Women and Shakespeare’s Cuckoldry Plays: Shifting Narrative of Marital Betrayal. By Cristina León Alfar

Abstract

Writing about Shakespeare’s cuckoldry plays is not new; the lengthy bibliography in Cristina León Alfar’s Women and Shakespeare’s Cuckoldry Plays makes that clear. However, Alfar’s goal is not to add yet another reading of Othello to that list. Rather, she seeks to refocus the lens through which such plays have been examined, choosing to privilege moments not when women are accused of infidelity but when they “seize the stories men tell and alter their terms” (5). Relying heavily on Judith Butler’s writings about how speech can both establish a position and contradict it, Alfar examines the ways that “the masculinist story, ‘you are a whore,’” serves to move the narrative from female infidelity to male betrayal (6). Not only do her nuanced readings emphasize that charges of female misbehavior stem from male anxiety, competition, and failure, but also, and more importantly, she pinpoints a central irony in these plays: defending...