The Tamer Tamed Prologue and Epilogue: From Paranoid to Reparative (Two Entries)

From the Prologue

Ladies, to you, in whose defense and right (1)

Fletcher's brave muse prepared herself to fight

A battle without blood, 'twas well fought, too,

(The victory's yours though got with much ado)

...

Yet not to go too far

In promises from this our female war,

we do entreat the angry men would not

expect the mazes of a subtle plot,

Set speeches, high expressions; and what's worse,

In a true comedy, politic discourse.
The end we aim as is to make you sport; (15)

Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed opens with a prologue that sets the expectations of the entire play. Essentially the Prologue claims that this play is "for women" and offers some hope for any women who might have watched Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and felt the injustices of how Katherina was treated. The prologue openly states that "The victory's yours" but by the end of the play it seems rather contrary to the reality. This prologue is like a movie trailer baiting us into another rom-com that ends up with Katherine Heigl's strong willed quirky character finding out that the douche bag Barstool host is actually a softy once you get to know him. Is this Fletcher cashing in on Shakespeare's play by openly recognizing the hardships of women and making them feel good about a new play that offers the new wife, Maria, the chance to put Petruchio in his place? To let women live out a fantasy of giving men a taste of their own medicine? The prologue seems to answer these questions and takes away from the proto-feminist framing the prologue set the play to be and managed to emulate up until the end.

From the Epilogue

The tamer's tamed, but so, as nor the men

Can find one just cause to complain of, when

They filthy do consider, in their lives

They should not reign as tyrants o'er their wives.

Nor can the women from this precedent

insult or triumph, it being aptly meant

To teach both sexes due equality

And, as they stand bound, to love mutually.

If this effect, arising form a cause

Well laid and grounded, may deserve applause,

We something more than hope our honest ends

Will keep the men, and the women, too, our friends.

Reader, she happily ran off to continue their marriage. 
The epilogue takes the decisive victory away from women in the line "To teach both sexes due equality". We should appreciate the fact that if both sexes learn to treat one enough with respect and recognized equality then everyone wins. By extension that means women wins! But it really is not the same. The epilogue claims that men "should not reign as tyrants o'er their wives" and follows it with "nor can the women from this precedent insult or triumph". A man should not be cruel and dictate his wife's life, but even if he does the wife should never use harsh language to express her dissatisfaction. This is the heart of the problem women have been facing that is just now starting to really be considered with the #MeToo movement. Women have been taught to not respond to men's anger. They have been trained to fear that their words, even in defense of themselves, will be met with violence. Here is Fletcher giving an example of that warning back in the 1600's!!

Fletcher seems to have some okay intentions here but they are clearly  influenced by the patriarchy. Had Maria just run off to be happy with her fellow widows (Byanca got a taste of freedom and more importantly, Fletcher redeems her a bit from Taming of the Shrew by allowing her the room to recognize how terrible Petruchio was to her sister), we would have gotten a longer lasting lesson of marital equality that would have done wonders for generations to come.

I will give Fletcher the benefit of the doubt because of his "domestic arrangement" to Francis Beaumont. It seems they  both were up against the patriarchy themselves. When considering that possibility I really pull back and see their own moves of tactical agency within their works. The two men handle female characters more realistically than some other writers of their time. Beaumont recognizes the sometimes overwhelming affections of a wife in Nell and showcases her desires beyond the domestic sphere. Fletcher gives Maria the chance to show off her incredible intelligence as she out matches wit against Petruchio. So even though they both seem to pull back on letting the women truly self actualize beyond their marriages, it says something about the fact that they gave them so much agency in their confines and granted them more than could have been expected.


At the end of the day, I am okay with their soft handed endings for the women. I can appreciate the gentle heart they allow the women to have. But I can also really get down with subverting that idea too.

Petruchio Sucks and Even his Friends are Tired of His Shit

Act IV Scene IV (Lines 11-24)

Hortensio : Say as he says, or we shall never go.

Katherina: Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please;
And if you please to call it a rush-candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.

Petruchio: I say it is the moon.

Katherina: I know it is the moon.

Petruchio: Nay, then you lie; it is the blessed sun.

