SECOND INDIVIDUAL PAPER:

THE PURSUIT OF LOVE AND BENEFIT IN SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES

 

Subject : 14159 Curso Monográfico de Literatura Inglesa Grupo B

 

Student´s name : Más Agrás, Julia

 

Title of the paper : Shakespeare’s comedies

 

Author or topic : Shakespeare, William

 

 

Abstract :

          Second Individual Paper: The pursuit of love and benefit in Shakespeare’s comedies.

 

                                                                                            

 

PRESENTATION elmerchantplot05

 

The aim of this essay is to provide a thorough analysis of a common theme dealt in four different Shakespeare’s comedies: the pursuit of love. The four plays have been chosen from the six which have been studied in class: The Taming of the Shrew (1594), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595-1596), The Merchant of Venice (1596-1597) and Twelfth Night (1601).

 

In order to provide a full study of it, this paper considers four main aspects of the aforementioned issue:

          Introduction. It presents briefly the theme of the paper as well as its origins, considering the method chosen to write the present essay.

          The pursuit of benefit. Through three of the most important reasons of this pursuit, the four comedies are compared proving the causes of this peculiar persecution of the Elizabethan time.

          The pursuit of love. This part studies each play separately analysing the actions and characters which create this pursuit of love.

          Conclusion. It sums up the main ideas developed throughout the essay

 

It is important to note the fact that all the extracts mentioned through this essay follow the version of Greenblatt, Stephen. The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1997. Nevertheless, the ideas used to develop this paper are shown through footnotes , although the last part of the essay, “Bibliography”, provides full information about all the sources used.

 

 

1. INTRODUCTION

 

Through some of William Shakespeare’s comedies we may see a common theme which is repeated several times: the pursuit of an impossible love. This issue can be rooted in the Petrarchian tradition in which an idealised woman was difficult to win.

Although in some of Shakespeare’s plays we find a non- corresponding love, as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Demetrius and Hermia, the vast majority of the cases this love is achieved and marriage shows it.

Nevertheless, this love pursuit sometimes is hidden under a selfish reason which has nothing to do with the idea of love, but with a political, social or economic interest. Thus, both love and benefit are closely linked since, as some plays show us, there is no existence of love without any kind of benefit. As a consequence, the idea of real love is doubtful in Shakespeare’s mind.

 

 

 

2. PURSUIT OF BENEFIT

 

In order to understand the reasons why these love pursuits occurred in Elizabethan time we should consider some of the causes which explain these pursuits. Therefore, the contrast between the four plays to study demonstrates the pursuit for benefit rather than for love.

 

 

        Social status interest

This aspect is crucial in the convenience of a marriage. When marrying, a person can increase enormously the status and consequently the wealth, too.

 

The best example to illustrate this is represented in the comedy The Taming of the Shrew. Lucentio’s role as a Latin master is a temporary stratagem, a part his education allows him to play to perfection but that his social rank permits him to cast aside when he has won his bride. Hortensio, for example, one of Bianca’s suitors who eventually marries a wealthy widow, decides to transform himself after Petruccio and to take lessons from him of how to tame a wife. By contrast, a wilful temporary woman such as Katherine obtains derision and condemnation as a shrew . Consequently, when Petruccio gets married to Katherine his social status increases due to the importance of his wife’s family in society.

 

In the same sense, we also find this status interest in the case of Malvolio in Twelfth Night. He dreams with the fantasy of winning the hand of one of the noble and wealthy aristocrats who reign over the social world of the play. The beautiful heiress Olivia, mistress of a great house, is a glittering prize that lures not only Malvolio but also Sir Andrew and the Duke Orsino. In falling in love with the Duke’s graceful messenger, Cesario, Olivia makes clear the kind of relationship that has thought Malvolio’s social climbing imagination . 

 

Nevertheless, in the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream the social status is considered as a cause of unhappiness, since an implausible dream for any Elizabethan member of the middle or upper classes, is brought about by a further plot device: the escape from the court or city to the green world or the forest . Moreover, the social status of Demetrius determines Egeus’ choice as the husband for his daughter Hermia. We can see this when Lysander claims for his rank in order to obtain Egeus consent for marrying to Hermia.

LYSANDER (to Theseus):

I am, my lord, as well derived as he,

As well possessed. My love is more than his,

My fortunes every way as fairly ranked,

If not with vantage, as Demetrius;

And- which is more than all these boasts can be-

I am beloved of beauteous Hermia. […]

                                              (1.1.99-104)

As a result of this, marriages at this time were concerned more as a benefit pursuit than as a love concept, on the grounds that social status could become higher in the marital union.

