305-Essay Response.docx

Kaisi Ritter
English 305—Staffel
Theatre Project
04/13/2015
John Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed; or A Woman's Prize
The play opens with a wager much like its Shakespearean counter-part closes with a wager; we see Petruccio's men and Moroso betting on the length of their friend's new marriage. Fletcher's Petruccio is based on Shakespeare's character of the same name in The Taming of the Shrew; along with Tranio and Bianca, both of whom are also loosely based on their Shakespearean namesakes. Tranio, Sophocles, and Moroso are all leaving Petruccio and Maria's wedding. They wager one another as to how long the marriage will last. Fletcher does a good job introducing the main players and setting the scene for a Domestic Comedy and the spectator is meant to be somewhat, if not completely, familiar with Shakespeare's play by the similar name.
Within the first Act and its four encompassing scenes we are introduced to the main characters. Maria and Petruccio, the main couple whose marriage and lack of consummation are the foundation of the plot; Bianca, whom is Maria's strong willed and quick witted cousin. She and Maria are the ones who lock themselves into Maria's room for the "sex-strike." Petruccio's two gentlemen friends: Tranio and Sophocles. Patronius who is Maria and Livia's father; Moroso and Rowland, Livia's suitors, Moroso is old and rich and Rowland is young and virile. Livia is happy to help her sister in her plight for marital equality but she has her own union to attend to. These four scenes take us from a wedding to a battle of the sexes.
The following four Acts allow for the unfolding of the females attempt to gain a little equality within their own marriages and marital choices. Livia joins her cousin's plight in Act two and by the beginning of Act three, the women have laid out their list of demands and the men have accepted those constraints, even if the men tell themselves and each other that it is just to get the women out of the locked room. Petruccio contract the plague and Maria and everyone, except an old maid to look after him, abandon him. Petruccio gives a valiant bachelor speech that seems to make his ego feel a little bit better. The two closing Acts tie up the loose ends from the main plot, Maria and Petruccio, and the two subplots, Livia and Rowland and Tranio and Biance. The latter is merely the covert workings of the two in order for them to reconcile and join in matrimonial bliss the former, and making a little money from a bet paying off always brings a sense of resolution with it. Petruccio pretends to be dead in order to get to the root of Maria's real feelings and Livia and Bianca concoct this deceitful plan to get Petronius and Livia's other suitor, Moroso to sign as witnesses for the clandestine marriage of her and Rowland. The play ends with an epilogue delivered by Maria in which she promotes the importance of a mutual love that should ultimately make the headspace for matrimonial equality.
John Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed; or The Woman's Prize concentrates on the gender inequalities that are associated with seventeenth century marriage and the inadequacies of a patriarchal hierarchy. The women in Fletcher's play are "feminocentric" (Intro 2) and avant-garde, they get what they want in the end. Yet, their reasons behind their push for matrimonial equality are almost completely ego driven and their means of achieving their goal is quite masculine. This superimposition of masculine traits portrayed by a female character seems to help Fletcher highlight the gap that lies between women and the rest of society. By doing so he is able to bring to light the expectations and egocentrism that accompanies and encourages gender roles and boundaries in the Jacobean era.
We get to watch as a group of women sexually "hold out" on their men. Fletcher utilizes his contemporary's characters that are already established in the spectators mind. By doing so, he seems to pick up where Shakespeare leaves off with The Taming of the Shrew, yet most critics agree that to call The Woman's Prize a 'sequel' is "another way in which critics have short-changed Fletcher's originality" (Fletcher 15). Bianca is seen as the instigator of Maria's want of equality in her new marriage to Petruccio, the old woman-tamer. Fletcher goes one step further though, bringing in his new female lead, Maria and using her to showcase "Shakespeare's inadequate representation of gender conflict" (Smith 4). In Act I, Scene 3, when the warrior women lock themselves away, Maria is bruising two egos: her new husband's and her father's. This causes both men to lash out in anger as they cling to the societal norms of the day as they attempt to inspire fear to prompt the ladies to surrender. Women were not only under the thumb of their husbands but of literally every man in their lives. Fletcher does a great job of showcasing this societal norm in a way that makes it seem archaic and outdated—even in the seventeenth century.
There are numerous places throughout the play where the reader can see how male ego's and the breaking down of prescribed gender roles are interlocked. Rajendra Chetty notes that "The emphasis is both on the individual empowerment of the protagonist as well as social transformation" (Chetty 94). The most intriguing part for a modern day feminist though, is to see how these women, become strangely masculine. When word of the lady rebel's plight reaches the other women of defiance in town; they all rush to lend a hand on the front lines. It is in Act II that we see the women at their most masculine. Bianca and Maria made sure to stock their war room with provisions but the ladies who lend aid come bring more gifts. The ladies have an all-out party in their room; wine, meat, and music. The men stand below and contemplate what terrible, awful things they will do to the women when they get them out of their compound. Fletcher allows Jaques, Petruccio's servant, to spy on the women through a "loose latchet" allowing the audience to get an idea of the debauchery that is taking place. The women are compared to tyrants and immodest, but that further supports the idea that Fletcher didn't want the women to seem modest—he wanted them to seem virile.
While the emphasis, as Chetty claims, is on female empowerment and social change, the placed on the idea that women were not only equal members of the household, they are equals of the mind; as Petruccio claims he married Maria for her wit, her mind. The reader can see that both Maria and Petruccio are doing this not out of hatred for each other or to break down gender barriers, but because they really do love one another. Maria's Epilogue explains that equality is not about triumph but more of understanding. Holly Crocker supports this, "Affirming her personal dignity, Maria makes marriage into a bond that necessarily recognizes the power of both partners" (Crocker 129). Yet, in Act I, Scene 2, Maria admits that she "will be famous" if she can pull this off. This reveal of her ego driven reason further highlights the masculine attributes Fletcher gives his leading lady in order to almost juxtapose the archaic ideas of female subservience.
The fact that women were unable to win any prize in this time period makes Fletcher's title even more suggestive. While women could not gain notoriety in the public eye; in a world of subservience, gaining the respect of your husband is still a significant win for an intelligent and independent woman.


Annotated Bibliography

Chetty, Rajendra. "Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed, a Rediscovered Jacobean Text." Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon 8 July 2003: 91-96. JSTOR. Web. 27 March 2015.