Katherina: Then, God be bless'd, 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 nam'd, even that it is,
And so it shall be so for Katherine.

Hortensio: Petruchio, go thy ways, the field is won.

I am so upset that Hortensio's line are not in this clip because his subtle remarks really steal the scene, and just the look on his face (and Elizabeth Taylor's!) really sums up just how exasperating Petruchio is throughout Taming of the Shrew. This scene is the poster child example for gaslighting, which is psychological manipulation to make the subject question their own sanity. In this case Petruchio uses it against Katherina to get her to believe the sun is actually the mom because he desperately needs to assert his faux-thority over her. Of all the petty things Petruchio picks to be right about, he picks the celestial source of lighting. He picks an undeniable fact and I wonder if Shakespeare includes this bat-shit crazy moment to reflect the human error of accepting blatant lies because it is easier to agree than to disagree with crazy. Despite this, the audience should most relate to poor Hortensio who just wants to get to where they are going. He encourages Katherina to just agree with Petruchio so he will let their journey continue. This is the silent majority represented and in a way is expresses the tactical agency that everyone around Petruchio seems to need to survive him, including his friends.

P.S. I sent out a question on Twitter to the official Grey's Anatomy account to see if the semi-recent "You are the sun" speech made my Christina Yang was a reference to this. I did not receive an answer but I did get a few heart reacts which really sums up all you can hope to gain from Twitter.

Don Quixote: In Which I Did Not Notice the Subtitling Until AFTER I Made the Paradise Lost Entry Titles Modeled After Umbrella Chronicles

Chapter Two:

"There was nothing in the inn but some pieces of fish, called in Castile pollack, in Andalusia codfish, in some parts ling, and in others troutlets, for they had no other fish to offer him. "Provided there are many little trout", answered Don Quixote, "They will supply the place of one salmon thought, for it is the same to me whether I receive eight single reals one piece of eight. Moreover, those troutlets may turn out to be like unto veal. Which is better than beef, and kid, which is superior to goat. Be that as it may, let it come in quickly, for the toil and weight of arms cannot be sustained without the good government of the guts."

This scene is all apart of Don Quixote's mass delusion of granduer. He takes the most pathetic bit of fish, names it five times, then says it will be as impressive as any finer meal and his only request is that it "come in quickly". We should worry about the man who can attribute such importance to such a small thing, but we should also learn from this example a level of gratitude that most of us never reach.  Cervantes is going to beat poor Quixote up over and over again until he finally breaks his spirit for optimism towards the end. And while we might be witnessing a man unraveling from the pressures of society, maybe we should cut him a bit of slack. I wonder if Cervantes feels that Quixote is a bit of himself. What writer of fiction has not been made to feel trivial for their ideas? Is not the act of writing fiction a coping mechanism of its own kind?

Authors are repetitive when they want us to take notice of a moment. How is having your main character be repetitive any different? Is Cervantes really teaching a lesson, or subjecting himself to the repetitive negatively most writers have faced?

Either way, how can you NOT love this Hufflepuff of a knight? I want to strangle him in all his Derpy optimism.

P.S. About that title:
Well that is embarrassing. Now I have to reconsider Umbrella Chronicles titling and its potential literary reference of its own. I signed up for this though, the whole see-all-the-referential-stuff thing and divining its meaning. Hooray for literature degrees.

Place Holder For The Entry I Won My Way Out Of

I needed a quick break from thinking about how I put off doing all these entries over the course of MONTHS versus the majority in one day. This break included time to make a gin and tonic (my back up plan for being a failed literary scholar) and to grab a bag of trail mix.

To anyone reading this blog in the future as an example of a Common Place Book know two things: DO NOT PUT THIS SHIT OFF. It is not shit. It is actually really fun and I appreciate the ways it has made me think more critically about what I have been reading.
Two: Seriously, do not put this project off. Imagine just how much funnier MY blog would have been if I had taken the appropriate amount of time? So many missed opportunities for gifs.

I am really proud of my little team for annihilating that vocabulary game and earning us one less entry in this project. Why? Because I really did not enjoy Mankind so skipping a second entry there makes me really happy.

Cheers to gin and tonics and literary analysis.

