Meat Makes the Man: Early Modern English Theater, Animal Flesh, and Socioeconomic Relations (Food and Medical History Series)
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| "The Butcher Shop" 1568 Joachim Beuckelaer |
Our past series examining the field of food studies within and outside of the academy focused on how food history is a growing field whose parameters are still in the process of being defined. Within the historiography, early studies of food typically came out of the field of medical history as medical historians were trained to study the impact of a single material or substance on society and substances, such as sugar, transformed from medicine to food within the cultural imagination. Today’s post is the first of an ongoing series, which will discuss the intersections between food and medical history.
Conceptions of the human body
are not fixed and trans-historical, but rather mutable, shifting in accordance
with scientific and social influences. Early modern English writers and
audience had a humoral understanding of health, which was portrayed in the
theatre of the time. Humorological systems relied upon a balance, which any
inputs or outputs could disrupt to the detriment of the individual’s wellbeing. Food, thus, was an agent able to
provoke change and in this disturbance it could impact one’s sexual desires and
gender representation. At the time, not only the health but also the sex of
bodies was considered differently. In the one sex model, women were less
perfect versions of men and had the same anatomy, only inverted. With enough
heat, women could become men. Additionally, humoral imbalances would influence
how masculine a person acted. These beliefs are evident in the plays: William
Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew (c.
1590) and John Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed (c.1610).
The following post will use these plays to investigate the impact of food’s
role as a substance on humorological understandings of sexuality and gender
dynamics during the Early Modern period in England.
Understanding the depiction
of the impact of food upon sexuality in theatre necessitates an explanation of
humoral physiology itself and its pervasiveness. The body was believed to be filled with four substances, the
humors, which when in balance indicated health. The humors, blood, black bile,
yellow bile, and phlegm, were attributed with different qualities, which, if
over-or under-represented, influenced a person’s temper. Blood was warm and
moist and indicated a sanguine, courageous, hopeful, or amorous person. Black bile was cold, dry, melancholic,
despondent, sleepless, and irritable. Yellow bile was warm and dry, choleric,
easily angered, and bad tempered. Phlegm was cold and moist, calm and
unemotional.[i]
An overrepresentation of any of these substances would then over-represent
themselves in a person’s temperament. A humoral body was porous, reacting to
excretion, alimentation, menstruation, and lactation. The boundary of the body
was thus vulnerable, able to be physically altered by absorbing the world
around it.[ii]
For Europeans, this explanation of the body’s composition and functioning was
prevalent from the classical period until its end after a slow and incomplete
decline starting in the seventeenth century, with remnants still existing in
the nineteenth century.
The idea that food and drink
could influence the balance of humors arose in Ancient Greece. While humoral
physiological notions may have some roots in Mesopotamia and or ancient Egypt,
Hippocrates is commonly accredited with applying the idea to medicine and Galen
popularized the concept. Galen believed that different foods had varying
potential to cause the body to produce different humors. Warm foods tended to
produce yellow bile and cold foods, phlegm.[iii]
Galenic medicine and theory held true throughout the early modern period. Like
Galen, Early Modern English men and women believed that the food and drink they
ingested would alter their humors to varying degrees. Beer, which was the basic
source of nourishment in England, resulted in hefty bodies, and was associated
with phlegm.[iv]
Such beliefs are evident also even in texts through the eighteenth century in
their discussion of how the substance affects temperaments.[v]
While these theories would be altered and replaced centuries later by cellular
pathology and germ theory, humorology prevailed throughout the early modern
period.
Although it is clear that
foods were considered able to influence the body’s humoral temperament, the
connection with gender and sexual drive is less evident. Women were believed to
be wet and cold. They were also thought to be more sexual because their wetness
signified the leakiness of their vessels and the lack of control that they had
over their bodies and desires.[vi] Excessive wetness would overpower their
cold passivity. Men, on the other hand, were supposed to be hot and dry. Yet
eating certain foods and drinking particular substances might alter these
dispositions. Gendered bodies were thus inscribed by humorological theory.[vii]
Every ingestion and excretion characterized sexual proclivity. That women
urinated more often than men was viewed as a sign of their moistness;[viii]
their inability to control their “leaky vessels” made them more sexual. The
whore was the leakiest of all women. Since men were able to contain more
liquids, the male body was seen as a container of liquids (humors), and
masculinity was measured by containment and control.[ix]
In the following plays, the substances imbibed and consumed alter sexuality.
These two plays are most remarkable for the emphasis of how meat could be used
as a way to control sexuality.
