Shrews! Unladylike Conduct on Stage and Page in Early Modern England

Undergraduate / Graduate

By embedding a varied sample of shrew plays in early modern England's expressive environment, this class aims to identify and interrogate the 'battle of the breeches' (the fight over who, in a household, gets to wear the pants) as an engine of theatrical success. Our process has two sides to it. One is a kind of textual detective work, as we chase down the many obscure epithets, proverbs, and jokes that inform the plays that we read. The other requires imaginative enactment (though not exactly acting), as we search out the gestures and patterns of embodied life that keep the principles of precedence, dominance and supremacy at the center of early modern people's lives. While delving deep into the techniques of subordination that constitute early modern shrew-taming, we will also attend to its continued presence in the language and social scripts of the present. (Drama, Pre-1650)