Contextual points Flashcards
What was the Elizabethan idea of comedy?
-to create a lighthearted, fun viewership through exploring love.
-Shakespearean comedy always closes in at least one marriage. (resolves any discourse between characters, making the issues non-serious.)
-Used as a facet for spectators to relax, and enjoy a pleasant time.
What was the philosophical debate of Apollonian values vs Dionysian values?
How does Shakspeare play with these views?
-Apollonian: Acting on logic/reason.
Dionysian: Acting on desires/emotion.
How does Shakespeare play with these views?
-Plays with both philosophies while not being clearly on one side.
-Has characters on both sides of the spectrum.
-the most emotional characters often suffer highest level of complication, confusion and foolishness.
-Logical characters often do not end in a marriage.
What was required for a fast marriage like Kate’s and Bianca’s in Elizabethan times?
-A marriage bond, proof to the bishop that the marriage was legal.
-This meant crying the bans only had to be done once before the couple got married.
-These required money, so only the rich could get married at haste.
-Other people had to cry the bans three times at church, giving plenty of time for objection.
What was marriage like in this era?
-Arranged by relatives.
-Religious ceremony, always in church.
-Arranged to reach social, economic and political gain.
-For the upperclass, a means to transfer property/wealth and alliances.
-Husband benefited financially from the dowry.
-Wives were expected to be obedient, loving and virtuous.
-Woman had to vow to be agreeable and cheerful.
-After marriage the wife and all her possessions belonged to the husband.
What was the role of women in society at the time?
-seen and not heard.
-controlled by their father from birth till marriage, then responsibility of them was handed over to husband through a dowry.
-They could not have financial independence as they could not live or work without men.
-Women legally belonged to their husbands.
-People believed that women were created by God to serve and obey men.
-the old testament preached that women were naturally inferior to men: created from man’s rib, they were the “woe of man” (woeman)
What happened if women did not get married?
They had to live with a male relative or become a nun.
What were the specific roles of women in the:
-Lower-class
-Working-class
-Upper-class.
Lower-class: House wives.
Working-class: Worked with and for their husbands, as well as taking care of the household.
Upper-class: look after house and children or make sure the servants did this. Only class in which women could express themselves, but not properly and with the male taint. If they were outspoken they would be severely judged and considered shrews.
What was the political role of men in society?
-Allowed to be outspoken and expressive.
-Upper class men had complete freedom.
-Men who were soldiers, politicians, and other leaders were talkers and decision makers.
What were the four main classes in Elizabethan times?
-The Nobility: were either Nobels by birth-right, or appointed by the King or Queen.
-The Gentry: were Knights, Squires, Gentlemen or Gentlewomen who had money enough that they did not have to work with their hands for a living. Their numbers grew rapidly, and they became the most important class in this era.
-The Yeomanry: lived comfortably, were the middleclass, could however be easily affected by famine or disease.
-The Poor: were people who found themselves without food, shelter and money.
How does Shakespeare use social standing in his plays?
-Shakespeare uses social standing as a method of categorization, confining characters to either very obviously fitting the role and expectation of an uneducated servant, or doing the opposite and making them a spectacle.
How are the servants treated in the play?
They are continually beaten and abused throughout, showing how their social standing dehumanized them to the Elizabethan audience.
What point about class does Shakespeare make by displaying rigid social hierarchy, and flipping it around?
Exposes class as a matter of the clothes one wears, and the way one behaves, rather one’s birth-right. The servants often take on the role of their master/a nobleman.
What is the contextual significance of the Shrew character to Elizabethan times?
-Idea of shrew came before Shakespeare in many folklore tales, recurring with the key aspect of women being tamed.
-This stock character was used to make an example of “badly behaved” women who disregarded patriarchal control, in order to promote the ideal women of this era (seen but never heard, submissive and obedient etc.)
-This stock character is seen in many other Shakespeare plays, for example Queen Margret in Henry VI, who is excessively violent towards male characters.
What were the traits of the “ideal Renaissance women”?
-Quiet respectful, submissive and mild.
-Duty to be beautiful for men.
-Virtuous, wise, kind , elegant and elegant.
-No objection to be controlled by men and enjoy their attention.
-Seen but not heard.
- Not allowed to be outspoken or to confident.
-Bianca embodies all these characteristics, or appears to…
What was the opposite of the ideal woman? eg. the shrew?
-Women who dared to speak out, attempted to be assertive, dominant, disobedient and outspoken were labelled “shrews.” They were often portrayed as violent and aggressive and in dire need of taming by a heroic husband. Any woman who refused to fit into her rigid society would be deemed mad, as is Kate labelled ‘STARK MAD” by Tranio.
what was the view on educating women in the Elizabethan times?
-Women were not allowed to go to school or to university, but they could be educated at home by private tutors.
-Baptista in his concern for his daughter education, shows himself as more liberal-minded and enlightened than many Elizabethan fathers.
What were the two opposed views of marriage in the Elizabethan times?
One: Marriage as a business matter, which aligned with the realistic philosophy of the time, as it corresponds with the facts. Mercenary idea of marriage. (Apollonian)
The other: Marriage as the union of hearts and minds, corresponds with the romantic/emotional philosophy at the time. (Dionysian).
-The two plots of Bianca-Lucention and Katherina-Patruchio represent these ideas.
What were the gentry and mercantile classes?
What is the new-gentry?
-The gentry were the land-owning (landed) wealthy people, like Petruccio who has inherited his wealth from his father as a nobleman.
-The Mercantile were the merchants, they made a good wealth by making cloth and weaving and trading goods with one another. Natasha Korda: They were a newly emerging class of Bourgeoise capitalists whose wealth was not inherited but rather came from the profits they made in trade.