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare demonstrates the shifts in gender and
sexuality that food, more specifically meat, induces in the characters’
temperaments. In the play within
the play, the beautiful Bianca has many admirers (Lucentio, Gremio, and
Hortensio) but her father will not allow her to marry until her older, shrewish
sister Katherina does. Petruchio of Verona comes to Padua in search of a wife
and decides to marry Katherina. He forces them to leave for his country house
before their wedding feast and continues to deprive her of food and sleep for
several days, pretending that he cannot allow her to eat his poor food,
specifically meat, or lay on his inferior bed. Petruchio thus continues to tame
Katherina’s willfulness and on their return to Padua, she obeys his commands.
He proves his success in taming Katherina when at a wedding banquet for
Hortensio, he wins the wager of who has the most dutiful wife when Katherina
obeys his command to come and lectures the others on the importance of wifely
submission. The major shifts in the gender dynamics of the play thus center on
food. Katherina’s taming first begins when she is deprived of her wedding
banquet, continues as she is deprived of food at Petruchio’s country house, and
is complete with the lecture she gives at her sister’s wedding banquet. The
analysis that follows will focus on how food, especially meat, affects the
gender and sexual dynamics of the couple as it produces changes in their
humoral physiology.
Katherina’s gender
disposition shifts dramatically in the play. At the start of the play, she is described as “much more of a shrew of thy impatient humour” (3.2.29).[x]
Katherina’s temperament
is here linked to her humorological physiology or disposition. This
understanding of her character as shrewish, or choleric, is prevalent
throughout the play. When she first meets Petruchio he says that he was told that she
was “rough, and coy, and sullen” (2.1.242). However he lies and tells
her that he thinks that she is “pleasant, gamesome, passing courteons, / but
slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers,” (2.1.244-45) which is in reality the kind of temperament he will aim to give
her after he tames her wild identity.[xi]
By manipulating her diet, Petruchio manages to render Katherina’s disposition
more “feminine” so that she may fulfill her prescribed sexual and gender roles.
Petruchio
tames Kate’s choleric or difficult, masculine nature by depriving her of meat.
After they are wed, Petruchio wants them to rush off to his country home and
will not let Katherina eat any of their wedding feast.[xii]
At his home, they are served mutton, but Petruchio claims that the meat is bad
and that they cannot eat it because
Twas burnt and dried
away, / And I expressly am forbid to touch it, for it engenders choler,
planteth anger, and better ‘twere both of us did fast, /Since, of ourselves,
ourselves are choleric, /Than feed it with such over-roasted flesh... and for
this night we’ll fast for company. /Come, I will bring thee to thy bridal
chamber.” (4.1.150)
This passage is one of the most
important of the entire play because it demonstrates how Petruchio will tame
Katherina. He will not let her eat
meat, which increases choler and would only make her more choleric or shrewish.
Choler was associated with the humor yellow bile, which was though to make one
warm and dry and thus more masculine. Petruchio’s denial of meat is thus an
attempt to keep Katherina from becoming more masculine or shrewish and to
rebalance her temperament. He also wants to deny her meat because choleric
dispositions were thought to be easily angered and bad tempered, and thus
harder to control. It is interesting to note that Petruchio also deprives
himself of meat here. He must rationalize his refusal of the meat as unfit for
dinner since he claimed that it is burnt. Thus he is so committed to altering
Katherina’s temper that he will sacrifice his own humoral balance. Petruchio’s servants comment on his
attempt to change his wife’s disposition through altering what she consumes.
Peter states, “he kills her in her
own humour”(4.1.168). Petruchio literally
kills Kate’s masculine disposition by killing the choleric humor that produces
it. This deprivation of meat is clearly strategic. His plan is revealed when he
says “she ate no meat today, nor none shall eat” (4.1.184) and that “thus [he]’ll curb her headstrong humour” (4.1.196). Although she continues to crave meat, Petruchio instructs his
staff against serving her any. She feels famished and doesn’t care what food she eats, but
insists that she must eat. Grumio replies, “I fear it is too choleric a meat.
