Daughters of Eve: The Role of the Shrew in Middle English Religious Drama

Abstract

<p>The occasion for this study was an awareness of a need for an isolated examination of the shrew figure in medieval drama. Owing to the limits of time and space regulating this research, its scope has been limited to English religious drama, and specifically to cycle and other biblical drama.</p> <p>This study examines the relationship of the dramatic shrew to the shrew in other literature of the period, the relationship between the shrew and the Virgin Mary, and the nature and purpose of comic characterization in essentially didactic drama. Chapter One is a discussion of the ecclesiastical and literary influences on the development of a shrew type in the Middle Ages, Chapter Two is an investigation of how Mary is presented in the drama, and Chapter Three is a systematic examination of the shrew in the drama. This study attempts to show that the characterizations of Mary and the shrews combine to form an integrated didactic commentary on ideal feminine behaviour and on modes of salvation peculiar to women.</p>