Discourses about the early modern body are contradictory and inherently sexist. Women’s bodies were equally controlled and misunderstood by male society in the early modern period.

A woman’s physical body was considered an inverted version of a man’s, and her emotional tempers separated her from a man’s rationality. Men were considered leaders, and in their positions of power, the theory of the King’s two bodies makes a distinction between the body politic and the body natural. Renaissance men were expected to maintain their political body without interference from the natural body, and in this way, men can separate from their emotions. Additionally, discourses surrounding women restrained their natural and emotional bodies. Renaissance women were expected to be quiet, submissive bodies for which their husbands to bear children, but women who claimed agency were considered “shrews.”

 

In the early modern period, shrewish women were publicly shamed or tortured, and in Shakespeare’s works, we can see these patriarchal discourses reproduced. Shakespeare’s female characters are often mistreated for behaving shamefully, and in this project, I’ll consider how three of Shakespeare’s texts reproduce early modern discourses on gender. I claim my own division of bodies: the emotional body and the physical body, to explore how female and male characters in Taming of the Shrew,

Titus Andronicus, and Richard III express feelings of shame and pain. 

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It is crucial in discussions of Shakespeare’s texts to remember that these stories are plays to be performed onstage. To consider how texts reproduce, maintain, or subvert patriarchal discourses is to consider the performances of physical bodies onstage. While critics cannot prove if Shakespeare is consciously reproducing heterosexist discourses, it is fair to analyze the texts and the discourses the text engages with. Shakespeare’s texts include themes of abuse, shame, violence, and emotional and physical pain. Catherine Zusky explores recreations of onstage pain in Staging Pain in Late Medieval and Early Modern Drama, arguing that staged pain “functions as an intersection between embodiment and imagination” as commentary on surrounding tensions. Zusky notes the distinction between violence and the pain it causes, stating that violence may be “representable, public, and describable” where physical pain is an “inherently subjective, internal and indescribable experience” (vii). As I understand this in terms of Shakespeare’s female characters, women like Katherine, Lady Anne, and Lavinia suffer horrendous emotional and physical pain, but do so quietly. Meanwhile, their male counterparts lament in their emotions and boast in their battle scars. Zusky comments on Titus Andronicus and Titus’s approach to pain, noting that Titus worries not for extreme physical pain but laughs at his own misery (1). Titus and Lavinia are of special interest to me, but I’ll start with Taming.

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First, I’ll consider the abuse Katherine endures in Taming of the Shrew. This text reproduces patriarchal discourses through the practice of shrew-taming. Katherine is introduced as a shrew, immediately classified as bringing her father shame. Katherine is a woman with agency, and her husband-to-be, Petruchio, spends the length of the text trying to mold her into a submissive woman. Where Katherine is a temperamental witch, a shrew, or a falcon to be broken, Petruchio is her level-headed tamer. His taming techniques include publicly embarrassing her on her wedding day and starvation, but his abuses are never punished. Instead, Katherine is punished with physical pain for being overly-emotional. Katherine is tortured via starvation in 4.3, and Petruchio shames her as if it’s Katherine’s shrewish behavior that brings Petruchio emotional pains. He feigns as if his shrew-taming efforts deserve thanks, stating:

Here, love, thou seest how diligent I am, / To dress thy meat myself and bring it thee. / I am sure, sweet Kate, this kindness merits thanks. / What, not a word? Nay then, thou lov’st it not, / And all my pains is sorted to no proof. (4.3.40-44) 

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The pain Petruchio experiences is not real pain, but a manipulation tactic that invalidates Katherine’s physical pain and validates Petruchio’s abusive efforts. Petruchio inhabits the emotional body and evades physical discomfort, but Richard, Duke of Gloucester, experiences pain in the emotional and the physical. In Shakespeare’s Richard III, the title character bemoans his physical form, which causes his emotional body to guide his behaviors. Richard III is a revenge tragedy, and in place of a romance is Richard’s revenge plot and deep obsession to become England’s king. Richard experiences emotional pain and physical insecurity, but his emotional body dominates. Discourses surrounding masculinity within the text frame Richard as exceptionally emotional and subject to rage. Richard feels ashamed of his deformed body and behaves irrationally as he murders members of the royal court, including women and children. 