How say you to a fat tripe finely broiled?” (4.3.20). She
replies in the affirmative but he reconsiders, “ I cannot tell, I fear ‘tis
choleric. What say you a piece of beef and mustard?”(4.3.24). She says that it
is “a dish that I do love to feed upon” (4.3.25), an indication of her habit of
meat eating. Such excess may be the reason for her more masculine representation
and choleric personality. Then Grumio says, “Ay but the mustard is too hot a
little” (4.3.26). Kate says “why then the beef, and let the mustard rest”
(4.3.27). He decides to give her nothing. At this point in the
play, however, it is not clear whether Petruchio’s prohibition of meat will
make Katherina fit her gendered role. When Petruchio and Hortensio enter with
meat, Kate tries to eat it, yet fails.[xiii]
At first Petruchio says that he is so kind because he dresses the meat
himself and brings it to her (4.3.40), but then he says to take away the meat
(4.3.35). Kate begs that he let it stand (4.3.45), but instead he gives the
platter to Hortensio. She must then watch
Hortensio eat the meat she cannot have. Petruchio encourages him to actually “eat it up
all, Hortensio, if thou lovest me” (4.3.50). Hortensio’s dining assists in
Katherina’s taming. Here the gender binary
is made far clearer. Hortensio is allowed and even encouraged by Petruchio to
eat meat, while Kate is denied the choleric substance. Katherina’s female
embodiment is intensified by both her lack of access to the choleric,
masculine, empowering product and by Petruchio’s control over that access. The
success of Petruchio’s scheme start to become evident when he famously
convinces her to say that the sun is the moon when clearly she doesn’t believe
it to be so. However, the transformation is still not fully complete. She begs
Petruchio to allow them to go to Hortensio’s wedding feast, where she would
potentially regain access to meat. However, she is only allowed to go when she
kisses him, an act that further grounds her sexual role and femininity (5.1.138). Now after he
demonstration of affection, he believes that her risk of becoming choleric
again has waned. He is so confident after her kiss that he actually encourages
her, alongside the other guests, to do “nothing but sit and sit, and eat and
eat” (5.2.12). Her humors have
been rebalanced and she has returned to her feminine role. She now is able to
eat again, possibly even meat, until perhaps she becomes imbalanced again in
the future.
Later when Petruchio competes to see who has the most obedient
wife, he wins when Katherina is the only wife to do as her husband demands and
admonishes the wives for not obeying their husbands. She says that she now sees
their “strength as weak” (5.2.174). She commands, “vail your stomachs, for it is no boot, / and place your hands
below your husband’s foot”(5.2.176-177). The note clams that the
phrase “vail your stomachs” means to “lower your pride.”[xiv]
However, I think something far more complex is being stated here that relates
to medical views on health in diet, disposition, and gender presentation. When
Katherina says, “vail your stomachs,” she is telling the women to watch what
they eat so that they do not become too choleric. This is made clearer by the
fact that before Kate is tamed and has yet to be deprived of meat, Petruchio
says, “I know you have a stomach”( 4.1.145 ). Katherina’s reference to
women’s stomachs here is thus suggestive of their masculine cravings for the
meat that would make them manlier. Katherina’s transformation is completed when
she forsakes the banquet to leave and have sex with Petruchio. Now her sexual
identity is cemented and she is firmly rooted in a female gender representation.
Petruchio’s masculinity is
emboldened in the play by his domination of Katherina, affected through the
withholding of food, and meat in particular. Although his gender disposition
does not undergo as drastic a change as that of Kate, his masculinity is strengthened
by his consumption of meat, just as hers is by her lack of access to it. Before
their wedding, Kate describes Petruchio as: “full of spleen” (3.2.10). The editor’s note claims that the spleen was associated with both
melancholy and laughter, both high spirits and irritability.[xv]
Indeed, each of the humors was associated with an organ: blood with the liver,
yellow bile with the gall bladder, phlegm with the brain and lungs and black
bile with the spleen, which was cold and dry. Men were supposed to be hot and
dry, according to humoral conceptions of the body. In describing Petruchio as
splenetic, Kate is thus suggesting that he is not fully a man. Petruchio, too,
is imbalanced and melancholic. At first when he tries to tame her, Petruchio
refrains from eating meat (4.1.168). The mirroring illusions he must create, in order to tame her,
demasculinizes him at first. He set up a false world, not the “right” one, in
which men are men and women are women. However, when he asserts control over
the meat (4.3.40), he regains some of his masculinity. In the end, his gender identity is
reaffirmed and rebalanced when Kate kisses him, and is cemented through the
consummation of their marriage when they leave the banquet to go to bed.
Meat makes the man in Shakespeare’s
Taming of the Shrew. John Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed, written as a kind of sequel
to the play also makes use of meat and humoral physiology in its narrative, but
with some alterations.
In the play, Kate,
Petruccio’s former wife has died and he has just remarried. [xvi] His new wife, Maria, proves to be head
strong like Katherina. However, his former shrew-taming tactics do not work on
Maria. She refuses to consummate their marriage until Petruccio alters his
behavior. She barricades herself on the upper floor of her house with a group
of other women who have chosen to abstain from sex with their husbands. During
this time, the women feast on meat and drink. Petruccio attempts various
methods to alter his temperament. At the end of the play her demands are met
and Maria succeeds in taming Petruccio. Throughout the play there are multiple
references to food, meat specifically, and the humors. However, since Fletcher
rather than Shakespeare wrote this play, some of the tactics employed differ.