 

 

        Economical benefit

As a matter of fact, the social interest previously explained is closely connected to the economic benefit that marriages of the time used to contain. Marriage is a hybrid social relation; associated with love and with the reproduction of living organisms, it is simultaneously a property relation, involving the economic alliance of individuals and families.

 

Analysing the example of Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice, his courtship of Portia is doubly motivated: he loves her but he also needs her money. The language he uses to seduce her, even at its most generous and disinterested, is full of the metaphors of commerce and exchange. For instance:

BASSANIO: […] Yet look how far

The substance of my praise doth wrong this shadow

In underprizing it, so far this shadow

Doth limp behind the substance. Here’s the scroll,

The continent and summary of my fortune.

(3.2.126-130)

According to Greenblatt , although Antonio protests against thinking of friendship as an economic transaction, it is not difficult to consider his generosity as an attempt to buy Bassanio’s love. So, although the Christians attempt to differentiate spiritual values from economic ones, those values continually result to be intimately intertwined. However, other critics claim that even if Antonio and Portia reflect the idea that money do not correspond to happiness, both characters are also interested in wealth. In fact, Antonio’s pursuit of foreign markets is a sign of it, and Portia newly won in the casket stratagem, declares to Bassanio:

PORTIA: […] I would be trebled twenty times myself,

               A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times                       

              More rich, that only to stand high in your account

               I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,

              Exceed account. […]

                    (3.2.153–157)

Then, when the lady learns of Antonio’s peril at the hands of Shylock, Portia warns her new husband to double payment of the bond, “treble that, / Before a friend of this description / Shall lose a hair through Bassanio’s fault” (3.2.298–301). As interest compounds, this is mainly done by love .

 

Wealth is also a crucial factor in the plot of The Taming of the Shrew. For despite his speeches about the necessity for suitors to gain his daughters’ love, Baptista is willing to give them to their wealthier wooers.

BAPTISTA: After my death the one half of my lands,

And in possessions twenty thousand crowns.

PETRUCCIO: And for that dowry I’ll assure her of

Her widowhood, be it that she survive me,

In all my lands and leases whatsoever.

Let specialties be therefore drawn between us,

That covenants may be kept on either hand.

(2.1.119-125)

Bianca’s suitors testify to the number of ships they have at sea and to the luxury goods and property they have acquired through their ventures. Hence, in this world of prosperous urban merchants, Baptista can indulge his daughters with some training in the arts even though he ultimately has less luck with his supposedly compliant daughter, Bianca .

 

 

        Imposition of a husband

In Elizabethan time, women could not choose their husbands and their opinion was insignificant in this as in many other matters. As we have mentioned before, their marriages were merely arranged for political, economic, or social benefit rather than from personal attachment.

 

The story of Bianca and Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew is the best example which illustrates it. Baptista arranges the marriage between Katherine and Petruccio, after assuring himself of the fortune of Petruccio. Thus, Katherine’s opinion about marrying with him does not matter since it is her father who decides the men who will stay with her.

KATHERINE: Call you me daughter? Now I promise you

You have showed a tender fatherly regard,

To wish me wed to one half-lunatic,

A madcap ruffian and a swearing Jack,

That thinks with oaths to face the matter out.

(2.1.277-281)

Nevertheless, it is Bianca who disobeys her father and gets married to Lucentio without asking permission to Baptista. Once her father is aware of Lucentio’s nobility, he accepts their love.

BAPTISTA: But do you hear, sir, have you married my daughter

Without asking my good will?

(5.2.114-115)

 

This disobeying also appears in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, on the grounds that Hermia and Lysander decide to escape to the forest due to the imposition of Hermia’s father, Egeus, of getting her married to Demetrius.

HERMIA: […] He no more shall see my face.

Lysander and myself will fly this place.

Before the time I did Lysander see

Seemed Athens as a paradise to me.

O then, what graces in my love do dwell,

That he hath turned a heaven unto a hell?

(1.1.202-207)

Hence, once again this behaviour is finally well received by her father, although in the Elizabethan world, if they did not obey their male ancestors they were beaten to submission and disobedience was seen as a crime against their religion. Consequently, they could never inherit any title from their families since it always passed from father to son or brother to brother. However, the only exception was the monarchy .

