Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and Macbeth both place substantial emphasis on male-female relationships and gender dynamics. Both The Taming of the Shrew and Macbeth explore the notion of male-female relationships and gender dynamics in contrasted ways, and through each play, Shakespeare attempts to make a point about the role of gender in his character’s lives.
In Macbeth for example, Shakespeare explores the relationship between gender and power, portraying male characters as strong willed and courageous, but at the same time giving a female character-Lady Macbeth a ruthless, power-hungry personality which is typically more associated with masculinity. Gender plays more of a social and economic role in The Taming of the Shrew, and addresses gender roles in the context of courtship. In Macbeth, the character Macbeth is portrayed as powerful and courageous, but not particularly intelligent or willful.
The main source of Macbeth’s power stems from his wife, Lady Macbeth who is the brains behind the plot to murder King Duncan and seize the throne of Scotland. The type of power that Lady Macbeth wields over her husband is unusual in literature of this time, and certainly would have been atypical for a husband and wife during the time in which Macbeth is set. In an essay by Robert Kimbrough, he explains the extent which this relationship would have been atypical: “By Shakespeare’s day, the division of humanity within the evolving world of mind had reached a state as Marilyn French has forcefully demonstrated, of an almost absolute division of humanity, not into subtypes of one species, but into separated types, each treated each treated as if it were itself a separate species.
Two worlds had evolved, two cultures had been created, masculine and feminine-not in a parallel relationship, but hierarchical: masculine first, feminine second.” Lady Macbeth defies this convention, and is masculinized in order to justify the power she utilizes for her personal gain, and even wishes at one point that she were not a woman so that she could kill Duncan herself. She states, “unsex me here…Come to my woman’s breasts, and take my milk for gall” (1.5.42) which exhibits the frustration she has with her husband and how her desire for power is so strong that she would be willing to do anything, even be a man to obtain it. Lady Macbeth further embodies the relationship between gender and power by repeatedly emasculating Macbeth, as a strategy to convince him to murder Duncan.
Macbeth is not inherently evil the way Lady Macbeth is, and in the end only goes through with the murder in a desperate attempt to prove his manhood. In contrast to Lady Macbeth’s overt masculinity, Macbeth becomes further feminized, according to an article by Stephanie Chamberlain, titled “Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England.” In this article Chamberlain supports the fact that Macbeth has become feminized, writing that “To overcome her husband’s feminized reticence, Lady Macbeth assumes a masculinity she will prove unable to support.” It is unlikely that Macbeth would have murdered Duncan on his own accord, based on the shred of morals that he seems to still have left.
In these lines, he expresses his fear of going to Hell and his uncertainty on whether or not to go through with the assassination, “But in theses cases we still have judgment here; that we but teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague th’ inventor…” (1.7.7) This demonstrates the feminization of Macbeth because typically the female is portrayed as the weaker, less willful character in contrast to the role reversal that occurs in this play. The role of gender in The Taming of the Shrew has less to do with power and ambition, and more to do with social and economic status. The romantic leads in this play are younger, and have less serious concerns than Lady Macbeth and her husband do, which partially plays into the reasons why gender is not so much characterized by a power struggle for the throne as it is by economics.
The Taming of the Shrew delves into the social roles of men and women, particularly how gender affects the decision making process when it comes to marriage. This is most predominately observed in the Hortensio-Lucentio-Bianca triangle, in that the marriage that ultimately transpires between Lucentio and Bianca only occurs because Bianca’s father Baptista approves of Lucentio’s economic status. Bianca has no power or say in the situation, and marriage at this time for their social class is an institution of economics and power, not love. Bianca does seem to love Lucentio, however despite this the marriage will only occur once Baptista receives confirmation from Lucentio’s father that he does in fact have money.
This situation shows the inferiority of women, particularly Bianca’s character in The Taming of the Shrew, due to the marriage situation. Regardless of Bianca’s feelings, she can only marry Lucentio with approval from the family patriarch. Gender roles in the context of courtship are further expanded on, in a contrasting way with the character of Katherine. Katherine rebels against the role of female passivity which she is expected to live up to, by becoming a shrew. She is ill tempered and sharp tongued and seemingly has no interest in conforming to the feminine role which is expected of her. In her first meeting with Petruccio, she demonstrates her contempt for his character and her disdain for adhering to her expected gender role.
They get into an argument, and Katherine makes several sharp remarks to him such as, “If I be waspish, best beware my sting,” (2.1.210) once again rejecting the tradition of courtly love which she was expected to submit to. Petruccio and Katherine stop arguing long enough for Petruccio to lie to Baptista, and claim that Katherine has agreed to marry him. He confronts Katherine with the news, stating, “Thou must be married to no man but me, for I am he am born to tame you Kate, and bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate conformable as other household Kates.” (2.1.269) This comment by Petruccio marks the beginning of a change in Katherine, where she goes from shrew-like to obedient, submissive, and conformist to female gender roles.
Kate even gives a speech after being “tamed” by Petruccio about the importance for women to adhere to their roles as wives and be loyal to their husbands. In this play, it is important to remember while reading it that the interactions between the characters are actually part of the play within a play that Christopher Sly is viewing. Therefore, it is arguable that since the play is actually intended for the men in the Induction, it is intended reveal “erotic fantasy” and have “salacious appeal” as Shirley Garner suggests in her article titled “The Taming of the Shrew: Inside or Outside of the Joke?” Therefore, it is a possibility that Shakespeare intended the character of Katherine to be somewhat satirical, and possibly spoof the submissive roles of women in society.
If the play is read with the Induction in mind, it is easier to suspend one’s disbelief, and go along with the idea that a character like Kate would do such a turnaround and suddenly become servile and submissive towards Petruccio. It is at first somewhat hard to believe that a character like Kate would change so drastically, especially because at the beginning of the play, Kate’s personality was so comparable to Lady Macbeth’s. Both women are willful and headstrong, but in Kate’s case she completely changes by the ending. The male-female dynamic between Petruccio and Kate is drastically different than the one between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth because Kate ultimately submits to her husband while Lady Macbeth remains powerful and in charge of her husband.
This transformation becomes easier to explain when considered in the context of the play within the play, because we are reading a female character that was supposed to be presented in a way that would be considered ideal to the Christopher Sly character, and not necessarily Shakespeare. The notions that Christopher Sly would have had about marriage and the economic reasons for marriage, and the conception he surely had of how a wife should behave ultimately factors into the way gender roles affect the characters. In the end, The Taming of the Shrew and Macbeth both cover male-female relationships and gender dynamics but in two different ways.
Macbeth portrays a powerful woman who becomes so ambitious that she convinces her impressionable husband to murder the king of their country. Despite the peculiar way that Shakespeare reverses their gender roles, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth actually seem to function as a team, albeit a dysfunctional one. Similarly, in The Taming of the Shrew a pair of characters also ascends to power, however Lucentio and Bianca do so through a marriage that gives them economic and social power, rather than by stealing the throne of Scotland. Conversely, the relationship between Petruccio and Kate becomes a social model for what men thought their wives should act as during this time period, and goes on to show a more traditional male-female dynamic of dominant-submissive than the pair portrayed in Macbeth.
