This is the first book to address and explore the various dramatic, poetic and narrative versions of the popular 'taming of the shrew' story, from the Middle Ages to the Restoration, in the light of new historical work on the place of early modern women in society. The contributors address the historical interrelationships of key theatrical texts such as the anonymous The Taming of A Shrew, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, John Fletcher's The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed and John Lacey's Sauny the Scot. The essays in this volume subsume and extend the historical work, especially on the later 17th century versions and address the multiple shrew-taming narratives as an extended cultural dialogue debating key issues of gender and sexual politics. Recent criticism has tended to overplay 'power' readings of the shrew-plays and to cast especially Shakespeare's play as an irredeemable document of barbarism. This volume reopens some of these critical questions and takes a fresh perspective on the renaissance shrew. The cast of contributors represents a balance between established critics responsible for seminal work in shrew-studies and younger scholars whose research is exploring new directions.

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors Introduction; G.Holderness Reading Shrews in Pamphlets and Plays; A.Bayman & G.Southcombe Shrews, Marriage and Murder; S.Clark Engendering Shrews, Mediaeval to Early Modern; H.S.Crocker 'He speaks very shrewishly': Apprentice-training and The Taming of the Shrew; R.Madelaine The Shrew as Editor/Editing Shrews; L.S.Marcus Putting the Silent Woman back into the Shakespearean Shrew; M.Maurer and B.Gaines Unknown Shrews: Three Transformations of The/A Shrew; H.J.Helmers 'Ye sid he taken my Counsel sir': Restoration Satire and Theatrical Authority; C.Conaway 'Darkenes was before light': Hierarchy and Duality in The Taming of A Shrew; G.Holderness The Gendered Stomach in The Taming of the Shrew; J.Purnis The Tamer Tamed, or None Shall Have Prizes: 'Equality' in Shakespeare's England; D.Wootton Afterword; A.Thompson Index

About the Author

GRAHAM HOLDERNESS is Professor of English at the University of Hertfordshire and author or editor of numerous studies in early modern and modern literature and drama. Recent books include Textual Shakespeare: Writing and the Word (2004) and Shakespeare and Venice (Ashgate, 2010). He is author of Shakespeare in Performance: The Taming of the Shrew (Manchester University Press, 1989), and editor of the Taming of A Shrew (Prentice-Hall, 1992). He is currently working on a biography of Shakespeare. DAVID WOOTTON is Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York, UK. He was was educated at Oxford and Cambridge and has held chairs in history and in politics at the University of Victoria (Canada), Brunel University, Queen Mary (University of London) and the University of York. He has published widely on Renaissance Intellectual History, particularly on atheism and on egalitarianism.

Prizes

ANNA BAYMAN Faculty of History, Oxford University, UK SANDRA CLARK Emeritus Professor of Renaissance Literature, Birkbeck, University of London UK CHARLES CONAWAY Assistant Professor of English, University of Southern Indiana, US HOLLY A. CROCKER Assistant Professor of English, University of South Carolina, US BARRY GAINES Professor of English Literature, University of New Mexico, US H.J. HELMERS English Department, University of Leiden, Netherlands GRAHAM HOLDERNESS Professor of English, University of Hertfordshire, UK RICHARD MADELEINE Associate Professor of English, University of New South Wales, Australia LEAH S. MARCUS Edwin Mims Professor of English, Vanderbilt University, US MARGARET MAURER William Henry Crawshaw Professor of Literature, Colgate University, US JAN PURNIS Department of English, University of Toronto, Canada GEORGE SOUTHCOMBE Praelector in Early Modern History, University of Oxford, UK DAVID WOOTTON Anniversary Professor of History, University of York, UK