Much Ado About #MeToo
Introduction: Shakespeare and the #MeToo Movement
I have both power and voice and I am only beginning to just use them. – Aly Raisman
When I was a junior in college, my roommates hosted a house party for the Catholic community. I remember drinking and chatting with some friends, neon lights flashing across their foreheads, when I suddenly heard a chant breakout from my kitchen.
“Confirm him! Confirm him! Confirm him!”
It was September 28, 2018. One day earlier, Christine Blasey Ford testified before Congress that then-nominee to the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school. Ford had described being at a house party and drinking among friends; there I was, twenty years old and surrounded by supposedly upstanding Catholic men who were calling for the confirmation of a rapist to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. I put down my drink and found a reason to leave, rushing out the door in recognition that my own house, my refuge, wasn’t mine in that moment.
Nothing happened to me that night, at least not physically. No one touched me or looked at me in a predatory manner. But when I reflect on my experience as a young woman — the moments I’ve felt powerless or afraid because of my gender — I come back to that night every time. I think about how any girl in that room might have shared Ford’s experience. I think about how none of those men remember that night the way I do; I doubt they think of it at all.
When Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, two reporters from The New York Times, revealed decades of covered-up sexual misconduct allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017, they sparked the modern #MeToo movement — an initiative first started by activist Tarana Burke in 2006.[i] Burke’s primary purpose in founding the movement was to “help survivors of sexual violence…find pathways to healing,” but Burke’s #MeToo movement was equally focused on expanding the parameters of what society deems sexual assault, harassment or violence to “speak to the needs of a broader spectrum of survivors.”[ii] The modern #MeToo movement remains primarily focused on the needs of survivors of sexual violence and harassment, with several scholars taking up Burke’s calls to re-envision our understanding of survivorship. For example, drawing upon Liz Kelly’s continuum of sexual violence, criminal justice professors Bianca Fileborn and Nickie Phillips challenge the patriarchal “himpathy” claims that the #MeToo movement has gone too far; they argue both that sexual violence is a “lived process” and that discourse has the power to shape our lived “realities” or understandings of sexual violence.[iii] As Fileborn and Phillips point out, linking specifically outlined sexually violent acts to daily acts of patriarchal aggression also expands the definition of the male perpetrator/transgressor and calls on men to wake up and take responsibility for the pain they have caused women —whether that pain is tied to explicit acts of violence or not. Thus, the modern #MeToo movement has two primary goals: 1) through collective online sharing, the movement establishes communities of survivors, empowers women and provides paths to healing and 2) in privileging the female voice, the movement publicizes women’s experiences of sexual misconduct along the spectrum from violent assault to often-invisible microaggressions, exposing abuses of power across institutions and industries and helping bring perpetrators to justice.
Abusers identified in 2017 include Roy Moore, Matt Lauer, and Bill O’Reilly; simultaneously, the women who made their experiences known were celebrated through awards like Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year,” which went to “the silence breakers.”[iv] The next year, hundreds of gymnasts came forward to recount the abuse they suffered at the hands of former Team U.S.A. doctor Larry Nassar, Bill Cosby was sentenced to prison and a wave of sexual misconduct violations flooded Silicon Valley; 2018 also saw Kantor and Twohey win the Pulitzer Prize, female-centric films dominate the Oscars and 20 million people watch Christine Ford on television.[v] In 2019, Rapper R. Kelly pled not guilty to ten counts of sexual abuse, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges, and Scooter Braun bought the rights to Taylor Swift’s music catalogue without her consent; Taylor Swift also won Artist of the Decade at the American Music Awards and a record number of women launched presidential campaigns.[vi]
I never used to see myself as a woman first and foremost, but the past three years and their #MeToo moments have altered my worldview on both a macro and micro level, shaping my understandings of gender and power while simultaneously affecting how I approach dating and networking. I now see clearly that this primary label (woman) and this cultural moment (#MeToo) define my secondary roles as student, friend, lover and daughter. I can especially trace the impact of this era on my academic career, as these days my writing primarily concerns representation, gendered subjectivity, and female agency in literature — starting with Shakespeare.