 

Finally, in The Merchant of Venice we also see this unfaithful attitude through the character of Jessica. This young lady, as well as Hermia in the previous play, defies her father who gives her orders for escaping with his loved Lorenzo.

JESSICA: […] But though I am a daughter to his blood,

I am not to his manners. O Lorenzo,

If thou keep promise I shall end this strife,

Become a Christian and thy loving wife.

(2.3.17-20)

However, Portia’s obedience to her dead father’s apparently irrational plans for her is quite remarkable in comedy, for comic heroines more often, like Jessica, defy their fathers than conscientiously follow their orders .

PORTIA: […] But if my father had not scanted me,

And hedged me by his wit to yield myself

His wife who wins me by that means I told you,

Yourself, renowed Prince, then stood as fair

As any comer I have looked on yet

For my affection.

(2.1.17-22)

 

 

 

3. PURSUIT OF LOVE

 

Through in depth study of four of Shakespeare’s comedies, we can assume that the methods used to persuade the loved person and the pursuit of this love have differing results. Due to this diversity, it is convenient to study each play considering this persecution through different characters.

 

 

        The Merchant of Venice.

In The Merchant of Venice Portia’s love is continuously desired by her suitors, and in order to choose one of them she decides to play them a trick making them choose one of three caskets she provides.

Thus, although we can only appreciate three of these men (Morocco, Aragon and Bassanio), we assume there is a long list of suitors.

PORTIA: In terms of choice I am not solely led

By nice direction of a maiden’s eyes.

Besides, the lott’ry of my destiny

Bars me the right of voluntary choosing.

But if my father had not scanted me,

And hedged me by his wit to yield myself

His wife who wins me by that means I told you,

Yourself, renowned Prince, then stood as fair

As any comer I have looked on yet

For my affection.

(2.1.13-22)

Moreover, the great number of lovers that Portia conveys is also shown in the promise that the gold casket contains, “Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire” (2.7.5), a claim that the Morocco Prince answers:

MOROCCO: […] “Why, that’s the lady! All the world desires her.

From the four corners of the earth they come

To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint.

(2.7.38-40)

However, the behaviour that Aragon adopts towards this promise is different to that of Morocco:

ARAGON: […] “What many men desire”- that “many may be [meant

By the fool multitude, that choose by show,

Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach,

Which pries not to th’interior but, like the martlet,

Builds in the weather on the outward wall

Even in the force and road of casualty.

                                 (2.9.24-29)

Nevertheless, both Aragon and Morocco fail in their attempt to woo Portia. Indeed, according to Greenblatt, “these failures demonstrate that it is possible to find a plausible reason for choosing any one of the three caskets”. However, when Bassanio makes his choice, we see how the test works.

BASSANIO: […] Look on beauty

And you shall see ‘tis purchased by the weight,

Which therein works a miracle in nature,

Making them lightest that wear most of it.

                                      (3.2.88-91)

Bassanio does not believe that because Portia is lovely, she must be unchaste. Thus, although every suitor gets the same chance, the casket test seems to be fair. In this case, the person best suited to be Portia’s husband is one who, by Christian standards, knows the limitations and right use of wealth. This knowledge would enable him to value characteristics in his wife- virtue, intelligence and beauty- that make her precious in more than monetary ways. 

 

 

        Twelfth Night

The comedy Twelfth Night presents a double pursuit of love represented by the passionate triangle between Olivia, Viola and Orsino. This persecution of a non- corresponding love shows the difficulty of winning the desired person. Thus, on the one hand we see how Viola accepts carrying Orsino’s messages to Olivia in order to be closer of his loved one Orsino. On the other hand, the interest that Olivia shows by watching Cesario and even by giving him the ring, explains her love towards Viola. Nevertheless, Orsino’s pursuit of Olivia’s love is the most remarkable, since his continuous love messages show his love, even if he needs the music to inspire himself, as we see at the beginning of the play:

ORSINO: If music be the food of love, play on,

Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken and so die.

(1.1.1-3)

 

Orsino’s great love for Olivia is a passion that is reiterated through virtually the entire play. The revelation at the play’s climax, “One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons!” (5.1.208), resolves all the relationships. However, after marrying, Orsino then will continue in a sense to “love” Olivia but only through the relationship formed by the linked twins: a strangely appropriate fate .