Attempts to manipulate the
humors via the control of consumption, as a means of empowerment, also occur in
this play. Bianca, Kate’s sister, warns Maria that “since his first wife set
him going, / nothing can bind his rage” (1.2.59-60). She wants Maria to succeed where her sister failed and be
able to resist Petruccio’s taming methods. She asks if Maria has “a stomach
to’t” (1.2.62). This question implies that her ability to take on this
challenge depends upon her temperament and is also thus dependent on her diet
or stomach. She agrees and decides that she will no longer be “the gentle, tame
Maria” (1.2.76), “but a tempest”(1.2.78), and will refuse to have sex with
Petruccio. In order to be a tempest, she will need to alter her humoral
disposition or temperament. Later, it becomes evident that she does so, through
the consumption of meat (2.1.118).
A high intake of meat will cause an imbalance of her humors and will
make her choleric, violent, hot-tempered, unscrupulous, and vengeful.[xvii]
With these characteristics, she hopes to have the strength to accomplish her
mission. She then vows to do better than Katherina, who “took a scurvy course”
(1.2.143). Maria understands that she cannot be malnourished, as Kate was when
she stopped eating meat, if she hopes to tame Petruccio. However she is so
confident in her abilities that she claims that she will conquer him so
successfully that “aged women, /wanting both teeth and spleen, may master him”
(1.2.176). Her discussion of spleen, which is a reference to black bile,
demonstrates that Fletcher, like Shakespeare, was writing with an awareness of
the humors. His bodily references to the stomach and digestion are made with
this humoral understanding.
When Petruccio is unable to
sleep with his wife he turns to food, as he did with Kate, as a means to try
and control her. He proclaims, “he shall rise again, if there be truth/ in eggs
and buttered parsnips” (1.3.15). These two foods were conventional aphrodisiacs
of the time.[xviii]
Thus he tries first to persuade her to sleep with him by forcing her to eat
these foods. Kate had a reputation of being a shrew before they met so
Petruccio knew that he would need strong methods to conquer her. Since Maria
was initially of a gentle or subdued temperament before she took her vow to
tame Petruccio, her resilience was unexpected. As a result, he first attempts
to begin his conquest with milder tactics. However, these methods are to no
avail. In a discussion with Sophocles, they conclude that she is “an ill wife”
(1.3.125) and that she was “never virtuous” (1.3.126) or good-natured. Despite
more pleading, Maria will not go to bed with Petruccio. He thus proclaims that
he “must not to bed with this stomach” (1.3.223). He realizes that he cannot
sleep with her due to her current disposition. In order to tame her he decides
that Maria will have “no meat, lady” (1.3.223). In Taming of the Shrew, he tamed Kate by depriving her of meat in
order to rebalance her humors. Again, Petruccio is attempting similar tactics.
This passage also has a double meaning. She will not receive his “meat” or
sexual flesh until her temperament changes. She then replies nonchalantly that
he may “feed where [he] will…/for I’ll none with ye” (1.3.225). She does not
respect his threat of depriving her of literal meat and for the sexual meat,
she tells him to find another love, suggesting a dairy maid, because she is not
interested in having sex with him. He once again asks for her to come to their
marriage bed (1.3.228) but she continues to refuse. He repeats that she will
“neither have meat” (1.2.154-155).
Like in Taming of the Shrew,
he clearly wants to deprive his wife of literal meat because she will not make
love to him and he thinks that in doing so he will change her stomach and cure
her of her illness caused by a humoral imbalance. However, Fletcher’s use of
meat is slightly different than Shakespeare’s. In this play, Petruccio’s
discussion of meat is a pun. Meat is both food and sexual flesh.
While food imagery for Maria
is used in a similar manner as Shakespeare’s description of Kate’s resistance,
this imagery for Petruccio is more complicated. When she decides that she will
not have sex with Petruccio, she says that she will “keep fasting/[her] valiant
bridegroom” (1.2.96-97). He will try to tame her by depriving her of physical
meat in order to temper her choler, but she will deprive him of her meat, or
sexual flesh. He is discussed as being starved of sex, made to fast and is left
hungry. She will not take his sexual meat and will not give him hers. By
depriving him of the ability to eat her meat, she hopes to tame his
temperament. Her flesh is meat that would increase his choler, and she already
thinks that he is “too hot”(1.3.201). Thus she must not let him have her if she
is to take away his title as a “brave wife breaker” (1.3.267) and “tame”
(1.3.268) him.