Shakespeare has long been the subject of feminist discourse, so it is not surprising that his work remains a fascinating site of study in our #MeToo era. While Shakespeare explores problematic male-female power dynamics in many works, a few plays have received special attention in the #MeToo era because they depict sexual violence. The revenge-tragedy Titus Andronicus is infamous for its graphic bloodshed. Throughout the play, many of the men resort to violence to feed their sexual desires and political aspirations. The opening scene features Titus returning from the Roman-Goth war with Tamora, the Queen of the Goths, and her sons as prisoners. Titus then then kills Tamora’s eldest son to avenge Roman deaths, prompting Tamora to seek revenge. Tamora sends her two remaining sons to kill Bassanius, the fiancé of Titus’s daughter Lavinia, and then rape Lavinia in the forest; the sons then cut off Lavinia’s tongue and hands to prevent her from telling her story. When Titus learns of what happened to his daughter, he kills her in what he considers to be an act of mercy, asserting that it is better for a victim of rape to die than live defiled. The play was extremely popular in Shakespeare’s era, but it is not frequently performed in the twenty-first century, though the experiences of its female characters might resonate with modern audiences. Lavinia is subjected to sexual violence and then silenced. She is not granted a chance at survivorship; rather, her life is determined by the male characters, and they decide that her life is not worth living. She is a product of the patriarchal system, and exemplifies the tragic fate of women who are abused, unheard, and not helped.
Then there’s Measure for Measure, which has flooded stages in New York and Los Angeles in the past three years.[vii] The 1604 problem-comedy is perhaps the play most commonly associated with the #MeToo movement (a quick Google search of the terms “Shakespeare and #MeToo” generates page after page of articles linking the two) because the play blatantly depicts sexual coercion and harassment. At the beginning of the play, the Duke of Vienna pretends to leave town and appoints a judge named Angelo to keep order. Angelo decides to reinforce the city’s strict codes on sexuality and fornication, which haven’t been enforced in years. As a result, Claudio is arrested because he impregnates his fiancé Juliet before their marriage is legal. Angelo tells Claudio’s sister Isabella that he will release Claudio if Isabella sleeps with him, which she refuses to do. In a scene that bears a chilling resemblance to the testimonies of sexual assault survivors today, Angelo tells Isabella that if she accuses him of coercion, no one will believe her. The rest of the play features an array of messy male-female relationships and explores the issues of sex, marriage, sin, and purity. Isabella is spared from sleeping with Angelo (a woman named Mariana takes her place), and the play ends with the return of the Duke, who rights all of Angelo’s wrongs and asks for Isabella’s hand in marriage. Importantly, she never provides verbal consent, casting a cloud over the play’s supposed comedic resolution. As Armin Shimerman, co-director of the Antaeus Theatre Company’s 2020 production of Measure for Measure said, the problematic plot points bring out the reality of the “unsettling times” in which we live.[viii]
Long before #MeToo, then, a few of Shakespeare’s plays engaged with still-resonant issues of female bodily autonomy and patriarchal silencing. I argue in this thesis that perhaps less-obvious #MeToo moments appear in Shakespeare’s romantic comedies — texts which are especially important to examine because of their widespread popularity and cultural influence. Indeed, few boy-meets-girl narratives have had as much cultural impact; Shakespeare’s clever wordplay, humorous characters and charming romance narratives have cemented the popularity of these plays. Yet, beyond these comedic elements lurk often-problematic gender scripts and patriarchal overtones, aspects of these works which have made Shakespeare’s romantic comedies the subject of extensive feminist scholarship. I have chosen to center my analysis on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew for both personal and practical reasons. Simply, they are two of my favorite plays by the bard; over the years I have found myself frequently returning to them, continually drawn in by the characters’ witty banter and poignant proclamations of love. There are also two practical reasons for beginning my #MeToo analysis with Much Ado and Shrew. First, these two plays are well-known and widely influential. Much Ado continues to top lists ranking Shakespeare’s most popular plays, and Shrew has been adapted into several films, a musical, and spin-off books (Kiss Me Kate, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Vinegar Girl).[ix] A second reason for selecting these plays is that though they do not explicitly stage rape or sexual harassment like Titus Andronicus or Measure for Measure, they portray complex gender dynamics and engage with similar themes of sexual power, patriarchal authority over women, and voicelessness. In fact, I contend that it is precisely these more nuanced depictions of male power in Shakespeare’s romantic comedies, rather than his explicit stagings of sexual assault and violence, that can best illuminate the ways patriarchal power and male domination impact intimate relationships between men and women — one of the primary emphases of #MeToo. They also provide models for female resistance. David Kastan points out that the women in Shakespeare’s comedies stand in contrast to the images of women as “weak and vain” found in Elizabethan Protestantism. He writes, “The logic of romantic comedy demands women whose ‘strength and constancy of mind’ at least equal the qualities of the men they love.”[x] He goes on to claim that it is precisely the heroines, with their “energy, intelligence and resilience,” who define the comedy, i.e. who “permit the realization and authentication of love’s triumph.”[xi] My thesis focuses on these comedies, then, because they provide platforms for women to boldly challenge patriarchal authority and exercise their independent spirits.
