Gender and Power in Shrew-Taming Narratives, 1500-1700 (Electronic book text)

This is the first book to address and explore the various dramatic, poetic and narrative versions of the popular 'taming of the shrew' story, from the Middle Ages to the Restoration, in the light of new historical work on the place of early modern women in society.
The contributors address the historical interrelationships of key theatrical texts such as the anonymous The Taming of A Shrew, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, John Fletcher's The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed and John Lacey's Sauny the Scot. The essays in this volume subsume and extend the historical work, especially on the later 17th century versions and address the multiple shrew-taming narratives as an extended cultural dialogue debating key issues of gender and sexual politics.
Recent criticism has tended to overplay 'power' readings of the shrew-plays and to cast especially Shakespeare's play as an irredeemable document of barbarism. This volume reopens some of these critical questions and takes a fresh perspective on the renaissance shrew. The cast of contributors represents a balance between established critics responsible for seminal work in shrew-studies and younger scholars whose research is exploring new directions.