Both characters continue to
try and tame each other by using meat. Maria wants to stop Petruccio’s
consumption of meat in order to reduce his choler for the purpose of
diminishing his feelings of entitlement towards sex. If she succeeds, his diet
will desexualize him. Petruccio also wants to deprive Maria of meat to tame her
choler. However, he wants to lessen her power so that she will not be so
resistant to having sex with him. He thinks that this diet will make her more
sexual. While it may seem contradictory at first that they are both trying to
cause the other to fast for different sexual goals, it is important to remember
that humoral understandings of the body were different for males and females.
Although the characters are held to the one-sex model, males and females still
had different humoral temperaments and these alterations in humors would affect
their sexual drives differently depending on their gender. When Maria, who is
supposed to, as a woman, be cold and wet, is too choleric, she is harder to
control. This more violent temperament overpowers her wetness and sexual
appetite. However, when Petruccio
is too choleric, the violent temperament makes him feel too entitled to have
sex, which overpowers the dry and controlled disposition that men were supposed
to have. Meat, either in the form of food or in sexual flesh, makes them both
too hot and each one, both headstrong, must try to stop the other from eating
it in order to obtain their goals. Access to meat will determine who holds the
power in the relationship.
Maria tries to prevent
Petruccio from gaining access to her sexual meat by locking herself among other
women on the highest floor of her house. Petruccio however will attempt to
“starve ‘em out” (1.3.279). He
says that if she gives “no sport, [she will have] no pie” (1.3.275). He tells
Jacques to make “an imposition upon souse and puddings…/ that the women / may
not relieve yon rebels” (1.4.13-15). Souse is a part of a pig or other animal
that is pickled.[xix] He is
telling Jacques, as he had earlier told Grumio in Taming of the Shrew, to not bring his wife meat. Livia, Bianca’s
cousin, comes to the floor and brings food.[xx]
The other women at first do not trust her. They think that she “hast been kept
up tame” (2.1.19) and is an accomplice to their husbands, but she insists that
she has “come/ to do as [they] do” (2.1.15-16) and hide from men. Bianca still
worries that she is a traitor who will “curse [their] meat” (2.1.101) and thus
their venture. However, they are
finally convinced when she produces “cold meat/ and tripe of proof”
(2.1.118). Her gift of cold meats
and entrails of cows or swine proved to the women that she is on their side,
for meat is the empowering substance. The women then gorge themselves on the
meat and get drunk on the wine and beer that she also brings.
Petruccio obviously has not
succeeded in depriving Maria of meat for she has maintained a supply to
consume. He begins to tire of this rift, but he believes that “if [he] offer[s]
peace, / she’ll urge her own conditions” (2.5.6-7) and he is still not ready
for that consequence. Although he
knows that he is currently losing the battle and is suffering, his friends
encourage him to “clap spurs on, and in this you’ll deal with temperance”
(2.5.30). They still think that he has a chance to rid her of this humoral
imbalance and make her subservient to his general will and more specifically,
his sexual desire. Time passes and the women still deny the men. Therefore at
the end of Act 2, Scene 5, Petruccio promises to try and find some agreement
over a supper that the women have accepted to attend. He says that he is
“roguey and scurvey” (3.1.19). This deprivation of sexual meat has wrought
horrors on his health. He is malnourished and his choler is diminishing,
evident in his suggestion to at least try and speak with the women. The women
though continue to obtain their choleric sustenance from chambermaids who “give
‘em flesh” (3.1.56). After the dinner
Pedro and Jacques discuss the events that took place at the supper. Pedro
insists that Petruccio has “found his full match now” (3.2.6). Jacques mentions that during the supper
“she looked on him” (3.2.7) and Pedro wonders if it was “scurvily” (3.2.8). He
wants to know if Maria is beginning to feel warmth for Petruccio due to lack of
certain nourishment that would change her disposition and thus her inclinations
towards her husband. However, Jacques says that her look “was of no great
affection” (3.2.9) and she had acted obstinate throughout the night. She has
not changed noticeably. Petruccio’s power however has diminished. Jacques fears
how “he’s fasted” (3.2.47) and without the sexual meat, he is weaker. When
Sophocles asks Petruccio if he touched her at all during the night and he
replies that he hadn’t (3.3.1-2), Sophocles asks, “Where was your courage?”
(3.3.3). Petruccio only answers by asking, “Where was her obedience?” (3.3.4).
Sophocles has noticed that Petruccio is no longer as brave and his choleric
disposition has begun to be tempered. Maria, however, still is disobedient.
