INDEX
I.
INTRODUCTION
II.
THE CHARACTERS
a. Katherine (The Taming Of the Shrew)
b. Antipholus of
c. The Faeries (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
III.
CONCLUSION
IV.
WORKS
CITED
Introduction
In this paper we are going to
explain how social roles and Elizabethan society behaviour influenced and are
reflected in Shakespeare’s plays.
To do this, we are going to take
into account the characters of Katherine in The
Taming of the Shrew, Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors and the main
fairies (Oberon, Titania and Puck) in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
We have started writing this paper
with the knowledge that Shakespeare was indeed influenced by the world around
him and our primary purpose is to develop and increase this knowledge in relation
to the characters and plays above cited. The first character we are going to
explore is Katherine and her representation of a young woman fighting the
patriarchal society around her. She is followed by the analysis of Antipholus, who is intended to show men their behaviour in
society. Finally, we are going to analyse how the fairy world as a whole serves
as a escape from the hard Elizabethan times and the
way the sociopolitical background is reflected on the
three main fairies.
Probably our conclusions will be
influenced by our contemporary society but we are going to do our best to
immerse ourselves in Elizabethan times and explore the context in which
Shakespeare wrote and the social circumstances that have remained engraved in
his writings.
The
social role of Katherine in
The Taming of the
Shrew.
In The Taming of the Shrew we can observe that Katherine reflects the
transformation and rebellion of a specific social class (high-class women) in
the Elizabethan society. First of all, we can see a young girl that does not
want to be married because of money since she seeks true love; and after that,
we can see Katherine as a wife that does not want to accept total obedience to
her husband. Katherine is a contraposition of women in the society where
Shakespeare lived, where they married for money and learned to love and accept
their husbands over time. Katherine is a woman that does not want to accept her
role of passivity. As Jamie Bence
said: “the author [Shakespeare] has favored a willful woman over her submissive counterpart, validating a
woman's attempt to control her choice of partner rather than proper obedience”.
In Elizabethan times, a young woman
had little to say about who she would marry. Marriages, and most commonly those
of the high-class, were arranged. Marriages were the equivalent of an alliance
between families and women could not reject their father’s will, so Katherine
had no choice but to accept her father’s decision and live with it the rest of
her life. In those days, a woman was considered a stupid and a “shrew” if she
contradicted the decisions of her patriarchal society and if she misbehaved
like Katherine did. Katherine rebels against this stereotype by becoming a
shrew, a violent and belligerent woman. Katherine is presented here as a free
woman. She is able to speak her mind and reach her proper ideas and conclusions
so we find her totally liberated and rejecting the impositions of her father
and the impositions of her husband to make her will. Shakespeare disguises
Katherine as a shrew to give her the freedom she is not allowed by society.
Katherine is without doubt a
reflection of an unconventional kind of woman in Shakespeare’s times. She
disobeys her father and rejects her sister and her suitors in an inappropriate
language for a young woman. She is different because she knows what she wants
and she does not become submitted to the wills of male characters and society
around her. In Elizabethan times this was not the proper way of behaviour of a
young maiden, they had to be obedient and submissive first to their fathers and
then to their husbands. She knows that even she is more intelligent than men
surrounding her, she has it clear that she nor her
opinions will never be taken into account in social and family life.
Katherine is rejected by the society
around her because she does not fit the correct behaviour of a young maiden.
She is a shrew and a disobedient woman so she has no place in a society were
young women had to be educated, obedient and servant to their male familiars.
Because of that she becomes alienated in society and as a consequence she
becomes very unhappy. Her unhappiness guides her to reject her social role, so
she becomes rejected even more.
A young woman had to be
very courageous, or very foolish, to disobey her
parents' wishes. These situations of obedience or defiance occur again and
again in Shakespeare: Katherine, Juliet, Desdemona, Perdita
in The Winter's Tale–all these women
fight or flee to protect their domestic integrity. Either they disguise
themselves in order to confront men as equals and show them the error of their
ways; or without resorting to disguise they courageously exert their wills in
spite of the conventions of their time and place, as does Katherine. The result
is usually the same: the men learn a moral lesson, the problem at hand is
resolved, and order and happiness are restored. (Insights).
