Content area
Full Text
Shakespeare and the Shrew: Performing the Defiant Female Voice. Palgrave Shakespeare Studies Series. By ANNA KAMARALLI. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Illus. Pp. xii + 250. $90.00 cloth.
Reviewed by EVELYN GAJOWSKI
"Bitch, hag, nag, crone, virago, harridan, harpy, scold"-thus begins Anna Kamaralli's study of Shakespeare's shrews in performance, a refreshing addition to contemporary Shakespeare studies (1). She goes on to define shrewishness in terms of speech and shrews as "vocal women"-"women who continue to speak their truth about the world, no matter what means others employ to silence them" (1). To be a shrew is to be a subject in patriarchal dramatic worlds that construct female characters as objects. The book's scope is thus broader than one might assume, since Kamaralli's deconstruction of early modern English prescriptions regarding female chastity, silence, and obedience opens up the whole field of female subjectivity for interrogation. "Shrewish is a pejorative term, but describes a behavior that can frequently be viewed as brave, clever, noble or just," as Kamaralli notes (204). Indeed, perhaps her most significant contribution to contemporary Shakespeare studies here is her transvaluation of the shrew from negative to positive connotations. The book, as its title suggests, is centrally concerned with theater. Using genre, Kamaralli makes reference to a wealth of theatrical, cinematic, and TV productions, some of which are represented in a dozen black and white photographs sprinkled throughout.
The pièce de résistance of the book is chapter 3 that analyzes Goneril and Emilia from the tragedies and Isabella, Marina, and Paulina from plays designated as "notquite Tragedies" (152). Kamaralli is right to examine the implications of not only the elision of Emilia's lines in productions such as the 1990 BBC TV version and Oliver Parker's 1995 cinematic text but also the brutal sexual treatment of the Emilias of Zoe Wanamaker and Anna Patrick by their respective Iagos (145). Kamaralli also emphasizes the significance of Emilia's heroic defiance of...