Petruccio is starving while she continues to feast. Sophocles then suggests
that Petruccio rape Maria (3.3.8) but Petruccio says that he “never could, nor
should [have sex with her], til she consented; / and [he] might take her body
prisoner, / but for her mind or appetite- ” (3.3.15) he could never have
control. Her will and consumption, fueled by meat, has dominance. Meanwhile Petruccio
wishes that he could just have “a kiss or two / to close [his] stomach”
(3.3.34-35). He thinks such a gesture would help maintain his disposition and
keep him from starving. He has successfully been blocked from obtaining sexual
meat and is left to eat his words. Each night he has a “diet of the same dish”
(3.3.160): spurs of “’thou knave’ / or ‘thou whore’ for digestion”
(3.3.161-162). He may feel sick (3.3. 170) but Maria continues to eat and
flourish.
Due to his lack of success Petruccio
then tries different tactics than controlling meat to tame Maria, although she
continues to work to obstruct his access to that substance. He pretends that
his sickness worsens in order to gain control over her through her pity. Maria
however does not submit. In replying to questions about his condition and the
state of the care he is receiving, she insists that “meat … / he shall not
want” (3.5.32-33). She says that he will not be deficient in meat, yet
Petruccio asks if she will “starve him here” (3.5.41). In his opinion she has
lied because he has been deprived of sexual meat for a very long time. He
continues to squabble and speak of his sickness until Petronius, Maria’s
father, suggests that he go to Bedlam, the insane asylum (3.5.61). Then he just complains but makes it
known to Petronius that he is not actually crazy. Maria has placed two watchmen
in his presence to guard him. When he complains of his wife’s actions the
second watchman insists that Maria “has taken care [that he] shall want
nothing” (3.5.73). The watchmen ignore his sexual desire and lack of bodily
flesh. Petruccio’s stated needs have gone unmarked. The watchmen also grow to fear
him for they believe he has actually gone mad and they decide to flee.
Petruccio then breaks out of the room and begins to rant about how terrible
women are. He finishes his monologue by asserting that he will “go
a-birding”(3.5.135) and will finally have power over Maria.
While the first attempt to
tame her by acting insane did not work, Petruccio tries other, more dramatic,
methods. When Petruccio next speaks to his wife, he acknowledges that she again
has the upper hand (4.1.55). At first she mocks him for pretending to be sick
just because of “one refusal from a tender maid” (4.1.49). She teases him for
his dependence on flesh in order to maintain even his own sanity, not to
mention the ability to control another. She continues to torment Petruccio.
Eventually he cannot stand being married to her and says that he will sever
their marriage (4.4. 118). He promises that when he leaves she will have half
of his estate legally bequeathed to her as a marriage settlement (4.4.123-124).
He is about to leave when she says “now I love you / and, now I see you are a
man” (4.4.130-131). Petruccio has
gained “a way of understanding [that Maria] long wished for” (4.4.138). He has been tamed and now Maria can
tell him how much she actually cares for him. After she has obtained equality
in their relationship she repeats her feelings of love for him multiple times.
In their celebratory revel, she confides that she has “cold meats ready for
[him]” (4.4.198). This is the first time in the play that she has ever talked
of giving him meat. Her statement is a loaded one. She now trusts him enough to
promise to present him with meats, which would risk increasing a choleric
disposition and perhaps make him less tame. However, more importantly, she is
no longer going to starve him in the future. She is going to allow him to
consecrate their vows with her own sexual meat. This statement is thus one
about trust and also about sex. She promises that he should “take [his] time
and pleasure” (4.4.203) and she will “see [him] horsed” (4.4.204). This
statement is further evidence that by saying that she has meat ready for him
means that she will now let him ride her, like a horse, and have his sexual
pleasure when he returns from his trip to France. His appetite will be
quenched. The horse comment was also a pun, for she is literally taking him to
the stables before his journey.
Petruccio however does not
trust these claims and he decides to test her. He pretends that on his return
voyage he has died at sea. Maria stands by his coffin and speaks of how sorry
she is that he is gone. Reacting to her words, Petruccio rises out of the
coffin and she goes to him. She admits that she “has done [her] worst” (5.4.43)
and she asks for him to forgive her. As an offering she pleads, “From this hour
make me what you please. I have tamed ye, and now am vowed your servant”
(5.4.44-46). She asks for him to not fear what she is saying and she then asks
for him to kiss her. They then kiss repeatedly. Sophocles suggests that they
quickly get to bed, however the couple remains fixated on each other. She
promises that she is “honest” (5.4.54) and that she will “dedicate in service
to [his] pleasure” (5.4.58). At this point she has already professed her love for
him because he was tamed before his journey to France. His coffin ploy had no
real effect except that it persuaded him that her words of love before his
voyage were sincere. This tactic did nothing to tame her. Before she had
decided to attempt to tame Petruccio she had already committed to serve him as
a wife. She just had refused to fulfill that role until her agreed to serve her
equally as a husband. At the close, his coffin ploy meant little for he had
already been tamed at that point in Maria’s mind.
