The Woman's Prize or the Tamer Tamed

The Woman's Prize
or the Tamer Tamed
(1647 Folio)

It would be absurd to believe that private realities matched public rhetoric. The ability to withhold sex … as well as other factors may have sometimes tipped the balance (Stone, L. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England: 1500-1800. 1977. 139).

The Woman's Prize or the Tamer Tamed exists in three versions: the first folio edition of 1647, the beautifully written Lambarde manuscript (date unknown), and the second folio edition of 1679. The first two are the most important textually as they are closely related though not identical.
In accordance with a suggestion from Michael Best of The Internet Shakespeare Editions the texts will be available for viewing in three formats: divided into acts and scenes, following modern editions; divided into pages as the play first appeared; or as a single long file.

Folio Edition

Lambarde Manuscript

Divided into acts and scenes
Divided into pages
As a single long file (??? KB)

The Woman's Prize is generally regarded as the work of John Fletcher alone. It was not entered into the Stationer's Register until 4 September 1646, although it was obviously written a great deal earlier. Just how much earlier has been a matter of considerable debate, with the principal focus being upon its status as a possible sequel for Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (1593-94). If this is so, and indeed it seems most likely, then it is reasonable to expect a date that is closer to The Shrew's composition rather than a later one. With this in mind Chambers assigns a date earlier than 1604, rebuking a suggestion by Gayley that a possible revision occurred in sometime around 1610-14 (Chambers 222). With unreserved alarm Oliphant questions Chamber's proposal. He supports the revision dates and cites 1606-7 as the date of possible composition (151-56). References within the play to two plays by Jonson, Epicoene (1609) and The Alchemist (1610), as well as to Fletcher's own Wit Without Money (c. 1614), support the concept of the revision. Bowers suggests a date of 1611 (3).
Whatever the date of the play's composition, an attempted revival on Friday 18 October 1633 placed the play at the center of a minor controversy when Henry Herbert, then Master of Revels, forbade its staging. The following Monday the play script was returned to the King's Men "purg'd," in Herbert's words, "of oaths, prophaness, and ribaldrye" (quoted in Bowers 4). It has been suggested at this point that the Lambarde manuscript represents the text of the play prior to Herbert's purging (Livingston). "All ould plays," he added, "ought to bee brought to the Master of Revells, and have his allowance to them, for which he should have his fee, since they may be full of offensive things against church and state" (Quoted in Bowers 4, Smith 39). Many editors have simply focused on Herbert's demand for his fee and assumed that greed was the prime motivation behind his censorship of the play. However, it is possible, as both Livingston and Smith point out, that part of Herbert's concern about things offensive to "church and state" was the play's "clearly anti-patriarchal theme" (Smith 39).
There is little doubt that the play is best understood as a sequel to The Taming of the Shrew. The plot concerns the marriage of Petruchio to his second wife Maria. As the new bride of a renowned wife-tamer, Maria sees it as her duty to womankind to subdue Petruchio. Exploiting the masculine sexual urge of her husband in a plot that owes its origins to Aristophane's Lysistrata, Maria literally barricades herself off from Petruchio on their wedding night, swearing to remain there until he capitulates to her demands. In a parallel to the subplot of The Shrew, that of The Woman's Prize deals with Maria's sister and her efforts to marry her partner of choice, Rowland, while avoiding marriage to the elderly Moroso, the suitor of her father's choice. Ostensibly, The Woman's Prize appears to explore some of the ideas around the supposed stability of the gender and power hierarchies of early modern England. Abuse of the masculine position of power by male characters in the play incites a state of feminine misrule and an inversion of the so-called natural order. In turn, the inversion of order aids the women in the play in achieving their goals within marriage. That achievement results in a restoration of the ideal order and an acceptance of the companionate ideals within marriage. While The Woman's Prize does not question the social belief in the conventional gender and power roles within the family, it does reveal that the ideal of the companionate marriage can only be achieved if both partners are willing to relinquish some authority.

Selected Works Consulted

Works dealing specifically The Woman's Prize are rare. However, I would point out that one critic, Meg Powers Livingston has studied the play in detail and has made available selected conference papers on various topics concerning the play. Links to these papers may be found below.

Fletcher, John. The Woman's Prize or the Tamer Tamed. Ed. Fredson Bowers. The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon. Gen. Ed. Fredson Bowers. Vol. IV. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979.
Fletcher, John. The Woman's Prize or The Tamer Tamed: A Critical Edition. Ed. George B. Ferguson. London, The Hague, Paris; Mouton & Co. 1966. [This is the only twentieth century annotated edition of the play]
Chambers, E.K. The Elizabethan Stage. Vol. 3. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951.
Clark, Sandra. The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: Sexual Themes and Dramatic Representation. New York; London; Sydney: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.
Livingston, M P. Fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize in 1633. A Paper Delivered at the 1999 NEMLA Conference in Pittsburgh, PA from a panel titled “John Fletcher and ‘The Nature of Women’.”
---. "Herbert's Censorship of Female Power in Fletcher's Woman's Prize." (Dec. 2000) Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England.
---. Herbert's Censorship of Female Power in Fletcher's The Woman's Prize. A Paper Delivered at the 1998 GEMCS Conference in Newport, RI from a panel titled “‘For all the world like men/mine’: Early Modern Anxiety And/About Manly Women.”
Oliphant, E. H. C. The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: An Attempt to Determine Their Respective Shares and the Shares of Others. New York: AMS Press, 1970.
Smith, Molly Easo. "John Fletcher's Response to the Gender Debate: The Woman'sPrize and The Taming of the Shrew." Papers on Language and Literature 31 (1995): 38-60.
Stone, Lawrence. The Family, Sex and Marriage in England: 1500-1800. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.