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Richard’s masculine emotions, those that are powerful, violent, and selfish, are validated by the text and therefore reproduce patriarchal discourses on masculinity. Richard is not a paragon of masculinity, but his revenge is justified by his anger, and his actions are driven by emotions. Richard cares not for the physical pain of his victims or the emotional pain of the survivors. The Duke of Gloucester murders Lady Anne, who shames him by betraying him, as well as the two young boys, who shame his future title. Wholly selfish, Richard understands his own misery and uses his own monstrosity to manipulate. Richard abuses his family in favor of power and manipulates the court with threats, as he does to Queen Margaret:

Let me put in your minds, if you forget, / What you have been ere this, and what you are; / Withal, what I have been, and what I am. (1.3.135-138) 

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Richard understands his own monstrosity, both in body and behavior, and his emotional pain creates physical pain for others. He cares not for the death of Lady Anne, his brother Clarence, or the children, nor the emotional pains this causes for his mother and Queen Margaret. While punished with death in the final battle, Richard escapes physical harm throughout the text and instead wallows in his own emotional turmoil, manifesting physical pain in others. Richard claims masculine agency as a deformed monster with uncontrollable emotions, validated in his thirst for revenge. Meanwhile, the women of the text are left shamed, scorned, or dead.

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In my exploration of three Shakespeare texts, I’ve noticed themes of shame and pain. Katherine is shamed for being a shrew and punished with tortue, Richard is ashamed of his deformity and punishes others, and Titus and Lavinia both experience intense shame and pain. Interestingly, I’m not the only scholar to notice Shakespeare’s fixation with shame. Ewan Fernie writes about shame in Shakespeare in a book of the same title, and Chapter 4 explores shame as a dramatic function. Fernie argues that shame in Shakespeare has been used to repress female characters through oppressive measures, such as public shaming. However, Fernie explores Shakespeare’s interest in shame “as a psychological, an ethical, and ritual experience,” and a “transforming moment” which may “motivate or complete the dramatic action” (74). Shakespeare’s characters are often motivated by their desires, and shame as a dramatic function can be argued as Shakespearean in nature. Shakespeare’s works include a complex relationship with shame as an emotion and an act, and Fernie recognizes shaming women and argues that Shakespeare “actively perpetuates” this ritual shaming through gendered discourse (75). Shakespeare’s texts perpetuate problematic discourses, especially as these texts attempt to subvert gender roles for humor. The ritual performance of shame in Shakespeare is often a gendered performance, where female shame is expected but male shame is surprising. 

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Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is of special interest to me in representations of female agency, masculine power, violence, misogyny, and shame. Originally inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s Titus recreates the infamous rape and mutilation in Lavinia. Shakespeare modifies this original text by including a more violent mutilation, in which Lavinia loses her tongue, as well as her hands, to keep her from speaking or weaving the names of her rapists. Shakespeare’s text alludes to Metamorphoses directly, but modifies elements of the original story to emphasize uncontrollable male lust and loss of female chastity. This text engages with discourses about virginity and chastity, as well as a father’s shame when his daughter is deflowered. Bernice Harris discusses representations of virginity and chastity in Titus Andronicus in a chapter about sexual virtue and masculine power from her book, Sexual Engendering: Constructions of Chastity and Power in Marlowe and Shakespeare. Harris makes the distinction between Christian and Roman ideologies about virginity, in which Roman ideology believes virginity is a readiness for heterosexual consummation and chastity is a state that can be returned to, while Christian ideology connects virginity with morality and claims that a loss of virginity is shameful when beyond the sanctity of marriage. Harris considers how female agency can be contained by masculine power and used in exchanges of male authority. 

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Harris explores representations of patriarchal discourses in Titus Andronicus through the circulations and exchanges of power. At her very introduction, Lavinia is framed as a pawn in exchange for power between Titus, Bassianus, and Saturninus. Lavinia is “Rome’s rich ornament” (1.1.52),  a desirable body used as a pawn in a political chess game between men. Harris details masculine political power, as well as the use of marriage in politics. Saturninus desires Lavinia as his mistress, as does Bassianus, which strips her of her agency and claims her as a physical body, necessary for marriage. Lavinia’s physical body is not her own, as she loses sexual chastity once raped. Where Lavinia is Rome’s chaste virgin, Queen Tamora inhabits the gendered trope of the evil Queen, the witch, or the anti-virgin who sends Lavinia to her end. Harris notes that both Tamora and Lavinia are used in exchanges of power because their bodies have political value. Where Tamora has value because she is a stolen queen, Lavinia’s value is “contingent on the presumption of her virginity” and what it represents (24). 

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As I’ve mentioned, Lavinia’s rape scene is modified from its Metamorphoses origin. Lavinia’s rapists are lustful, and Tamora tells Chiron and Demetrius to “satisfy” their lust on her (2.3.180). With few speaking lines, Lavinia’s entire character is devoted to her rape plot, and once raped and mutilated, she becomes monstrous, deserving of her father’s pity and shame. Lavinia loses her voice, her hands, and her humanity, and instead functions within a Shakespearean narrative of shame to further Titus’s emotional pain. In my initial analysis of this play, I noticed that Lavinia suffers intense physical and emotional pains, but does so silently. Her rape happens offstage, leaving her without a place to scream or fight, and returns to the story already bloodied and mutilated. When Lavinia is found bleeding out, Marcus monologues about the tragedy without helping her. The spectacle of Lavinia’s rape is more necessary to the plot than the pain the woman herself experiences. In this way, Titus Andronicus reproduces a sexist discourse that expects women to suffer silently, while glorifying

male pain.