Critics who see Shakespeare as anti-feminist point to the behavior of characters like Petruchio and Claudio to argue that Shakespeare subordinates and silences women. Writing on Kate and Petruchio’s relationship in The Taming of the Shrew, Natasha Kordova states, “At the end of the play, [Kate] herself appears to stand idle, frozen within the domestic sphere, like a use-less household crate.”[xii] Employing similarly bleak language, Thomas Scheff writes that Claudio’s violent language toward Hero in Much Ado About Nothing is “hidden beneath a façade of romantic love.”[xiii] Such critics posit that in Shakespeare’s romantic comedies, men employ grotesque rhetoric to gain the upper hand over the heroines. The emphasis on rhetoric is important given the patriarchy’s use of language as a tool of domination. Speaking to The New York Times about her experiences with Harvey Weinstein, the actress Ashley Judd remembers, “I said no, a lot of ways, a lot of times, and he always came back at me with some new ask…It was all this bargaining, this coercive bargaining.”[xiv] Men like Weinstein, who abuse and manipulate women, refuse to take no for an answer and use their power to silence women. Words matter, and that includes the words exchanged between Shakespeare’s male and female characters. Too often, media and literary scholars want to focus on actions, but they ignore language. Just as it is not enough to care only about physical assault while ignoring verbal harassment and coercion, it is not enough to care about Shakespeare’s relationships only when they are dramatized.
Previous critics have highlighted ways that the women in these romantic comedies emerge as victorious over, or at least equal to, their male suitors. In her 2002 essay on Shrew, Ann Blake writes, “Though presented by post-1970s critics and directors as brainwashed, broken, or tamed, [Kate] is not silenced nor is her spirit crushed. That would make her situation too painful for laughter.”[xv] Amy Smith, in line with Kastan’s argument, sees Kate as an agent of change. She explains:
By using performance theory to contend that gendered institutions such as marriage can and do change, I suggest that the very institutions which some critics suggest Kate is forced either to accept or to escape are instead critiqued — and perhaps even shaped — by her.[xvi]
In emphasizing Kate’s performative role within the comedy, critics like Blake and Smith preserve her agency and paint her relationship with Petruchio as a challenge to Elizabethan marital practices. Such accounts align with the modern #MeToo movement’s efforts to resist the patriarchal script, and in doing so, generate change. These scholars see Katherine and Beatrice as characters with what Bianca Fileborn and Rachel Loney-Howes call “disruptive potential” because the way they speak and act challenges patriarchal norms, so that their performance of womanhood has the potential to challenge even our modern conception of it.[xvii]
We cannot know whether Shakespeare’s intentions were to liberate or suppress women, but strict historicist attempts to categorize the comedies as pro or anti-feminist no longer make sense in our contemporary feminist landscape — a landscape defined by complex heterosexual power dynamics. The #MeToo movement, with its pursuit of both justice and celebration, provides an illuminating framework for reading Shakespeare’s heroines, their male suitors, and the marital framework that unites them. While comedies like Shrew and Much Ado feature violent and manipulative men clinging to their patriarchal identities, they also celebrate witty, bold and sexual female heroines. Thus, a modern feminist reading of Shakespeare, while revealing patriarchal overtones of the plays and toxic conceptions of masculinity featured within them, also shows ways that Shakespeare can be celebrated in the #MeToo era for his attention to the independent feminine spirit. This paper aims to be an example of a modern feminist approach to Shakespeare, employing a #MeToo framework to demonstrate that Shakespeare presents, through the comic trope of wooing and weddings, a space where abusers can rightly be criticized and his heroines celebrated. Rather than signing away their freedom through marriage, Shakespeare’s romantic heroines use their wit to assert their power in the wooing process, so that by the plays’ concluding wedding scenes they have arguably the upper hand over their husbands.