However, what many critics suggest
is that during the play, Katherine is presented as a shrew that confronts to
the highest point the decisions imposed on her by the patriarchal society
governing Elizabethan times but at the end of the play she makes a speech that
“apparently” shows us that she demonstrates total obedience to her husband.
From this, we can conclude that the disordered society presented at the
beginning of the play is totally restored by the end, when everything becomes
rearranged in the way it should be and characters finally reach happiness.
Katherine could be seen as a shrew that has been domesticated by the
Elizabethan society and a woman that has accepted her role, or else, and my
favourite position, a woman so intelligent she is able to discover that if she
demonstrates she has been tamed and accepts the her role in her society she
will be happier and she will be able to obtain her desires more easily. We can
conclude that “we cannot know whether or not Kate has relinquished her shrewish
nature for that of a good Elizabethan wife, or merely mastered it for a time in
favour of her shrew side” (Joanne Danford-Cordingley).
There is no doubt that what
Shakespeare is doing in The Taming of the
Shrew is to reflect the patriarchal approach to marriage, the way in which
people got married and the process they had to endure until they at least
became happy. Katherine is presented as a shrew in front of her husband and
finally accepting her role of wife, but she does not do that because of the
impositions of society but because she is in live with her husband. Petruccio
is in love with her and he would give his life for her, so becoming a good wife
is Katherine’s present to her husband. We are not presented a materialistic
marriage but a lovely one, in contrast to the practices of that time.
In the idealized picture of society
which is usually found on stage at the conclusion of Shakespeare's comedies,
men and women are in their respective place, collaborating to create harmony
between them. As long as the men behave as they should, fulfilling their duties
and acting with honour and intelligence, Shakespeare seems to say that women should
be supportive and loyal. When a man needs a lesson, a wise and courageous woman
will teach him one. (Inights)
We
can observe that the line dividing the different roles occupied by the
characters (and the roles they should occupy according to the society) is fully
experimented and overridden throughout all the play. Shakespeare is presenting
a society turned upside-down by Katherine’s behaviour that finally returns to
social normality making us thinking if the taming and the acceptance of roles
has finally concluded or on the contrary it is assumed and fought in other
ways, not from an active position but from a passive one. Joanne Danford-Cordingley said that “the fun and comedy of the
play lies in the ambiguity and confusion created by erasing any sharp
delineation of gender and role”.
We can conclude among all the
sources cited and visited that the opinions about Katherine are varied and
often they lead to more questions than answers. We have seen that Katherine is
firstly presented as a shrew and a disobedient young woman that contradicts the
social behaviour of her time where women had to be submissive to father/husband
wills. At the end of the play we are presented a Katherine totally submissive
in her speech in front of the other women that appear in the play. These women
were firstly presented as submissive ones but when they marry they become the
shrews of the play, the process contrary to that of Katherine. As we were
saying, this last Katherine can be interpreted in different ways according to
the point of view we want to transmit. If we see her speech as an ironic one,
she has not accepted her role of obedient wife but on the contrary she has
discovered a different way of fighting the society that wants to control her.
From another point of view, we can also conclude that Katherine has finally
accepted her role of an obedient wife, totally faithful to her husband, as an
Elizabethan woman would do. Presenting things like this, we leave the
conclusion open to our readers, we invite them to read the play and draw their
proper opinions on if the taming has been finally completed or not.
Antipholus of
The
Comedy of Errors.
Antipholus of Syracuse could represent a
high-middle class man of the Elizabethan society.
The story, located in the far,
classic
As the son of a merchant, Antipholus of Syracuse could be either a simple citizen, a
member of the bourgeoisie or even a gentlemen. In the
Elizabethan society, following William Harrison: “Citizens and burgesses have
next place to gentlemen [...] In this place also are
our merchants to be installed as amongst the citizens (although they often
change estate with gentlemen, as gentlemen do with them, by a mutual conversion
of the one into the other), whose number is so increased in these our days[1]”.
Once we know, more or less, the social status that this character is
representing, we can investigate the way he behaves according to his social
position.
The first thing we are acquainted of
is that Antipholus has a servant – Dromio- , and that he is allowed to beat him any time he
wants, as we can see, for example, in 1.2. 92-93 (although
this time that is not his Dromio), 2.2. 23-24, etc.
