a man who proves to have a superior mind and spirit. Adriana and Kate are not so different from Silvia, whose wit protects her from a fool like Thurio and wins her a noble Valentine, and Beatrice, who is likewise proof against all men but her equal, Benedick.

The characterizations of the four heroines in these two plays are not wholly good-bad contrasts. Luciana and Bianca, though they make a point of their obedient natures, are not completely submissive, and Adriana and Kate have attractive traits to temper their shrewishness. They are sensitive and passionate. Adriana is deeply grieved by her husband's coldness, genuinely devoted to him, and ashamed of her bitter tongue. Kate is sensitive about her reputation—“Now must the world point at poor Katherine / And say, ‘Lo, there is mad Petruchio's wife, / If it would please him come and marry her’” (Shrew III.ii.18-20). She is ashamed enough of Petruchio's breach of form at the wedding to do what she has never condescended to do before, entreat a man. She protests about Petruchio's ill treatment of the servants as well as of herself. She is justifiably forward in resisting Petruchio's boorish treatment and admirably holds her own in argument though not in physical combat. Her change from willfulness to humility is expressed in a change from rough to imaginative language, but her burst of poetry when she addresses the stranger on the road is prepared for by the hints that there is a sensitive heart beating within her breast and an intelligent mind in her head. This humanizing of the shrew is not an artistic blunder. Both Adriana and Kate play for audience sympathy from the beginning, though they are not wholly successful because they have to struggle against a strong will to dominate. Other Shakespearian heroines succeed better because they find more acceptable outlets than shrewishness for their spirited natures.

Luciana and Bianca recognize the need to be submissive. They try to deny that they also have a will to dominate, but it nevertheless shows itself at times. Luciana importunes the supposed errant husband as vigorously as Adriana does; were she wife rather than sister-in-law, she too might earn the title of shrew. Bianca, though she keeps up until the last scenes the appearance of modest girl, demonstrates that she too is wilful. “I am no breeching scholar in the schools”, she tells her disguised lovers; “I'll not be tied to hours, nor 'pointed times” (Shew III.i.18-19). She will be wilful when she can although she will show a proper respect for duty when it costs her nothing. Adriana and Kate give free rein to their wills, but they come at the end to recognize that they have also a need to submit. Every woman, then, has within her both a need to submit and a will to dominate, and the harmony of the character depends on the balance between the two. These two aspects of character might be labeled the male and the female, since Western culture has a tendency to consider dominance a masculine trait and submission a feminine one. Shakespeare's point would seem to be that women have both male dominance and female submission, and it is perhaps healthier to burn out the male through such experience as Adriana's and Kate's than to let it rest dormant and suddenly flare forth as it does with Bianca.

But though in marriage the dominant woman threatens the proper ordering of a household, in courtship the woman enjoys a superior position. Courtship is not, then, very good training for marriage. Women who take seriously such lavish expressions of praise and worship as sonnet lovers heap upon them will not take easily to the altered marital situation. Such praise the lover in The Comedy of Errors heaps upon Luciana; he calls her “our earth's wonder, more than earth divine”, “a god”, “sweet mermaid”, and “siren” (Errors III.ii.32-47). Adriana was also courted in just such a way:

The time was once when thou unurg'd wouldst vow
That never words were music to thine ear,
That never object pleasing in thine eye,
That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
That never meat sweet-savour'd in thy taste,
Unless I spake or look'd or touch'd or carv'd to thee.

(Errors II.ii.115-120)

In The Shrew the theme is clearly presented in the wooing and wedding of Bianca. In the last scene we are shown men who after marriage expect an altered relationship and women who wish to remain dominant. Also, one of the traits that was particularly desirable in a Renaissance mistress was witty discourse, because mistresses had to set an eloquent tone for the court. But the difference between wit and shrewishness is a difference of degree, not kind; both result from the same power of speech, so that it is but a step from the witty mistress to the shrewish wife. Shakespeare shows elsewhere witty mistresses (Silvia, Rosalind, Portia) who are the subtle but effective guiding spirits in courtship. In these two farces he relates courtship to marriage in such a way that the contrasting attitudes toward women are clear.