This thesis developed out of a paper I wrote in 2017 entitled, “Kick Him Kate: Petruchio’s Patriarchal Persona and Its Modern Implications.” In that essay, I unpacked Petruchio’s problematic treatment of Katherine and compared it to Donald J. Trump’s “locker room” banter. I aimed to enter an important conversation on the influence of literature on societal values and presented the idea that how we teach Shakespeare matters. In my disdain for Petruchio and his verbal abuse, however, I realize that I stripped Kate of her agency and portrayed her more as a victim than a survivor; I hope this thesis can correct that wrong.[xviii] My analysis of Petruchio is still critical as it aligns with my desire to call out abusers in Shakespeare’s comedies, a primary aim of the #MeToo movement; but in this thesis I attend more fully to the other component of the #MeToo movement, which is to celebrate women for their fight, their wit, and their resilience — all qualities that Kate, and Beatrice, undoubtedly possess.
As discussed earlier, the #MeToo movement — the continuation of collective sharing amongst survivors following Alyssa Milano’s tweet in 2017 — is primarily centered on survivors of sexual violence. Although Katherine, Bianca, Beatrice, and Hero are not survivors of any physical forms of abuse, I believe that they, like all women, have experiences that fall under Liz Kelly’s continuum of sexual violence, in which “prevalent forms of everyday harassment and intimidation share underlying mechanisms of coercion, abuse, and force that are extensions of normalized heterosexual behaviors.”[xix] These issues of voice, power, and intimacy are nuanced, and routine occurrences—like mansplaining, silencing, manipulation, cat-calling, and humiliation—are as valid examples of abuse as are such explicit forms as rape, domestic violence, and incest; indeed, as Kelly and others point out, these instances are systematically linked to one another. Given this latent interconnectivity, the call-to-arms from feminist scholars to expand the sexual violence discourse and continuum, and the multitude of ways that women have claimed and inflected respond #MeToo hashtag, I believe that the principal women of The Taming of the Shrew and Much Ado About Nothing should be recognized as survivors and have granted the space to say #MeToo.
Any assertion that these women are survivors is necessarily followed by the question of how to define the male characters, principally Claudio, Benedick and Petruchio. Though directors might choose to portray these men as physically abusive, Shakespeare’s texts do not explicitly describe Petruchio, Benedick or Claudio as domestic abusers or sexual predators. Of course, that lack of clarity does not mean that these men are not often manipulative and controlling. As Carly Gieseler points out, “oppressors – much like the oppressed – are not monolithic but multiple and complex”; that is, just as the female characters share experiences within the continuum of sexual violence, the male characters can be seen to contribute in a range of ways to a toxic patriarchal culture in which men feel as though they have a right to speak for women and claim ownership over female bodies.[xx] Though I would not go so far as to label Petruchio, Benedick, or Claudio perpetrators, it is my hope that my thesis rightfully exposes these men for their problematic tendencies and contribution to a sexist society.[xxi] Ultimately, however, I believe that the women (mostly) triumph over the male characters — that by asserting their voices and sexual agency, they rewrite the script for femininity and marriage. While I believe that the male characters, like most men, exhibit some problematic misogynistic behaviors (some more than others), I still believe that the comedies’ marital endings can be celebrated because, as my analysis will show, they are negotiated on the women’s terms. The male characters are ultimately forced to accept that their conceptions of marriage and masculinity are not acceptable, and the women, with the unfortunate exception of Hero, maintain their autonomy and their authority.
