The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed is a Jacobean comedy written by John Fletcher. Its initial publication occurred in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, though it was obviously written much earlier (Fletcher died in 1625). There is no doubt that the play is the work of Fletcher alone; his highly distinctive and characteristic pattern of linguistic preferences is continuous through the text.
The play is a sequel and a reply to Shake...
more
The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed is a Jacobean comedy written by John Fletcher. Its initial publication occurred in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, though it was obviously written much earlier (Fletcher died in 1625). There is no doubt that the play is the work of Fletcher alone; his highly distinctive and characteristic pattern of linguistic preferences is continuous through the text.
The play is a sequel and a reply to Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, in which (as the subtitle indicates) the gender tables are turned and Petruchio the "tamer" is "tamed." As a proto-feminist work, The Woman's Prize was controversial in its own day and has attracted critical attention in later generations and centuries.
The date of the play is very uncertain and has attracted a large body of dispute and opinion. A reference to the siege of Ostend in Act I, scene iii has led some commentators to date the play as early as 1604 (the siege ended on Sept. 8 of that year) — though...
less