Regardless, the couple is now
happy in their love. Petruccio then orders Jacques to “get all the best meat
[that] may be bought for money” (5.4.59). The two, now standing “bound, to love
mutually” (5.4.97) in equality, trust each other’s love and their relationship
enough to each eat literal meat. However this statement is significantly a call
for them to first gorge on food and then gorge on each other’s flesh in bed. They
will share meat, the substance of control. The play thus finishes with them
forming an equitable partnership, governed by a sharing of substances and sex.
This play shares many traits
with The Taming of the Shrew. It is
quite evident that both plays utilize humorological conceptualizations of the
body in order to explain shifts in character changes. In both plays choleric
characters, like Kate, Maria, and Petruccio are difficult to have power over.
They also all have characters that try to subsequently tame them by controlling
their access to meat, either literal or figurative. At the end of each play
there is a form of celebration in which the characters talk of eating meat
together. They then leave the festivities to have sex. Each play closes with a sexual
resolution for their relationship conflict.
There are some differences
however. Fletcher’s discussion of meat is slightly more complex. He still pays
attention to the affect meat had on humoral temperament. However he complicates
the idea of meat, by making it be both food and sexual flesh. This usage makes
the play slightly more dynamic and it also follows in how the entire play is
much more overtly concerned about sex than Shakespeare’s. His play is further
complicated due to his discussion of alcohol. The women are quite drunk after
Livia brought them beer and wine (2.1.118). Their drunkenness and their
resulting leaky “vessels” (2.5.99) are so noticeable that they are repeatedly
commented on (3.2.23). Drunkenness complicates the analysis because alcohol was
associated with both wetness and a lack of control. When women drank, they were thought to become wetter, and
thus more sexual. These women however are abstaining from sex, or at least sex
with their husbands. However, while drinking alcohol they are likewise eating
the meat that Livia and then later the chambermaids had brought them. Perhaps the
choleric properties of meat are so strong, they negate or at least minimize the
effects of alcohol upon the women’s temperament. As the overpowering substance
of control, meat and its choleric effects would enable the women to still control
their sexuality while they are drunk.
These complications do alter the analysis somewhat, yet generally the
plays share quite a few similarities.
However, the greatest
difference is that Maria, the female lead, is not tamed by meat. Petruchio was
able to tame Kate by depriving her of meat in Taming
of the Shrew.
Maria was able to tame Petruccio by impeding his access to her sexual meat or
flesh. Petruccio however does not successfully tame Maria. Only after Petruccio
has changed his ways and gives her control of half of the estate, does Maria
begin to stop her shrewish methods. He does not in fact tame her. At the end
she does give Petruccio access to her flesh and professes her affection.
However, at the beginning of the play she was gentle. She has been acting
shrewish only in order to gain equality in her relationship, not because it is
her nature. She had to intentionally consume lots of meat in order to aid her
shrewery. When she gets what she has desired, she returns to her beginning
disposition. How could Petruccio have ever had a chance in taming her though
when he never blocked her access to meat? Although he had made threats and told
Jacques not to give Maria meat, she still managed to eat it throughout the
play. If he had been more successful in preventing her consumption, would the
play have ended differently?
The idea of meat as a
substance of power and control is not limited to Early Modern English Theater
or to the humoral conceptualization of the body. Carol J. Adam’s The Sexual
Politics of Meat offers a feminist critical theory that traces the
connections between meat, rampant masculinity, and misogyny. Meat acts as a
substance through which economic and social control is enacted. Meat, in its
production, distribution, and consumption, governs ideas of health, access to
resources, and social conditions. William Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew and John Fletcher’s Tamer Tamed demonstrate how such an awareness of the power of meat
in bodies and in society existed in Early Modern English Theater. Meat may make
the man, but it also governs social and economic relations.
Works
Cited
Adams,
Carol. The Sexual Politics of Meat: a
Feminist-vegetarian Critical Theory.
London: Continuum, 2010. Print.
"Elizabethan
Humours." George Mason University
Classweb. George Mason University.
Web.