(baptista).
What is the new-gentry?
-Gentry who were continually seeking to improve their estates through commerce, forays into business over seas, and contracting wealthy marriage.
-Petruchio is and example of this “I come to wive it wealthy in Padua”.
How is Kate and Petruchio’s marriage an example of a marriage between the gentry and mercantile classes?
-Petruchio gains surplus capital (a dowry of twenty thousand crowns).
-Baptista gains symbolic capital that comes with land.
-This reifies Kate completely, she becomes a business transaction/commodity to benefit the two of them, but is not benefited in any way herself.
What is housework theory, and what is it’s significance to Kate and Petruchio?
-A new gendered devision of labour, according to which husbands go to work or as Kate puts it “Labour both by sea and land.” and their husbands “luxuriate” at home.
-In this new devision of labour all the work that goes on at home is not acknowledged.
-It produces the economic invisibility and unremunerated (unpaid) status of housework.
-In erasing the status of housework, the housewife is perpetually indebted to her husband, and her “love, fair looks, and tru obedience” are sufficient “payment” for the material comfort in which she is “kept”.
-Kate makes many references to this through her final speech, making it obvious that she is trapped by this idea.
-Sixteenth century marks the emergence of the ideological separation of feminine and masculine spheres of labour.
Why was the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century described as a “culture of violence”?
-Public whippings, mutilations, burnings, hangings and beheadings to punish crime.
-Violent rebellions against state power.
-in such a culture violence is not inevitably transgressive, it can assert authority as well as betray a lack of control.
What were Elizabethan views on violence towards social inferiors?
-Verbal or physical assaults on one’s social inferiors left few traces precisely because they were not seen as transgressive.
What was the Elizabethan view on wife-beating?
-Wife-beating had an ambiguous status in the early modern culture of violence because f the wife’s double position as and “authoritative mistress who is also a subjected wife.”
-Wife beating was not illegal, and within limits neighbors and courts did not intervene.
-Prescriptive texts urged men not to abuse their wives, not because it was immoral and unfair, but because it was counterproductive.
-Prescriptive literature was constructing wife-beating as a failure of control and a lapse in good household government.
When was violence transgressive and when was it not?
-Violence was not transgressive when it was directed towards ones inferiors, for example ones servants.
-It was also considered more acceptable for women to be violent or shrewish towards other women. For example in her ending speech, Kate calls the other women “forward and unable worms.” But as her violence no longer threatens the patriarchy it is not considered shrewish. She has learnt how to use violence to assert dominance in a more socially acceptable way. She is not less aggressive, she has just redirected her aggression to servants and other women.
-Violence was considered transgressive when it was towards ones superiors, or holy figures, as this was a very religious time.
When was women using violence acceptable and unremarkable?
-In those relations in which women had authority - over servants and children, for instance - they were licensed to use violence.
What are the sumptuary laws?
-Attempted to dictate the fabrics and styles of clothing permitted to different social ranks.
-These laws had the dual aims of protecting English industries from fashionable foreign imports and of making social status visually apparent.
Why did the sumptuary laws not work very well?
-Due to the portability and transferability of clothing (from masters to servants, theaters where lowborn men wore costumes of Nobles.
-This was problematic due to the status these garments encoded.
-If all it takes for a common man to become a noble is a piece of clothing, then a society that relies heavily on a feudal system is uprooted.
Renaissance plays are full of meta theatrical jokes, reminding the audience that this is just a play. What is the significance of this to The Shrew?
For example, Grumio is playing an old Italian man, but when someone speaks Italian he can’t understand.
What real life speeches might Katherina’s end speech have taken inspiration from?
Catherine Parr expressed some of her own religious opinions and was in grave danger of arrest fro heresy. She saved herself with a speech to her husband, Henry 8th in language much like Katherina’s. “Yet must I, and will I, refer my judgement in this, and in all other cases, to your majesty’s wisdom, as my only anchor, supreme head and governor here in earth, next under God, to lean unto.” Might this suggest that Katherina is simply giving a speech she knows she has to in order to keep the men around her happy, and that she does not believe a word of it?
similarly queen Elizabeth 1st sated who addressing troops for expected Spanish invasion: “ I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too.’
How was a woman’s tongue often seen?
A woman’s tongue was often seen as an instrument of hell. A 1557 book by Erasmus contains a story about a man who marries a dumb wife. With the help of the devil, he gives her a tongue made from a leaf, and she begins to speak, too much, he decides to ask the devil to make her dumb again. The devil replies, “if a woman begins once to speak, I, nor all the devils in hell, are able to make her silent.”
What were renaissance views on those suffering from mental illness?
It was believed they were possessed by evil spirits, which could be driven out by beating, immersion in freezing water and periods in isolation. In the early 16th century, sir Thomas more was as much in favour of thrashing those believe to be insane to bring them to their senses as he was of flogging heretics. Disobedient Katherina is labelled “stark mad” by train in the first scene she appears. She is certainly a sad figure: scorned and isolated by all of the other characters.
her “madness” means her refusal to fit into society. Many women who resisted social roles found themselves judged as such. Medical authorities believed that possessing a womb made women particularly susceptible to insanity.
What is companionate marriage
-Post reformation idea of marriage
-Not between equals - but proposed mutual responsibilities for husbands and wife.
-Seen in large number of protestant conduct books, produces in second half 16th century.
-Sets out that just as the wife has responsibilities to the husbands - he also had responsibilities to her.
-K Speech draws on this - ‘painful labor both by sea and lands’ owes ‘love, fair look and true obedience’, ‘too little payment for such great a debt’.
However - Petruchio doesn’t have to work - has her dowry.