 

Nevertheless, according to the website http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-152,pageNum-41.html, Olivia is more interested in the pursuit of her love for Cesario, than is Duke Orsino in his pursuit of Olivia. Although the lady does not love the Duke, she recognizes some of his good qualities and acknowledges them. Consequently, it is part of the comedy that the lady who has no sympathy for the duke falls in love with a young girl disguised as a young boy. In fact, when she discovers that she has actually married young Sebastian, Viola's twin, she quickly transfers her love to him, just as Duke Orsino does to Viola.

 

 

        A Midsummer Night’s Dream

According to Greenblatt, both critics and directors have given different opinions to the settling of affairs which the four young lovers of the comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream display. This darkness includes emotional violence and masochism, the betrayal of friendship and the radical desire. So, sexual politics become evident in the play.

 

As we will see in the next subpart of this essay, in the comedy The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare also begins his reflection on the struggle between men and women, a struggle frequently focused on the male desire to dominate and subdue the female .

Firstly, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, uses tension with the fairies in an open conflict and leads to Oberon’s plot to humiliate Titania.

OBERON: How canst thou thus for shame, Titania,

Glance at my credit with Hyppolita,

Knowing I know thy love to Theseus?

Didst not thou lead him through the glimmering night

From Perigouna whom he ravished,

And make him with fair Aegles break his faith,

With Ariadne and Atiopa?

(2.1.74-76)

Secondly, in the human world of the play, this tension is less immediately apparent, but in the first scene Theseus alludes to his military conquest of the Amazon queen Hippolyta, and there are other brief glimpses of cruelty, indifference, and rage.

THESEUS […]: Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword,

And won thy love doing thee injuries.

But I will wed thee in another key-

With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.

(1.1.16-20)

Thirdly, the brutal insults hurled at Herrmia by the young man who had loved her and with whom she had escaped, might also seem extremely painful, but the language in which these insults are expressed distances audiences from the pain and generates laughter. Consequently, Helena represents a character completely overwhelmed by love; she has lost her self-respect in her pursuit of Demetrius. For instance, one of Helena’s attempts in winning Demetrius’ love consists of degrading herself as being his dog in order to catch his attention.  However, this neither works.

HELENA: […] What worser place can I beg in you love-

And yet a place of high respect with me-

Than to be usèd as you use you dog?

                                 (2.1.208-210)

Even his hardest statements have no influence on Helena’s obsessive affection. This interaction between Demetrius and Helena highlights the often violent subtext of this play, and suggests that strong emotions such as love often feed into other, less desirable but equally strong behaviours, like violence. Their interaction has a violent edge, as Demetrius vows he will leave her to the mercy of wild beasts or even potentially rape her if she does not leave him alone.

DEMETRIUS: I will not stay thy questions. Let me go;

Or if thou follow me, do not believe

But I shall do thee mischief in the wood.

(2.1.235-237).

However Helena’s love is so deep that she betrays her friend Hermia by telling the secret of the two lovers (Hermia and Lisander) to Demetrius, in order to get his love. She thinks that by informing Demetrius about this, he would repect her and would reconsider his love towards her.

HELENA: […] I will go tell him of fair Hermia’s fight.

Then to the wood will he tomorrow night

Pursue her, and for this intelligence

If I have thanks it is a dear expense.

But herein mean I to enrich my pain,

To have his sight thither and back again.

                                  (1.1.246-251)

All of these examples suggest male creatures violating a female, often sexually. Helena seems aware of her odd position in the relationship with her beloved. She argues that women aren’t allowed to fight for love in the same way men do, so her pursuit of Demetrius makes him hate her, perhaps because it displays an unfeminine aggressiveness .

 

As a consequence, desires in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are intense and irrational. The speed with which desire can be detached from one object and attached to another, does not diminish the need for passion, as the lovers are convinced at every moment that their choices are irrefutably rational and irresistibly compelling. However there is no security in these choices, and the play is repeatedly involving a fear of abandonment. The emblem of a dangerously mobile desire is the fairies’ juice. No human being in the play experiences a purely abstract, objectless desire .

 

 

        The Taming of the Shrew

This play shows one of the most evident pursuits of love and benefit through both sisters, Katherine and Bianca. Their suitors, and even Katherine herself, manage to tame themselves in order to acquire their suitor’s attention and desire.

 

On the one hand, in the pursuit of Bianca, several of her suitors disguise themselves. Firstly, Hortensio, poses as a teacher of music and mathematics. His quick and simple rejection of his beloved Bianca may seem to us as curious, but his action contributes to Shakespeare’s predominate themes of courtship and marriage. Instead of gracefully removing himself from the love triangle, Hortensio answers with a vengeance. He is quick to curse Bianca, but the joke really is on him, as the audience is well aware .