08 May 2011. <http://classweb.gmu.edu/rnanian/humours.html>.
Fletcher,
John, Celia R. Daileader, and Gary Taylor. The
Tamer Tamed: Or, The
Woman's Prize. Manchester [u.a.:
Manchester UP, 2006. Print.
Paster,
Gail Kern. Humoring the Body: Emotions
and the Shakespearean Stage. Chicago:
University of Chicago, 2004. Print.
Paster,
Gail Kern. The Body Embarrassed: Drama
and the Disciplines of Shame in Early
Modern England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP,
1993. Print.
Shakespeare,
William, and H. J. Oliver. The Taming of
the Shrew. Oxford: Oxford UP,
1998. Print.
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Tastes
of Paradise: a Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and
Intoxicants.
New York: Pantheon, 1992. Print.[xxi]
[i]
"Elizabethan Humours." George
Mason University Classweb. George Mason University. Web. 08 May 2011.
<http://classweb.gmu.edu/rnanian/humours.html>.
[ii] Paster, Gail Kern.
The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern
England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1993. Print. 13.
[iii] In his, On the temperaments (De
temperamentis, humors were also influenced by the seasons of the year, time
of life, geographic regions, organs, and occupations.
[iv] “Beer and phlegm were mentioned in
the same breath” Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes
of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants,
Chapters 2: “Coffee and the Protestant Ethic” and Chapter 4: “Tobacco: the Dry
Inebriant.” Print. 48.
[v] Quoted in Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of
Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants. 45-48: “seventeenth century tried
to fir coffee into this scheme [of humors]…Opinions varied as to whether coffee
was cold or warm, dry or moist substance, for its sobering and anti-soforic
effects were observed in equal measure among the different temperaments.
Finally its adherents agreed on the empty formula that coffee contained all the
properties of the fourfold scheme, and it was therefore the appropriate remedy
for the most varied temperaments: it cheered the melancholy, subdued the
choleric, and animated the phlegmatic (the sanguine was held to be the “normal”
healthy temperament…” (45). We can see multiple examples of authors arguing
about coffee’s effect on the temperament: “Dufour wrote that coffee “dries up
all the cold and most fluids,” the eighteenth century French physician Tissot
wrote in his work The Health of Scholars “viscous phlegm, which lines the sides
{i.e. of the stomach] is lost,” the English physician Benjamin Moseley spoke of
“coffee, which through its effectiveness, thins the mucous moistures, and
improves circulation of the blood.”
[vi] Paster,
Gail Kern. The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early
Modern England. 25.
[vii] Ibid. 7. More subtly, “they experienced
such basic social interpellations as their engenderment in humoral terms, since
humoral theory was instrumental in the production and maintenance of gender and
class difference as part of what Foucault has called “the hysterization of
women’s bodies.” When they were required to master their bodies for the sake of
“the civilizing process” (the various disciplinary regimes Foucault has seen as
characteristic of emergent modernity), the bodies that had to be mastered were
humoral bodies.”
[viii] Paster, Gail Kern.
Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage. Chicago:
University of Chicago, 2004. Print. 42.
[x] Shakespeare, William, and H. J.
Oliver. The Taming of the Shrew.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.164. Here we can see that Shakespeare was writing with an awareness and
attention to humors. The editor H. J.
Oliver notes: “perhaps
already by the time Shakespeare wrote this play, ‘humour’ had become a vogue
word; it was certainly so by 1597… Medical theory said that a man’s character
depended on the proportions in his composition, or the four ‘humours’ or
‘fluids’; and so, by extension, jealousy, e.g., or shrewishness (as here) could
be a humour. But a person could be brought out of his ‘humour’ if, for
instance, he could be made to see how absurd it was; and so the word often
denoted some deliberately cultivated way of behavior that could be ‘cured.”
[xi] “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.” Shakespeare, William, and H. J. Oliver. The Taming of the Shrew. 2.1.275-8
[xii] Ibid. 3.2.200.
He wants to go but in line 208 he talks about how the horses have already
eaten, but Kate cannot.
[xiv] Ibid.
231.
[xv] Ibid.162.
[xvi] In this
play his name is spelled “Petruccio,” not “Petruchio.” Fletcher, John, Celia R.
Daileader, and Gary Taylor. The Tamer
Tamed: Or, The Woman's Prize. Manchester [u.a.: Manchester UP, 2006. Print.
[xvii]
Elizabethan Humours." George Mason
University Classweb.
[xviii] Fletcher,
John, Celia R. Daileader, and Gary Taylor. The
Tamer Tamed. 63.
[xix] Ibid. 77.
[xx] Ibid. 82.
(stage note) “Enter Livia with food, alone.”
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