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This is a fun read and describes a lot of the social "types" seen in Shakespeare's London. The thing that interested me the most was the discussion of the scold
by esloanpa 11y ago
This is a fun read and describes a lot of the social "types" seen in Shakespeare's London. The thing that interested me the most was the discussion of the scold, a figure that makes a lot of appearances in art from the time. The scold, the over-domineering woman who beat/verbally humiliated her husband, was a character that seemed to provoke a fair amount of anxiety in people during this time. An unruly woman like a scold was thought to represent a house in disorder, and was seen as the result of a husband's failure to adequately assert his masculine authority. To counter the behavior of the scold, a husband could employ a number of strategies, including the scold's bridle, which you can see here: http://bit.ly/1QTuxrU http://bit.ly/1QTuxrU and here: http://bit.ly/1PedRgu http://bit.ly/1PedRgu It's an amazing historical artifact of a time when female speech was particularly feared. The idea of a man walking his wife on a leash is particularly jarring, and I find it impossible to imagine that such things were ever actually the case...but lots of woodcuts seem to indicate it was.
Have questions about the culture of the Renaissance, or Shakespeare in general? I'd love to answer them. I'm a Shakespearean working in a SaaS company and love to talk about the wild period that his plays came from. Let's talk!
- k__ 11y agoI always find it interesting how people talk about the past, like everything has changed since then. After I went to a theater play of victorian times, everyone was shocked about the fact that a man and a woman couldn't be in one room when no one else was there if they weren't married. But a few weeks later I overheard a call of a girl sitting next to me in a train station, where she told the caller that she "didn't let her male friend drive her home from the party, last night. because no one else was driving with them and she didn't want the people to get a wrong picture so she called a taxi" I found this an interesting read too. especially the cuckold stuff. Even today it's hard for a man to let the women take charge, because society is harassing him if he does.
- esloanpa 11y agoYep. Even though we like to claim that we are far more modern and advanced than our historical predecessors, many of the same narratives and anxieties about what is or is not appropriate for men and women remain the same as in the Renaissance and even ancient Greece/Rome.
- ttctciyf 11y agoThe Taming of the Shrew riffs on a similar theme, right? I find that play fascinating, partly for the unresolved play-within-a-play setup (when the inner play ends, we never go back to the container play..) and partly for the similarity to the 1001 Nights story[1]. Any speculation about the relation between the two works? 1: https://1000into1night.wordpress.com/26-the-sleeper-and-the-waker/ https://1000into1night.wordpress.com/26-the-sleeper-and-the-...
- esloanpa 11y agoIt does! Kate is a classic shrew/scold. But what makes "Taming" really interesting to me is that Petruchio is a far greater shrew/scold than poor Kate. The play within the play angle also fascinates me. Te way it gets sort of tossed aside after the first act and never resolved leads to all sorts of questions about the writing of the play itself. Did Shakespeare intend to have this framing mechanism and then it got forgotten in the process? Is this a result of lazy editing, or no editing? Did the printers miss something? The framing play often ends up getting cut, or awkwardly forced into a resolution by directors. It's wonderfully weird. :) -emily