In pursuing my analysis, I employ what Frances Dolan describes as “presentist historicism” to analyze Shakespearian marriage and its modern implications, meaning that I explore the intersections between past and present in hopes of emphasizing similarities rather than dwelling on difference. Yet, unlike Dolan I do not wish to “estrange the present,” since my paper explores precisely how our existence as modern, #MeToo women might enrich our readings of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies and their leading ladies.[xxii] Rather, my work responds to Evelyn Gajowski’s understanding that our reading of Shakespeare is shaped by our cultural moment. Instead of denying ways that our subjectivity shapes our view of and/or investment in Shakespeare’s work, what Gajowski and others label the critical approach of “presentism” begs us to “own up to [it].”[xxiii] Gajowski writes, “Rather than an obstacle to be avoided or a prison to be escaped from, the present is acknowledged as an experience with which we inevitably engage.”[xxiv] Presentism, according to Gajowski, should lead us to question how our “living in a post-feminist world” informs our readings of gender, power, sexuality, etc. in plays like Much Ado or Shrew.[xxv] Thus, while I rely heavily on a variety of critical texts — Dolan’s analyses of early modern marriage, Judith Butler’s theories of gender performativity and, of course, Bianca Fileborn and Rachel Loney-Howes’s critical approaches to #MeToo — I approach Shakespeare’s romantic comedies, most broadly through the critical lens of presentism, recognizing that my #MeToo reality influences my reading of these plays.
Nowhere in this paper do I alter Shakespeare’s language or assume his stance on female liberation. I do aim, however, to use my place in this post-feminist landscape to draw connections between Shakespeare’s romantic comedies and relationships in the #MeToo era — connections which include themes of female voice and autonomy, gender expectations and norms, heterosexual power dynamics, and the expectations dictated by the marital contract. It is my goal that in analyzing how Shakespeare engaged with heterosexual romance and marriage in the early modern period, we can simultaneously engage with our present and the #MeToo moments that define it. It doesn’t matter to me, then, whether Shakespeare was a feminist; Katherine and Beatrice’s fiery tongues, open sexuality, and resistance to dominant patriarchal structures have influenced my understanding of femininity and inspired me to be bolder and louder than I imagined possible.
[i] Garcia, Sandra. E. “The Woman Who Created #MeToo Long Before Hashtags.” The New York Times, Oct. 20, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/us/me-too-movement-tarana-burke.html. Accessed Nov. 26, 2019.
[ii] https://metoomvmt.org/about/
[iii] Fileborn, Bianca and Phillips, Nickie. “From ‘Me Too’ to ‘Too Far’? Contesting the Boundaries of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Activism,” #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change, edited by Bianca Fileborn and Rachel Loney-Howes. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 99-117, p. 104. The term “himpathy” refers to sympathy for the powerful men accused of committing acts of sexual violence, such as Harvey Weinstein.
[iv] Zacharek, Stephanie; Dockterman, Eliana; Edwards, Haley Sweetland. “The Silence Breakers,” Time Magazine, https://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence-breakers/, Accessed Nov. 26, 2019.
[v] Nicolau, Elena; Smith, Courtney E. “A #MeToo Timeline To Show How Far We’ve Come — & How Far We Need To Go,” Refinery 29, Oct. 5, 2019, https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/10/212801/me-too-movement-history-timeline-year-weinstein. Accessed Nov. 26, 2019.
[vi] Grady, Constance. “The Taylor Swift/Scooter Braun controversy, explained,” Vox, 1 July 2019, https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/7/1/20677241/taylor-swift-scooter-braun-controversy-explained. Accessed March 30, 2020. On June 30, 2019, pop musician Taylor Swift wrote a Tumblr post in which she accused top executives of Big Machine Label Group and Ithaca Holdings of bullying her. Specifically, she labelled Scooter Braun, the head of Ithaca holdings, as manipulative and expressed outrage and his ability to purchase her entire music catalogue without her consent. She claims that she had wanted to purchase the masters herself, but was denied access. Her post sparked an online movement #WeStandWithTaylor, as her fans and celebrity friends flocked to her side against Braun.
