“the polemics signal a sex-gender system under pressure and that crossdressing, as fact and as

idea, threatened a normative social order based upon strict principles of hierarchy and
subordination, of which women’s subordination to man was a chief instance, trumpeted from
pulpit, instantiated in law, and acted upon by monarch and commoner alike.”
“In the polemical literature women who crossdressed were less often accused of sexual
perversion than of sexual incontinence, of being whores. This was in part because the discursive
construction of woman in the Renaissance involved seeing her as a creature of strong sexual
appetites needing strict regulation. Her sexual desire was both a mark of her inferiority and a
justification for her control by men.”

“When women took men’s clothes, they symbolically left their subordinate positions. They
became masterless women, and this threatened overthrow of hierarchy was discursively read as
the eruption of uncontrolled sexuality.”
Gender, Sex, And Subordination In England, 1500-1800.

“Men’s control of women’s speech, an aspect of their potency, was at the heart of the early
modern gender system. Speech takes us to the centre of the issues of patriarchal authority, for it
proposes and initiates. Speech represents personal agency. The woman who speaks neither in
reply to a man nor in submissive request acts as an independent being who may well, it is
assumed, end up with another man than her husband in her bed. Thus every incident of verbal
assertiveness could awake the spectre of adultery and the dissolution of patriarchal order.”

“Chaste, silent and obedient: the trilogy of primary female virtues carries with it a series of logical
connections.”

S. Hull. Chaste, Silent and Obedient: English Books for Women 1435-1640 (San Marino, 1982)
“transvestism of this kind, displayed at the playhouse and on the London social scene, blatantly
challenged the gender role and put men’s patriarchal authority on the line.”

“the division of women into the pure, who were available for marriage and needed to be
constantly watched and controlled so they kept within its boundaries.”

The Tamer Tamed, or None Shall Have Prizes: “Equality” in

Shakespeare’s England

Thus Pierre Charron, in his Of Wisdome (1608; French original 1601) acknowledged the standard
language of superiority and inferiority:
“The distinction of superiority and inferiority consisteth in this, that the husband hath power
over the wife, and the wife is subject to the husband. This agreeth with all laws and policies; but
yet more or less according to the diversity of them. In all things the wife, though she be far more
noble and more rich, yet is subject to the husband. This superiority and inferiority is natural,
founded upon the strength and sufficiency of the one, the weakness and insufficiency of the
other. The Divines ground it upon other reasons drawn from the Bible . . .”

According to Anthony Fletcher, professor of history at the university of Essex,

patriarchy is an outstandingly significant feature of English society between 1500 and
18001. In the patriarchal society, the idea that “man is superior to woman” is
influential, and man is usually in the dominant position while woman the obedient. As
to the superiority of male and inferiority of female, Pierre Charron explained in his Of
Wisdome:
“The distinction of superiority and inferiority consisteth in this, that the
husband hath power over the wife, and the wife is subject to the husband.
This agreeth with all laws and policies; but yet more or less according to the
diversity of them. In all things the wife, though she be far more noble and
more rich, yet is subject to the husband. This superiority and inferiority is
natural, founded upon the strength and sufficiency of the one, the weakness
and insufficiency of the other. The Divines ground it upon other reasons
drawn from the Bible . . .2”

1
Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex And Subordination In England 1500-1800, Introduction, p.ⅩⅤ.
2
Quoted from David Wootton, “The Tamer Tamed, or None Shall Have Prizes: “Equality” in Shakespeare’s
England”. Gender and Power in Shrew-Taming Narratives, 1500–1700 (2010), 206-225.
The Taming of the Shrew

Petruchio 的婚姻观：只为金钱
Petruchio: “and therefore, if thou know/Once rich enough to be Petruchio’s wife/As
wealth is burden of my wooing dance/ Be she as foul as was Florentius’s love/ As old
as Sibyl and as curst and shrewd/ As Socrates’ Xanthippe, or a worse/ She moves me
not, or not removes, at least/ Affection’s edge in me, were she as rough/ As are the
swelling Adriatic seas/ I come to wive it wealthily in Padua/ If wealthily, then happily
in Padua.” (I. ii. 60-70)

Grumio: “Nay, look you, sir, he tells you flatly what his mind is. Why, give him gold
enough and marry him to a puppet or an aglet-baby; or an old trot with ne’er a tooth in
her head, though she have as many diseases as two and fifty horses. Why, nothing
comes amiss, so money comes withal.” (I. ii. 71-74)

Petruchio 对女性的态度：
“Women are made to bear, and so are you.” (ii. I. 200)

“For I am he am born to tame you, Kate/ And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate/
Conformable as other household Kates.” (ii. I. 277-9)

“I will be master of what is mine own:/ She is my goods, my chattels, she is my

house,/ My household stuff, my field, my barn,/ My horse, my ox, my ass, my
anything.” (III. ii. 219-222)

Petruchio 的残暴
仆人 Grumio 对他的评价
“Why, that’s nothing; an he begin once, he’ll rail in his rope-tricks. I’ll tell you what,
sir, an she stand him but a little, he will throw a figure in her face and so disfigure her
with it that she shall have no more eyes to see withal than a cat. You know him not,
sir.” (I. ii. 101-4)