Paradise Lost Book IV: In Which Satan's Imposter Syndrome Intensifies

Artificer of fraud; and was the first
That practisd falsehood under saintly shew,
Deep malice to conceale, couch't with revenge:
Yet not anough had practisd to deceive (121-124)


The word "Artificer" sticks out to me because of it rhymes with "Lucifer" and I feel that Milton was clever enough to make that connection purposefully here. There seems to be an unspoken slight here to God. According to Christianity, God is the creator of all. Giving the claim of creating fraud takes away a tiny bit of the power from the all creator, God. It is subversive because realistically most would not be so offended to see their "God" removed from the responsibility of something negative, however, from a jealous all-powerful ruler point of view, it might not go over so well. But the other thing Book IV of Paradise Lost does is create a lot of self doubt within Satan. This vulnerability is incredibly enduring. Milton manipulates his audience to relate to Satan, the quintessential evil of all history practically. In context of his disdain for the Crown, Milton creates a space to question the divinity of the monarch and their right to rule. He balances the right amount of power with self doubt for readers to feel bad for Satan, and this room for empathy teacher the readers to look for other opportunities to reconsider the positions in which they were dictated.

P.S.
I could not help but make another Umbrella Academy inspired title.

Paradise Lost Book I: In Which We Learn Satan is a Bad Boy

Here we may reign secure; and in my choice
to reign is worth ambition, though in hell:
better to reign in hell than serve in heaven (261-264)

Despite the title of this post I am not going to make an Umbrella Academy reference no matter how tempting it is. (Luther sucks, Five for Number One!)

The story trope of the son longing to take reign over his father is pretty old. For the Greeks it started prior to humankind with Kronos and Jupiter. For Milton is just so happens to be an allegory for his feelings towards the Crown. But let's focus on Satan here. He says, /in my choice/ to reign is worth ambition/ the syntax makes the reader question if the meaning a bit more than might be considered necessary. The hang up is how he says that he chooses to reign and he paid for that with ambition. This seems a bit awkward to say but Milton is using it to stress a point. We America's clearly think of being in charge as something you HAVE to aspire to and earn with a heck (hehe) of a lot of ambition. For Milton, he gets a monarch who needs nothing more than the right birth certificate. The pointed idea that it is "evil" to go against the divinely appointed leader/"God" comes across clearly when taking in the context. 

Milton's power move of re-imaging all the characters of the bible is unmatched. Anyone making that move today just looks like a knock off. Perhaps the most interesting move Milton's allegory of the Crown makes is wrapping it under the layer of religion. It pointedly judges but cleverly hides behind religion's big power of uncontested righteousness. To question God and religion is dangerous in any era, so it seems like the right way to hide your intentions. Ask the question: Did Satan win? Just do not ask the Christians or the Crown.

Francis Beaumont Misdirects Nell

The Knight of the Burning Pestle

Introduction Lines 50-51

Wife
By your leave, gentlemen, all, I'm something troublesome;
I'm a stranger here

Just how meta was Francis Beaumont being when he wrote The Knight of the Burning Pestle? First of all, he wrote a play that takes place during a play. He filled his play with social commentary relevant to the theater in his time. So it is safe to say that Beaumont understood nuance and specifically understood the nuances of a gendered theatrical field. Nell's line is a bit of a joke about how women were not allowed to act on stage, that is why she is "a stranger here" as she joins her husband on stage. The prior line shows that Beaumont did not have the intention of outwardly allowing a women on a stage, within a stage. Instead, having Nell say that she is "troublesome" foreshadows all of her behavior afterwards. She instructs her husband to interject when she has an idea, she offers up actors, and stops the children to fawn over them. She is domestically troublesome and the subtleties of placing a women in this role hold way more weight than the annoying George on stage. Nell's character seems to be reasons why a women should not be allowed on the stage. She will be distracted, she will be too motherly, she will make suggestions that have nothing to do with the plot, she will get her husband involved and that will be one more man to deal with.

Beaumont might not have been commenting on women being allowed on the stage or within a theater company. But I find it hard to believe that a man with the ability to layer so many ideas onto one another, was not making some kind of gendered statement when it came to placing a women on a stage in the manner that he did.