But, why does Antipholus beat his servant? Nowadays,
this behaviour of the master towards the servant would be highly criticised and
punished by law but obviously at that time it was not so. As some critics say,
“The best servant is a little bit psychic. He is there when you need him but
never hovers” (Elizabethan) so these passages of the play might be better
understood to be a funny feature of the performance of the comedy and have
nothing to do with Antipholus’ social status or
education. However, if we look at the educational system in Shakespeare’s time,
when “The main purpose of education was to teach children appropriate behaviour
for their social class and to make them useful members of society” (ISE), we
also find that “Discipline was strict, and often involved beatings” (ISE). So
here we could even see – from a very critic and cynical point of view – a sort
of reflection of that educational system.
Antipholus of
Syracuse is an educated man and, as I said in my first individual paper of this
subject - which dealt with the problem of identity – quoting the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, ‘In Elizabethan time, “The educated Englishman was no longer a cleric but a J.P. or
M.P. (justice of the peace or member of Parliament), a merchant or a landed
gentleman who for the first time was able to express his economic, political,
and religious dreams and grievances in terms of abstract principles that were
capable of galvanizing people into religious and political parties”
(Encyclopaedia Britannica). So the man had a definite role in society, knew
more about the world and about himself ’, and that is exactly what happens with
this character.
Although Shakespeare does not fill Antipholus of Syracuse with long speeches – a more common
feature of tragedies -, he shows his education through his vocabulary,
especially in his soliloquy of 1.2. 33-40, and when he is showing Luciana that
he loves her in 3.2. 60-64.
Furthermore, we need to know how a
man of his class behaves with a woman. We must pay attention to the fact that
“The concept of equality between the sexes would have seemed very foreign to
most in Shakespeare's day:” (ISE). So we can understand how Antipholus
of Syracuse acts towards Adriana. She, who really believes that the man she is
talking to in 2.2. 113 is her husband, will be very
delighted to please Antipholus and he, not really
understanding if that is a dream or a nightmare, following her, acts as a
responsible man, as the head of the family. Otherwise, if both would have acted
as having the same responsibilities, rights and duties, the performance would
have seemed completely unreal to the Elizabethan audience and the play would
have been a disaster.
Then we can conclude that
Shakespeare uses this character, Antipholus of
Syracuse, to unconsciously - or indirectly - show to the male audience how
their everyday acting was.
The
Fairies in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
In the case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, noting the political tensions and social
background in its contextual history deepens the understanding of the play.
The very title of the play carries a
reference to an important holiday for Elizabethans, a magical festivity during
which rites of witchcraft and amusement were performed (Astrana,
61). Throughout the text Shakespeare makes reference not only to Midsummer Eve
and
Shakespeare’s 16th-century
One of those changes had to do with
the beliefs about the nature of the supernatural. The existence of fairies and
witches, previously ignored or just denied by Catholicism since they were pagan
figures, became a matter of real debate (Paster &
Howard 7). In this context of controversy about the supernatural, people
question what is possible or impossible and the causes of things. A Midsummer Night’s Dream reflects this
re-examination by presenting us a magic world: the woods, a place dwelled by
fairies and where everything seems possible, in contrast to the reality
represented by the city of
The fairies do not act simply as a
representation of a “dream world”, as they reflect many of the issues of the
time or allude to historical happenings in the human world. For instance, Titania situates the real time and space of the writing by
mentioning the wet summers, bad air and poor harvests of the mid-1590s
(2.1.87-95), which actually happened not just in
“Three wet summers in
succession caused disastrous grain harvests which sent food prices skyrocketing
and created inflation—with speculation and profit for some, grain merchants in particular,
and disaster for many of the artisan class, whose buying power decreased
drastically” (Camp 37).
The amusing side of these facts is
that Shakespeare talks about them as if these calamities had been caused by Titania and Oberon’s marital quarrel:
“No night is now with
hymn or carol blest:
Therefore the moon, the
governess of floods,
Pale in her anger,
washes all the air,
That
rheumatic diseases
do abound: 105
And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter
[...]” (2.1.102-07)
According to Paster
and Howard, the sense of crisis hung over the last decade of the sixteenth
century. For Europeans living in those years the 1590s seem to have been a
terrible time, with political disorder, religious warfare, inflation,
collapse of the agricultural economy, subsistence and mortality crises and
recurrent epidemics of plague (Paster & Howard 8).
