「지빠귀부리왕」의 동화적 프레임과「말괄량이 길들이기」읽기

This essay examines The Taming of the Shrew from the fairy tale frame of “King Thrushbeard.” It is well known that Shakespeare often used frame stories for writing his dramas. Before Shakespeare wrote The Taming of the Shrew quite a few shrew-taming stories existed and it is suggested that Shakespeare read some of them. Just as Tillyard finds similarities between “King Thrushbeard” and The Taming of the Shrew, I intend to read The Taming of the Shrew within a shrew-taming frame. However, keeping an eye on the similarities between the two stories, I focus on the differences between them, which were mainly caused by the shift from the medieval historical and economical system to the early modern one. As for the causes of the differences, firstly, the social, political, and religious circumstances are considered. The demand for the establishment of a powerful modern nation and the Reformation required a powerful patriarchal society and a solemn religious household, which led to justification for suppressing woman’s will and speech. Therefore, the focus of the two stories shifts from the suppression of woman’s pride as the cause of the original sin to the control of woman’s tongue and shrewishness as the necessity for the subjugation of women. Secondly, the transition from the medieval economic system to early capitalism changed the economic role of women. With the rise of capitalism, the economic value of women lay not in domestic production but in the consumption of market goods. Therefore the focus of the taming of women shifts from making women as good domestic producers to proper consumers of market goods. Whereas King Thrushbeard imposes the duty of production on the princess, Petruchio controls Kate’s consumption. Consideration of the specialties of The Taming of the Shrew within the frame of shrew-taming stories offers an effective way of understanding the play. KCI Citation Count: 0