HORTENSIO: […] Signor Lucentio,

Here is my hand, and here I firmly vow

Never to woo her more, but do forswear her

As one unworthy all the former favours

That I have fondly flattered her withal.

(4.2.22-26)

Secondly, another character who plays a common disguised man in society is Lucentio, a young man from Pisa, who will go to all extremes to obtain Bianca’s love. He hides himself behind Cambio, a language instructor. Lucentio orders his servant, Tranio, to act as a suitor in pursuit of Bianca as well to distract the attention of the other suitors in order to give Lucentio a chance to obtain Bianca’s love. In fact, he declares to Tranio, “If thou ask me why, sufficeth my reasons are both good and weighty” (1.1.250-253).  Thus, he plays a game of trickery and takes on a false identity to benefit his own desire of gaining Bianca .

Thridly, Lucentio’s servant, Tranio, assumes his master’s identity and in that disguises poses as yet another of Bianca’s  possible admirers. Love clearly makes men willing to transform themselves, though in this plot there is a startling reversibility to these changes of identity. When the disguised gentlemen get tired at acting as scholars-for-hire, they reclaim their houses, fortunes, and social positions and demote their servants.

Consequently, while Tranio uses lofty language to contribute to the illusion of nobility, Lucentio uses lofty Latin words to hide in the truth of his pursuit of Bianca. Thus, the tension between superficial education and desire is emphasized. According to the webpage http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/shrew/section4.html:

“The Latin passage that Lucentio pretends to translate for Bianca is fitting, as it describes Priam’s palace, thus evoking several Classical images of lust. The Trojan War began with Paris’s abduction of Helen - just as Lucentio intends to "abduct" Bianca. Also, that war was won with the Trojan Horse; Lucentio is, in his way, a Trojan Horse wheeled into the enemy's gates under the guise of a gift. Moreover, the name "Priam" evokes phallic imagery, as the Greek god of fertility was called Priapus”.

Consequently, Lucentio is able to use legitimate figures and allusions to Greek history in order to woo Bianca. In his way, Lucentio is not following Tranio's advice at the play's opening since he is mixing pleasure with academics, or, as Tranio put it, mixing Ovid with Aristotle.

Thus, Hortensio is not as successful as Lucentio in balancing his roles as teacher and wooer. Where Lucentio speaks his words of love to Bianca, Hortensio writes his down; where Lucentio reveals himself for who he truly is, Hortensio never does. Bianca's hint to Lucentio shows that his way of seducing is the best since she offers no such consolation to Hortensio.

 

On the other hand, to teach Katherine she must obey him, Petruccio assumes the role of taming master, a role in which he appears at his own wedding in strange clothes and, during a stay at his country house, turns the world on its head by denying Kate sleep, food, and any exercise of her own will. But if his servant Grumio is to be believed, this role may not be so out of character for Petruccio. Kate can be as eloquent as anyone but because of her gender her verbal independence is read by her father and suitors as a sign that she needs taming, that she is not properly deferential to masculine authority. Consequently, Petruccio aims to tame Kate’s impudent tongue by aggressive use of his own. A clear sign that he has succeeded occurs when, at her husband’s behquest, Kate calls the sun the moon.

KATHERINE: Then God be blessed, it is the blessed sun,

But sun it is not when you say it is not,

What you will have it named, even that it is,

And so it shall be still for Katherine.

(4.6.19-23)

Moreover, Petruccio is distinguished in many other ways from the other Italian suitors. He has, for example, a sullen and quarrelsome servant, who helps Lucentio win Bianca and, in fact, seems to do most of his master’s thinking and plotting for him. Moreover, while Hortensio, Gremio and Lucentio woo Bianca with song and poetry, Petruccio makes her fall in love by contradicting her every word and such taming manages to pervade both the Induction and the Petruccio scenes. Indeed, according to Greenblatt:

 “Petruccio repeatedly compares the taming of a wife to the transformation of a wild hawk into a docile hunting falcon. Petruccio is in many ways an Englishman, and the play implicitly suggest that unlike his Italian counterpart, the true Englishman defines his manhood through the firm and cruel mastery of wife and servant. By contrast, the less virile Lucentio takes direction from his servant, supplicates his betrothed on bended knee, and ends up with a wife he cannot master” .

