Performing Marriage with a Difference: Wooing, Wedding, and Bedding in The Taming of the Shrew

Performing Marriage with a Difference: Wooing, Wedding, and Bedding in The Taming ofthe Shrew Amy L. Smith Even before the recent burgeoning of performance theory, The TamingoftheShrew was ofgreat interest to critics interested in roleplaying , identity, and theatricality. And because Kate's "taming" and her performative speech both take place in a play-within-a-play, Tamingfostered a critical interest in the intersection between performance and gender long before the phrase"gender trouble" became commonplace. The recent debates about performance, culture, and theater sparked in part by Judith Butler suggest, however, that it is time to revisit our analysis of gender and performance in this play. Although there are a number of readings that have already investigated connections between patriarchy andperformance in The TamingoftheShrew,critics canlargelybegrouped into two opposing camps: revisionist and antirevisionist.1 First there are those who, reading the play as Kate's taming, see her role as reflective or constructive of early modern patriarchal hierarchies that contend that women mustbe subjectto theirhusbands.2 Because such readings argue that Kate's speech implies a straightforward acceptance of submission, they deny the play's ability to foster critiques of wifely subordination. Second, diere are those who read Kate's final speech ironically, as an act or game.3 The emphasis on playin these revisionist readings sometimes results in the near avoidance ofthe uncomfortable taming aspects ofthe play: Kate's game frees her from them.While the outcomes ofthese readings are very different,both seem to pretend that early modern patriarchal ideologies are unified and static: Kate submits or escapes subjection to them. And either way, these arguments implicitly suggest that the 289 290ComparativeDrama marriages performed in The Taming ofthe Shrew do not question or complicate gender hierarchies; rather, they applaud or escape them. In contrast, I suggest thatthe wooings, weddings, and banquets performed in The TamingoftheShrew do not merelyenact an acceptance or rejection ofthe subjection ofwives to their husbands. Ramer, they dramatize a marriage that leaves Kate and Petruchio negotiating not only gender hierarchies but also love, sexuality, and parental demands. The Turning's particular reiteration of marriage enacts a series of negotiations for power, none of which results in a marriage based on simple domination and submission or perfect egalitarianism. By exaggerating husbandly dominance, for example, Petruchio's performance draws our attention not to the power inherent in such dominance but rather to its inefficacy. Thereby a conception ofmarriage that expects hierarchy and mutualityto coincideeffortlesslyis questioned. Kateemphasizes the room marriage leaves for maneuverability by enacting one that incorporates her wit and sexuality into herveryperformances ofsubmission.Thus by thinkingofmarriage (andthefemalesubjectionitrequires) asperformative, we can read Kate's agency through her reiteration ofthe role ofwife—a reiteration that stresses her reshaping ofPetruchio and their marriage. By using performance theory to contend that gendered institutions such as marriage can and do change, I suggest that the very institutions which some critics suggest Kate is forced either to accept or to escape are instead critiqued—and perhaps even shaped—by her.4 Indeed, one of the reasons that the field of performance studies is so prevalent today and has so much to offer our readings ofthis play is its contention that performance has die potential to "provide a site for social and cultural resistance and the exploration ofalternative possibilities."5 The notion of performativity recently theorized by Judith Butler proposes a theoretical framework which allows that subjects can work from within the very power structures that bring them into being. For Butler it is the repetition required by all "ritual social dramas" that makes agency and even cultural change possible. To call gender performative, then, means that "the action ofgender requires a performance that is repeated. This repetition is at once a reenactment and reexperiencing ofa set ofmeanings already socially established."6 Buder's theory thus provides for alterationsbyarguingthatbecauseperformed categories require repetition, AmyL. Smith291 they make room for change. Thus gender is at once a "'thing done'—a pre-existingoppressivecategoryand a'doing'—aperformance thatputs conventionalattributesintopossiblydisruptiveplay."7Eachperformance, each repetition, can serve as a possible impetus for a critical reworking ofgender norms. While I use Buder's formulation of agency through repetition as a starting point, my work considers the historical and material contexts and...