The transition from courtship to marriage has to be made, though. A woman matures by transforming herself from worshiped mistress to devoted wife, and a man matures by changing from a worshiper to a governor. Adriana offends in her shrewishness even though we sympathize with her in her provocation. But her shrewishness is more talked about than displayed—Luciana's protest, “She never reprehended him but mildly, / When he demean'd himself rough, rude, and wildly” (Errors V.i.87-88) seems to be accurate, for Adriana, though she importunes, is not always bitter, often pleading for the right to love rather than scolding. One feels that marriage is not so simple an affair as Luciana imagines without challenging Luciana's ideal. In The Shrew, Kate experiences, farcically and brutally, the necessary transformation as she learns to curb her will. She learns to be less frank and direct, to play the role which her husband wishes her to play. This is clear in the key scene when Petruchio and Kate meet the stranger on the road to Padua. In the past she spoke her mind frankly that she might not suffer; but she has seen Petruchio successfully put on an act, treat her brutally “under name of perfect love” (Shrew IV.iii.12). On the road she disputes with him when he calls the sun the moon, then quickly gives in. Obviously when the stranger appears Kate does not see a young maiden, no matter what Petruchio says; but she plays the part assigned to her much more poetically than required. She discovers that such playing can be good sport, that if she bends a little she and her husband can not only live harmoniously, but can also entertain themselves gloriously at the expense of others. She needs only one more lesson, to enjoy her husband's kiss, and she is ready for her great stage triumph. When she sees the other two wives unsuccessfully called into the presence of their husbands and then is called herself, she knows that Petruchio has a new game afoot, and she plays her part so brilliantly that the audience cannot be sure just how serious she is in her final lecture. Kate need not be so ironic as Margaret Webster suggests;² the others on the stage do not catch the irony; so the point is that she plays her part so well that only she and Petruchio know how much is serious and how much put on. When the couple sweeps triumphantly from the stage, the audience feels not that a curst shrew has been broken in spirit, but that Petruchio has won an enviable mate. These two will go far.

Shakespeare's The Shrew differs notably at this point from A Shrew. In the latter version the shrew's lecture is the conventional theme of the chain of being. The wife should be submissive because it is morally right for her to be—the same reasoning that Luciana uses in The Comedy of Errors. To Shakespeare's Kate, though, marriage is a bargain in which the husband works for the wife and she in turn serves him faithfully. This is the solution that Chaucer presents in The Canterbury Tales. The Wife of Bath suggests that women desire the same sovereignty in marriage as in courtship; the Clerk suggests that men desire to have absolute sway over their wives; and the Franklin then suggests that these clashing desires can be resolved only when man and woman strike a careful bargain at marriage and adhere to it.

Successful marriage depends, then, on the woman's ability to subdue the male nature which is nurtured in her during courtship. As Draper points out, Petruchio tames Kate by augmenting her choler until it burns out its own fury.³ In Much Ado [Much Ado About Nothing] Beatrice sets out to “tame” her “wild heart” (III.i.112), doing for herself what Petruchio does for Kate. In The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It Portia and Rosalind have a chance, while disguised as men, to exercise their forwardness until they tire of it. In Twelfth Night Viola, similarly disguised, undergoes an apprenticeship in which she learns to act more spiritedly. A different disguise is adopted by Helena in All's Well That Ends Well; instead of playing a male part, she plays an excessively female one, that of whore. Helena is not a simple character, but throughout the play there is a contradiction in her being, a genuine tenderness, devotion, and humility combined with talent, forwardness, and ambition. The bed trick is a violent way of demeaning herself and perhaps assuring Bertram that it is not a shrew he has wed. At any rate, Shakespeare has inexhaustible means for exploring the two parts of woman's nature, spirit and tenderness, and the problems of character, courtship, and marriage which result from their mixture. Adriana and Kate are blood relations of his other heroines.

Successful marriage depends also on the man's transformation from lover to husband. The Comedy of Errors not only presents a contrast between the inexperienced girl and the experienced wife, but also between lover and husband. The lover woos with the lavishness of sonneteers, worshiping Luciana as a goddess who moves about the earth. The simplicity of his expectations is as clear as the simplicity of Luciana's by contrast with the marital discord of their brother and sister. In spite of the discord, Adriana and her husband are attached to each other; since they are attached in spite of their discord, they have discovered a more satisfactory basis for attachment than the ethereal worship which Luciana's lover expresses. The same contrast is presented in The Shrew. Bianca's lovers are all worship in their words, and her father expresses a tender fatherly regard for his daughter's welfare. By contrast, Petruchio is frankly materialistic, having come to Padua to wive it wealthily. But when put to the test, the others show materialistic concerns too; the father will give Bianca to the highest bidder, and the lovers bid vigorously for her. Petruchio is also not so materialistic as he says; he is concerned enough about his relationship with his wife that he goes to great lengths to establish a good one. His praise of Kate during the courtship is obviously pretense, while Bianca's lovers are apparently sincere, but the lovers' attitudes at the end show them to have been guilty of pretense too. The spirited frankness of Petruchio and Kate thus exposes the insincerity of romantic pretense. The moral is not, of course, that all motives are amply expressed in materialistic terms. Lucentio's love for Bianca is real if exaggerated. He cannot live in his romantic dreams forever, and the final scene brings him down to earth.

