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Katherina Bound; or, Play(K)ating the Strictures of Everyday Life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Barbara Hodgdon
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Abstract

Offering a layered reading of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, this essay investigates the gender politics of the play's Elizabethan performance conditions together with those of twentieth-century film and video reproductions. Instead of attempting to recuperate Shrew for feminism, this reading confronts the sadomasochistic fantasies lurking behind the facades of farce and romantic comedy; considers how Shrew's representations accumulate cultural capital that can be deployed to make and remake new patriarchies and new myths about “woman,” as well as about women; and explores the play's continuing cultural renewal as a popular pleasure that weaves together voyeurism, fantasy, and consumerism.

Type
2. Underwriting Performance: Appropriation, Legitimation, Exchange
Information
PMLA , Volume 107 , Issue 3: Special Topic: On Poetry , May 1992 , pp. 538 - 553
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1992

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