The combination of these factors would have created a general sense of crisis,
with violence and crime in the city, which surely influenced the writing of A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the hands
of Shakespeare the forest becomes a magical and mysterious world where
characters try to run away from their problems. According to Schneider, the
woods symbolize an escape from the hard working-class life from the city –an
impression shared by Herbert, who sees them as a temporary escape from the
workaday world (Herbert 27), although Puck, one of Oberon’s mischievous fairies,
also acts as “a fairy-world evocation of working-class status” (Schneider 192),
so reality is once again mirrored in this magical microcosm.
Puck, or Robin Goodfellow,
was actually a different kind of fairy. A puck was, in medieval English folklore,
an evil spirit or a demon that was considered in Elizabethan lore a mischievous,
brownielike fairy (Britannica, “Puck”). For a Renaissance audience, more interested than
ever in rationality (Britannica, “Renaissance”), a fairy like Puck and his
magic would have represented irrationality, one of the most noticeable themes
in the play –Puck himself is the one who creates the necessary twist to show
the irrationality of human love.
We have mentioned Puck’s lower
status within the faeries’ world, but it is not the only reference to class in
Elizabethan times. One of the most noticeable ways in which Shakespeare
addresses the sociocultural context of early modern
The Elizabethan government tried to
repress traditional amateur forms of popular entertainment in favour of
professional theatre, which seems to have seen by the crown as “potentially if
indirectly useful, both as an instrument for the aggrandisement of the dynastic
nation state and for the supervision and diversion of its subjects” (Montrose,
“Shadows” 72). However, when Puck addresses his master as “King of shadows”
(3.2.347), Oberon becomes the principal player in the action, and the only who
can manipulate Titania –who is, for her part, the one
who manipulates Bottom, an artisan and an amateur actor. Montrose concludes
that the social reality of the Elizabethan players’ dependency on Queen
Elizabeth “is inscribed within the imaginative reality of a player-dramatist's control
over the Faery Queen” (Montrose, “Shadows” 82), which
goes to show that even a queen can be subordinated to a male authority (Pearson
29).
Finally, after the conflicts and
confusion caused by Puck’s mistakes and Oberon’s tricks on Titania
are resolved, the play arrives to a satisfactory conclusion. The characters
that once fled from the constraints of the city into the woods are “purified”
by the solstice ritual of the Midsummer Night and integrated again into the
social order. As Anca Vlasopolos
points out, at the end of the play the Elizabethan audience may have had the
impression that one of Shakespeare’s messages is that “the cyclical generative
needs of the natural world triumph over the initial societal barriers” (Vlasopolos 21).
Conclusion
From the analysis of these
characters our main conclusion is that society’s influence is present
everywhere in Shakespeare plays. In one way or another, society reflections are
developed in his plays sometimes as a primary theme and others as a secondary
one, but they are always present.
Shakespeare demonstrates once again why
he is considered the best playwright in history. He is not only able to write
plays in order to entertain audiences but also to teach them. By portraying society
in his plays he is telling people what they do wrong and showing them the
consequences of their behaviour, right or wrong. He does that in a subtle
manner because in Elizabethan times theatre was
controlled and paid by the rich strata who did not want their situation to change
because of a rebellion or a new way of thinking.
Our purpose in this paper was to
discover themes and examples which Shakespeare provided hidden in his
characters and which were a way to teach, exemplify or even criticise existing
social roles, and we humbly think that we have accomplished this task.
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Antonio Jódar
Marín
Raquel Jordà Breso
Esther Martínez Berti
REPRESENTING ELIZABETHAN
TIMES
the influence of context in
three shakespeare’s plays
Antonio Jódar
Marín
Raquel Jordá Breso
Esther Martínez Berti
REPRESENTING ELIZABETHAN
TIMES
the influence of context in
three shakespeare’s plays
[1] From “Holinshed's Chronicles. The modernization of the
spelling, etc., follows that of Mr. L. Withington, whose notes are signed W.”
(William Harrison).