Shakespeare's romantic heroines have to make men of their lovers as well as women of themselves. If the lover is too earthly he has to be ennobled—Julia's disguise and well-timed faint add the final touch to the education of Proteus; Helena accomplishes the same for Bertram by showing him that a wife can do for him what a whore can and some things that a whore cannot. More often the heroines have to teach their lovers to tread upon the earth, as Juliet and Rosalind do. Rosalind in particular uses her disguise to purge her lover of effeminacy, showing him that “Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love” (As You Like It IV.i.106-108). The rarest couple is Beatrice and Benedick, both of whom are spirited and devoted enough to mature with only an assurance of mutual trust. In the other plays varieties in degree and proportion of these two qualities, spirit and devotion, and varieties of problems of courtship and marriage are explored.

The comic point of view assumes that problems can be resolved. The devotion of Adriana and her husband is proof against temporary mistakes. For a woman so spirited as Kate there is a Petruchio to tame her. For a Beatrice there is a Benedick. Excessively devoted girls like Julia, Hero, and Viola are protected by others or by chance. Hermione's spirit enables her to chastise a jealous husband. In tragedy the case is altered. Juliet's spirit cannot quite protect her lover and herself from a tyrannous father and a malicious fate. Ophelia's tenderness makes her a prey rather than a ward to her environment and situation. The right proportion of spirit and devotion does not always harmonize with the situation.

One case of tragic meddling with the male and female natures is Lady Macbeth. She cultivates her will to the point of exorcising her tenderness. She deliberately makes herself a shrew. Between the Macbeths there is, at the beginning, complete understanding, and Lady Macbeth's motive is at least partially a desire to help her husband to do what she knows he most wants to do. Their marriage is so successful, they act so much in harmony, that they reenforce each other in evil deeds which neither could bring himself to do alone. But the understanding and trust which give them such strength turn, after the murder, into misunderstanding and lack of trust. Their success together so preys upon them individually that each becomes isolated from the other—afraid to show the other his inner feeling. This isolation weakens their union, leading to a lack of communication; and their failure to share visions then contributes to their failure to act wisely. Lady Macbeth also fails to recognize her true being. In exorcising tenderness from her nature, she attempts to be what she cannot really be, so that the attempt to split the masculine and feminine in her nature results in the fatal split personality of her madness.

The mature plays are too complex to be adequately explored in these terms. There are other qualities of the nature of women as well as other problems of human relationships involved in them. But the contrast which Shakespeare establishes in The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew between spirited and devoted women has meaning for these other plays. His two shrews are not merely ridiculous figures. They are more forceful than their romantic sisters. Their shrewishness is not simply their natural condition but results from will and spirit which properly controlled can make valuable wives of them. They have feminine tenderness and sensitivity which war with their masculine intelligence and spirit, and their romantic sisters have a subdued masculinity as well as an apparent femininity. All women need these two aspects of nature. The male makes them more successful in courtship, the female more successful in marriage, but too much of either exposes them to difficulties in both situations. Courtship is a time for them to exercise their masculinity to the point of burning some of it out, and it is a time for them to ennoble or make manly their lovers. These themes enrich the farcical action of these two plays. Shakespeare's romantic shrews are posited on the same conceptions of feminine nature as his other heroines, and we need not feel disturbed, when we think of the truths that the tragedies tell us, that these two plays suggest that marriage can sometimes be a battle and yet be a highly satisfying experience.

Notes

1. Citations are to act, scene, and line numbering in The Complete Works of Shakespeare edited by G. L. Kittredge (Boston, 1936).

2. Margaret Webster, Shakespeare Without Tears (New York, 1942), p. 142.

3. John W. Draper, The Humors and Shakespeare's Characters (Durham, N. C., 1945), p. 112.