[vii] Jacobs, Tom. “‘Measure for Measure,’ the Shakespeare play for the #MeToo era?” The Los Angeles Times, 3 March 2020, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-03-03/measure-for-measure-shakespeare-metoo-era. Accessed April 7, 2020.
[viii] Jacobs, Tom. “‘Measure for Measure,’ the Shakespeare play for the #MeToo era?” The Los Angeles Times, 3 March 2020, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-03-03/measure-for-measure-shakespeare-metoo-era. Accessed April 7, 2020.
[ix] “The Ten Best Shakespeare Plays of All Time.” Time Out London, 4 March 2019, https://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/the-ten-best-shakespeare-plays-of-all-time. Accessed April 7, 2020.
[x]Kastan, David Scott. “Shakespeare and ‘The Way of Womenkind.’” Daedalus, vol. 111, no. 3, 1982, pp. 115–130. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20024806, p. 115.
[xi] Ibid, p. 115.
[xii] Kordova, Natasha. “Household Kates: Domesticating Commodities in The Taming of the Shrew.” The Taming of the Shrew, edited by Dympna Callaghan, W.W Norton & Company, 2009, p. 149.
[xiii] Scheff, Thomas J. “Gender Wars: Emotions in ‘Much Ado about Nothing.’” Sociological Perspectives, vol. 36, no. 2, 1993, pp. 149–166. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1389427, p. 154.
[xiv]Kantor, Jodi and Twohey, Megan. “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harrassment Abusers for Decades,” The New York Times, 5 October 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/harvey-weinstein-harassment-allegations.html. Accessed 16 December 2019.
[xv] Blake, Ann. “‘The Taming of the Shrew’: Making Fun of Katherine.” The Cambridge Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3, 2002, pp. 237–252. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42967805, p. 249-250.
[xvi]Smith, Amy L. “Performing Marriage with a Difference: Wooing, Wedding, and Bedding in ‘The Taming of the Shrew.’” Comparative Drama, vol. 36, no. 3/4, 2002, pp. 289–320. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41154130, p. 290.
[xvii]Fileborn, Bianca and Loney-Howes, Rachel, “Introduction: Mapping the Emergence of #MeToo,” #MeToo and the Politics of Social Change, edited by Bianca Fileborn and Rachel Loney-Howes. Palgrave MacMillan, 2019, pp. 1-19, p. 5.
[xviii] The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network claims that both the terms “victim” and “survivor are applicable when referring to someone who has undergone a sexually traumatic incident. RAINN uses the term “victim” when referring to a person who has been recently effected and employs “survivor” when referring to someone who is undergoing the healing process or has completed it. Because none of the female characters I am discussing experience explicit sexual violence such as rape, assault or incest, I am choosing to employ the term “survivor” for the purpose of this thesis.
[xix] “From ‘Me Too’ to ‘Too Far’?”, p. 104.
[xx] Gieseler, Carly. The Voices of #MeToo: From Grassroots Activism to Viral Roar. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, p. 5.
[xxi] “From ‘Me Too’ to ‘Too Far’,” p. 109. Fileborn and Phillips discuss their struggle to label these men who commit acts which fall under the continuum of sexual violence but are not necessarily physical in nature. They discuss the nuanced differences among terms like perpetrator, offender, aggressor or transgressor. Agreeing with their notion that “perpetrator” sounds too extreme or legalistic, I believe that Claudio might more accurately be described as an aggressor transgressor. Petruchio and Benedick, however, I believe cannot be accurately described other than “men,” as many of their actions stem from the inherent privileges of being a man in a society defined by patriarchy.
[xxii] Dolan, Frances. Marriage and Violence. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, p.17.
[xxiii] Presentism, Gender and Sexuality in Shakespeare, edited by Evelyn Gajowski. Palgrave MacMillan, 2009, p. 12.
[xxiv] Ibid, p. 12.
[xxv] Ibid, p. 14.
