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.