Witty Shrews and Shrewish Wits

Abstract

This essay analyzes the devices and methods of satirical discourse as they are presented by Much Ado About Nothing’s Beatrice and The Taming of the Shrew’s Katherine. By exploring shared points of contact in the “flyting” scenes between Katherine, Beatrice, and their respective suitors, I discuss how ironic, critical speech comes to be elevated as satirical wit in one play, even as it is reduced to shrewish complaint in the other. Both readings complicate conventional understandings of these plays as comedy, especially insofar as they undercut the institution associated with the genre’s successful resolution: marriage. Ado’s and Shrew’s engagement in discourses of satire, complaint, and invective offers an opportunity to recognize how these plays figure women and marriage as vehicles for a satirical critique of the period’s comedic and romantic conventions.