 

Suitors of the younger sister, who tried to put an end to the sister’s rivalry, help in finding a love for Katherine. Gremio and Hortensio bear the brunt of Petruccio's courting of Katherine while Lucentio and his servant Tranio help him to come into Baptista house. Hence, this follows a continuous pursuit of love. Thus, as clueless of the entire scheme, it is Baptista whom the suitors have tricked.

Consequently, as the webpage http://mattviews.blogspot.com/2006/04/36-taming-of-shrew-william-shakespeare.html agrees, The Taming of the Shrew maintains all the elements of the comedies owing to the intriguing trickery with which characters rival each other for courtship. Just as suspenseful and entertaining is Petruccio's calculated, punctilious campaign to tame his wife. His secret of seduction is psychological, although persuasive words carefully planned for each step accompany his actions. The essential moment flourishes in the scenes in which Petruchio abuses his servants and tailor. His being abusive, tyrannical, violent, and capricious nature functions as a caricature of Katherine through an exaggerated parody of her wild behaviour.

 

 

4. CONCLUSION

The tireless and intense pursuit of a lover to win his loved attention results to be a beneficial affair which interests not only both lovers but also people surrounding them, especially their families.

As we have seen, this pursuit is differently solved according to the four plays; either by hiding their identity to affect other character’s personality, such is the case of Viola or Lucentio; or by admiring visit and playing trickery that both Aragon and Morocco lived in Portia’s house.

It is also important to note the fact that in every situation, we discover that both love and benefit are closely connected, and none of them can exist without the other.

 

 

In conclusion, this insatiable fight against the difficult feeling of love is achieved in the four comedies and, as it is characteristically of this genre, with a happy ending: the marriage between the two lovers.

 

 

 

 

 

            BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 

Books:

 

▪Greenblatt, Stephen.The Norton Shakespeare: "Twelfth Night". Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997 (pages 1764-1765).

 

▪Greenblatt, Stephen.The Norton Shakespeare: "The Taming of the Shrew". Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997 (pages 133-139).

 

▪Greenblatt, Stephen.The Norton Shakespeare: "The Merchant of Venice". Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997 (pages 1086-1087).

 

▪Greenblatt, Stephen.The Norton Shakespeare: "A Midsummer Night Dream". Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1997 (pages 808-810).

 

 

Electronic sources:

 

-          Websites:

 

          A Guy’s Moleskine Notebook. <http://mattviews.blogspot.com/2006/04/36-taming-of-shrew-william-shakespeare.html>

      Consultation Day: 30th December 2006

 

          BBC Homepage. English Literature. The Merchant of Venice. http://images.google.es/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bbc.co.uk

      Consultation Day: 7th January 2007

 

          Cliff Notes. Character Analyses: Olivia. <http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-152,pageNum-41.html>

       Webmaster: Copyright © 2000-2007 by Wiley Publishing, Inc. All rights  reserved.

       Consultation Day: 5th January

 

          Cliff Notes. A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare- Summaries and Commentaries. <http://www.education.yahoo.com/homework_help/cliffsnotes/a_midsummer_nights_dream/23.html>.

      Webmaster: Copyright © 2000-2005 by Wiley Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. All Rights Reserved

      Consultation Day: 4th January 2007

 

          Cliff Notes. The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. Summaries and Commentaries. <http://education.yahoo.com/homework_help/cliffsnotes/the_taming_of_the_shrew/36.html>.

      Webmaster: CliffsNotes. Copyright © 2000-2005 by Wiley Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

      Consultation Day: 4th January 2007

 

          Flachmann, Michael. My Daughter, My Ducats: Love and Money in The Merchant of Venice <http://www.bard.org/education/resources/shakespeare/merchantdaughter.html>. Webmaster: Copyright © 2006 Utah Shakespearean Festival

      Consultation Day: 3rd January 2007

 

          GradeSaver. ClassicNote: The Taming of the Shrew Study Guide. <http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/shrew/section4.html>.

      Webmaster: Copyright (C) 1999-2007 GradeSaver LLC.

      Consultation Day: 4th January 2007

 

          The Nets biggest free essays library. <http://www.free-essays.us/dbase/d9/ykd200.shtml>

      Consultation Day: 30th December 2006

 

 

 

 

Auto-evaluation: I think I should obtain a good mark on the grounds that I studied the comedies very hard in order to develop very complete essays. 

 

 

 

 

Academic year 2006/2007

© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López

© Julia Más Agrás

jumasa@alumni.uv.es

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Universitat de València Press