Chapter five
The conventions of comedies, as those of
all literature are consistent with the customs of the society in which those
pieces of literature were produced. Thus, Shakespearian comedies will reflect the
society of early modern English, patriarchal and authoritarian, inhospitable to
disorder or disruption. They represent the unshakable power of husbands,
aristocrats and other dominant cultural voices. It is strange then, when we
observe Shakespeare’s alliance with a woman in her refusal to marry the man her
father has chosen for her (Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream rejects
her father’s claim to marry the man he has chosen for her, and claims to marry
the one she loves). This situation is but a reflection of the cultural anxiety
pervading this period, when notions of romantic love began to challenge the
norms of patriarchal authority in the matter of marriage27. We see
thus another recurrent element in Shakespearian comedies, strongly connected
with the role of women in his society, the parental disapproval of the one the
lover has chosen (in The Merchant of Venice this disapproval is more of
an imposing will, and Portia has to marry the one her dead father has chosen
for her, while in The Taming of the Shrew, Kate has to marry Petrucchio
by force because her father fears no one else will woo her).
Many critics have
claimed that Shakespeare sides with his young women, but in the end he marries
them to husbands whose superior power is assumed. Nonetheless, to arrive to
this desired moment, that of marriage, these women will have to disguise
themselves as men in order to acquire recognition for their intellect (which is
rather ironic, for they never really acquire recognition as women). It is a
remarkable feature of Shakespeare’s comedies his prominence given to women. It
may almost be said that whereas men dominate the tragedies and die, it is women
who dominate the comedies and live. They take control of the events, they seem
to possess not only greater intuitive awareness then men, but also more common
sense and emotional maturity.
Given the fact that in
Elizabethan theatre the female parts were played by young boys, there is no
surprise at the frequency with which these actors played the part of a woman disguised
as a young man. It has been often said that Shakespeare employed this technique
to confuse his audience even more (audience who saw a young man who played the
part of a woman who disguised herself as a man). But the employment of young
men that played women’s parts also served Shakespeare; for he was able to put
words into a woman’s mouth without them sounding outrageous as they would have
is really uttered by a woman.
Women disguising
themselves as men and deceiving men is thus a recurring element in
Shakespeare’s comedies. These women manipulate other character through their
superior knowledge and their stratagems are indispensable for the dramatic
structure, generating both complications and resolutions. Portia in The
Merchant of Venice disguises herself as a lawyer and manages to find a flaw
in the Venetian law to save Antonio. Rosalind in As You Like It is also
the young Ganymede who helps
Of course, not all of
the comedies act in this way, not all of Shakespeare’s heroines are “women on
top”, but he manages to create comic mode by temporarily placing servants over
masters (as with Christopher Sly in The Taming of the Shrew), women over
men, this way dislocating the hierarchies sanctioned by society. It is but
another form of chaos which is reestablished to order at the end. The comic
heroine, whether disguised as a man or not, acts on her behalf and also as the
agent of authority which was frequently gendered as masculine.
This might seem a trick
of the comedy, but it was not really such, given the fact that at that time it
was a woman, Queen Elizabeth I, who ruled a man’s world. Shakespeare’s comic
heroines become socially androgynous, just like the Queen. This androgyny comes
not only from their embodiment as boys-actors on the stage, but also from their
speech, from their language. All dramatic characters are made of words, but the
comic heroines assume masculinity to control the language.