Petruchio 对 Kate 的驯服：

“Thus have I politicly begun my reign,/ And ‘its my hope to end successfully./ My
falcon now is sharp and passing empty,/ And till she stoop she must not be full-
gorged,/ For then she never looks upon her lure./ Another way I have to man my
haggard,/ To make her come and know her keeper’s call,/ That is, to watch her, as we
watch these kites/ That bate and beat and will not be obedient./ She eat no meat today,
nor none shall eat./ Last night she slept not, not tonight she shall not./ As with the
meat, some undeserved fault/ I’ll find about the making of the bed,/ And here I’ll fling
the pillow, there the bolster,/ This way the coverlet, another way the sheets./ Ay, and
amid this hurly I intend/ That all is done in reverend care of her./ And in conclusion
she shall watch all night,/ And if she chance to nod I’ll rail and brawl/ And with the
clamour keep her still awake./ This is a way to kill a wife with kindness,/ And thus I’ll
curb her mad and headstrong humour./ He that knows better how to tame a sherw,/
Now let him speak.’Tis charity to show.” (III. iii. 151-174)

Tranio: “Faith, he is gone unto the taming school.” (III. iv. 56)

Tranio: “Ay, mistrees, and Petruchio is the master,/ That teacheth tricks eleven and
twenty long,/ To tame a shrew and charm her chatt’ring tongue.” (III. iv. 58-60)

Baptista 对女儿婚姻的决定：买卖？
Kate: “Call you me ‘daughter’? Now, I promise you/ You have showed a tender
fatherly regard/ To wish me wed to one half-lunatic, A mad-cap ruffian and a swearing
Jack/ That thinks with oaths to face the matter out.” (ii. I. 286-290)

Baptista: “Faith, gentlemen, now I play a merchant’s part,/ And venture madly on a
desperate mart.” (ii. I. 327-8)

Baptista: “Content you, gentlemen, I will compound this strife./’Tis deeds must win
the prize, and he of both/ That can assure my daughter greatest dower/ Shall have my
Bianca’s love.” (ii. I. 343-6)

Kate: “No shame but mine: I must forsooth be forced/ To give my hand opposed
against my heart/ Unto a mad-brain rudesby full of spleen,/ Who wooed in haste and
means to wed at leisure.” (III. ii. 8-10)

Kate 的屈服：
“The more my wrong, the more his spite appears./ What, did he marry me to famish
me?/ Beggars that come unto my father’s door/ Upon entreaty have a present alms,/ If
not, elsewhere they meet with charity./ But I, who never knew how to entreat,/ Nor
never needed that I should entreat,/ Am starved for meat, giddy for lack of sleep,/
With oaths kept waking and with brawling fed./ And that which spites me more than
all these wants,/ He does it under name of perfect love,/ And who should say, if I
should sleep or eat,/’Twere deadly sickness or else present death.” (IV. i. 2-14)

听任 Petruchio 将太阳说成月亮
“Then, God be blessed, it is the blessed sun./ But sun it is not, when you say it is not,/
And the moon changes even as your mind./ What you will have it named, even that it
is,/ And so it shall be so for Katherine.” (IV. iii. 19-23)

顺从 Petruchio 将老汉说成漂亮姑娘
“Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet,/ Wither away, or where is thy
abode?/ Happy the parents of so fair a child;/ Happier the man, whom favourable
stars/ Allots thee for his lovely bedfellow!” (IV. iii. 37-41)

主动向 Petruchio 献吻
“Nay, I will give thee a kiss. Now pray thee, love, stay.” (IV. iv. 116)

向 widow 讲述妇道，要顺从丈夫
“Fie, fie! Unknit that threat’ning unkind brow,/ And dart not scornful glances from
those eyes,/ To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor./ It bolts thy beauty as frosts do
bite the meads,/ Condounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,/ And in no sense
is meet or amiable./ A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,/ Muddy, ill-seeming,
thick, bereft of beauty,/ And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty/ Will deign to sip or
touch one drop of it./ Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,/ Thy head, thy
sovereign: one that cares for thee,/ And for thy maintenance commits his body/ To
painful labour both by sea and land,/ To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,/
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe,/ And craves no other tribute at thy
hands/ But love, fair looks and true obedience;/ Too little payment for so great a debt./
Such duty as the subject owes the prince/ Even such a woman oweth to her husband./
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,/ And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel/ And graceless traitor to her loving lord?/ I am
ashamed that women are so simple/ To offer war where they should kneel for peace,/
Or seek for rule, supremacy and obey./ Why are our bodies soft and weak and
smooth,/ Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,/ But that our soft conditions and our
hearts/ Should well agree with our external parts?/ Come, come, you froward and
unable worms,/ My mind hath been as big as one of yours,/ My heart as great, my
reason haply more,/ To bandy word for word and frown for frown;/ But now I see our
lances are but straws,/ Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,/ That
seeming to be most which we indeed least are./ Then vail your stomachs, for it is no
boot,/ And place your hands below your husband’s foot:/ In token of which duty, if he
please,/ My hand is ready, may it do him ease.” (V. i. 148-191)