The Tamer Tamed (New Mermaids)

by JohnFletcher (Author), Lucy Munro (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $10.24

  The Tamer Tamed is the subtitle or alternative title to John Fletcher's The Woman's Prize, a comedic sequel and reply to The Taming of the Shrew. The plot switches the gender roles of Shakespeare's play: the women seek to tame the men. Katherine (the shrew of the original) has died, and Petruchio takes a second wife, Maria. Maria denounces her former mildness and vows not to sleep with Petruchio until she turn him and bend him as [she] list, and mold him into a babe again. After many comedic exchanges and plot twists, Petruchio is finally tamed in the eyes of Maria, and the play ends with the two reconciled. The play is seen to reflect how society's views of women, femininity, and domestic propriety were beginning to change. It is said that Fletcher wrote this play to attract Shakespeare's attention - the two went on to collaborate on at least three plays together. This brand new New Mermaid edition offers unique and fresh insight into the critical interpretation of the play. It builds on current critical foundations (the relationship with Taming of the Shrew, gender relations etc) and suggests different areas of interest (popular associations of the shrew, the question of reputation, and a re-examination of the play's structure). as well as examining stage history and recent productions.

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.35

  An irreverent sequel to the Taming of the Shrew, written in 1611 and now published alongside its production at the RSC - the first for 300 years In The Tamer Tamed Petruchio marries for a second time and is tamed in his turn by his wife Maria in a reversal of roles that has echoes of the sex-strike in Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Written twenty years after Shakespeare's original, The Tamer Tamed is also a revealing insight into changing attitudes to women and marriage in the Jacobean period. Gregory Doran's production of The Tamer Tamed - the first in the RSC's history and almost certainly the first major production in three centuries - follows his acclaimed staging of The Island Princess (also by Fletcher) in the RSC Classics season, which transferred to the West End playing though till Spring 2003