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Titus Andronicus, military leader and father of many sons, experiences intense physical and emotional pain. He experiences the deaths of his sons, barters for two of them by dismembering his own hand, and feels so much anger and grief over their deaths that he swears revenge on Tamora by baking her sons into a pie. Titus is a force, terrifying in his intensity, but what’s most problematic about his character is that he believes the rape of his only daughter is a personal defeat. Shame functions heavily in Titus’s reactions to Lavinia, and his references to her rape are certainly literary. Titus makes intertextual references to the rape of Lucrece and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, referring to himself as Virginius when he kills Lavinia in the finale. Titus grieves for the deflowering of his daughter and loss of a political chess piece, emphasizing his own shame. Titus recognizes his own tears of shame, but the validation he receives from other male characters emphasizes his personal sorrows, as Marcus does here:

O heavens, can you hear a good man groan / And not relent, or not compassion him? / Marcus, attend him in his ecstasy, / That hath more scars of sorrow in his heart / Than foemen’s marks upon his battered shield, / But yet so just that he will not revenge. / Revenge the heavens for old Andronicus! (4.2.124-130). 

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Lavinia’s rape is an attack on Titus, and an attack on the head of Rome is an attack on Rome. Tamora targets Titus by making her sons rape Lavinia, thus engaging in war. Dominant discourses about political power normalize this kind of behavior, but Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus glorifies violence and pain and can be considered problematic. I believe that while this text is responding to dominant beliefs of the era, Titus as a character makes some questionable choices, exhibiting traits of toxic masculinity, at the very least. Where Titus downplays his reactions to physical pain, he does express sorrow and shame over losing Lavinia. He believes Lavinia’s rape is worse than death because it shames him and Rome. Lavinia’s mutilated physical body triggers Titus’s emotional body. Losing virginity is losing the possibility for marriage, and a lost daughter is lost prospects. Titus is so overwhelmed with loss at the play’s finale that he decides to remove Lavinia’s shame with his own hand, or rather, his sword: 

Titus: Was it well done of rash Virginius / To slay his daughter with his own right hand / Because she was enforced, stained, and deflowered?

Saturninus: It was, Andronicus. 

Titus: Your reason, mighty lord? 

Saturninus: Because the girl should not survive her shame, / And by her presence still renew his sorrows. 

Titus: A reason, mighty, strong, and effectual; / A pattern, precedent and lively warrant / For me, most wretched, to perform the like. / Die, die, Lavinia, and thy shame with thee, / And with thy shame thy father’s sorrow die. (5.3.36-48)

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Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus is one text of many that reproduces patriarchal, heterosexist discourses. Early modern ideologies that smother women’s agency through their physical and emotional bodies reproduce in onstage performances, and certain texts include gendered performances that must be honored in order to draw dramatic meaning from the text. Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, and Richard III all present characters who battle shame and physical pain, often emphasizing female suffering and male glory. Female characters such as Katherine, Lady Anne, and Lavinia suffer pains without victory; however, their male counterparts such as Petruchio, Richard, and Titus engage with shame and pain as if they can best it, even if consumed by it. These male characters might emphasize a certain kind of masculinity, that which is cunning, weak, or powerful, but their emotional spheres are not criticized as the emotions of female characters are. Titus and Richard are validated in their distress, and Petruchio gets away with domestic abuse. These three texts engage with and reproduce sexist discourses, but to claim these texts as wholly problematic and therefore undeserving of critical attention is ridiculous. I believe scholars can analyze texts and draw conclusions from painful narratives even when the text reproduces problematic beliefs.
 

Works Cited

 

Harris, Bernice. Chapter 1: “Sexual Virtue and Masculine Power in Titus Andronicus,” Sexual Engendering: Constructions of Chastity and Power in Marlowe and Shakespeare, The University of Tulsa, Ann Arbor, 1993. pp 17-47. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.humboldt.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/304081665?accountid=11532.

 

Fernie, Ewan. Chapter 4: “Shame in Shakespeare.” Shame in Shakespeare. Routledge, 2003, pp. 74–108.

 

Shakespeare, William. Richard III. New Folger's ed. New York: Washington Square Press. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. Print. 1996.

 

Shakespeare, William. Taming of the Shrew. New Folger's ed. New York: Washington Square Press. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. Print. 1992.

 

Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus. New Folger's ed. New York: Washington Square Press. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. Print. 2005.

 

Zusky, Catherine C. Staging Pain in Late Medieval and Early Modern Drama, University of California, Santa Barbara, Ann Arbor, 2015. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.humboldt.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1765692862?accountid=11532.