‘Faming of the Shrews’: Medieval Drama and Feminist Approaches

Abstract

This article examines the growth of gendered critical readings of medieval drama and looks at the changes that have occurred during the last decades. The journey moves from the placement of women in a position of obscurity towards the acceptance of the distinctive contribution made through their roles as audience members, back-stage helpers, and their representation on stage, albeit played by men. Given that women characters in medieval drama have often been interpreted as unruly, or shrewish, this article examines how the lens of feminism brought the role of women in medieval drama increased exposure: the shrews were placed in the limelight. Using the five phases of revisioning a feminist education developed in the 1980s by American educationalist, Peggy McIntosh, the article analyses how each stage of feminist scholarship is linked to a particular set of ideological blueprints and demonstrates how the feminist scholarship of medieval drama replicates McIntosh's five phases of revisioning. The article concludes by investigating why feminist revisionist studies of medieval drama occurred so late in the day, in comparison to contemporary scholarship being undertaken in other areas of performance studies.