Ray Crosby
ENGL 145B
I would my father looked with but my eyes:
The Roles of Parents The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
In an Elizabethan England governed by “The Virgin Queen,” one social structure that
was surely undergoing change during Shakespeare’s lifetime was patriarchy. The idea of the
undisputed rule of a male patriarch, governing all aspects of his family’s life, was becoming
more and more difficult to swallow. In a nation ruled by a single woman, the unlimited power of
fathers over their children, and especially daughters, would surely come under fire, and
Shakespeare uses his plays as a forum for this debate. In The Taming of the Shrew and A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare pokes fun at the convention of parents as the allpowerful dictators of their children’s lives. He portrays parents in various roles—as providers,
educators, matchmakers, trust funds, buffoons, tyrants, legislators, and as non-entities.
He
ultimately paints parents as valuable to their children, but subservient to the ultimate ruling
principle of the plays: love.
Baptista in the Taming of the Shrew is perhaps the father with whom the audience has the
most interaction. He is presented in several different capacities, most notably as a provider,
educator, and matchmaker for his daughters. His foremost role is to provide for his daughters,
and we see him doing so throughout the play, both in his child-rearing and in his negotiations to
secure their future livelihoods through marriage. Baptista is a single father without any male
heirs, so the actions he takes with regard to his daughters and their suitors become all the more
pregnant with meaning, since they will determine the men with whom he must graft the
remaining female branches of his family line. Baptista wants his daughters to have every
advantage in life, and he manipulates Bianca’s suitors in order to extort an education out of them.
He realizes how important an education is, especially for his shrewish daughter Kate, who has no
womanly virtues to recommend her to a suitor and must be won either by her dowry or by her
intellect. As a matchmaker, Baptista does his best to pair his daughters up with suitors who will
best meet their needs. Bianca, he knows, is a loving woman, but one who could easily let her
heart get the best of her head. She is delicate and somewhat high-maintenance, so he seeks to
align her with a practical husband of wealth and stature. He wants to know that she will be taken
care of, and firmly believes that she could grow to love any man he selects. Thus, he offers her
hand to the highest bidder. Katherine, on the other hand, is a survivor and a fighter. Baptista
knows that she needs a man who can tame her heart and mind before ever subjugating her body
and will. He rejoices when the equally strong-willed Petruchio emerges on the scene and
commences his courtship. Although Baptista is tricked by the masquerading suitors and tutors, is
offended at Lucentio’s not “asking [his] good will” (5.1.133) before making love to Bianca, and
is confounded by Petruchio’s unusual tactics in “wive[ing] and thrive[ing] as best [he] may”
(1.2.55), Baptista ultimately accepts the marriages of both his daughters. Having convinced
himself that his daughters’ various needs have been met by their partners, he is able to yield the
floor to the all-powerful influence of young love.
Vincentio in The Taming of the Shrew is presented somewhat more comically. We see in
him the title and wealth more than the actual man. This wealth serves as the vessel by which his
son will eventually acquire the beautiful Bianca. When Tranio, masquerading as Lucentio, is
outbidding Gremio for Bianca’s hand, he brings Vincentio’s wealth into question. We are told
that he possesses “two thousand ducats by the year / of fruitful land” (2.1.362-3) and “no less /
than three great argosies, besides two galliasses and twelve tight galleys” (2.1.371-2). By title
and reputation, he is one of the richest and most respected men in Pisa, yet when we see him in
the flesh he is no more than a buffoon. Confronted by the Pedant impersonating him, noble
Vincentio is publicly humiliated and nearly arrested until his son, Lucentio, comes to his rescue
and begs his forgiveness and blessing. Despite his pride and high station in life, Vincentio
ultimately submits to his son’s will and allows love to supercede his parental authority.
Egeus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is undoubtedly the least likeable father figure in
either play. He enters the play “full of vexation… with complaint against [his] child” (1.1.22-3),
which arises from Hermia’s rejection of his hand-picked suitor, Demetrius, in favor of another
man, Lysander. Egeus requests Theseus to uphold “the ancient privilege of Athens” (1.1.41),
which allows a father to offer his daughter to the suitor of his choice or to have her killed for her
disobedience to him. Egeus would rather have no daughter at all than a daughter who is bold
enough to disobey him, especially for a reason as trite and insignificant as love. Egeus fancies
himself, as Theseus explains to Hermia, “like a God, / one that composed [her] beauties; yea, and
one / to whom [she is] but as a form in wax / by him imprinted and within his power / to leave
the figure or disfigure it” (1.1.47-51). And yet, the all-powerful, godlike father figure is soon cut
out of the equation entirely. Hermia and Lysander elope into the woods with the intention of
being married outside of the Athenian sphere of legal influence. In the woods the lovers exit the
paternalistic realm of reason, law, and civilization and enter the carnivalesque and exotic realm
of the fairies, where love and passion reign supreme. When Egeus and the rest of Theseus’
hunting party stumble across the lovers the next morning, the father begs Theseus to uphold his
previous ruling. However, the monarch changes his mind, and Egeus is forced to submit and
yield his permission—if not to love, at least to the will of his ruler.
Theseus, although not a biological father in the play, can be regarded as the father of
Athens. While he begins the play in anticipation for his upcoming marriage, he serves as a bythe-book legalist, telling Hermia that she must submit to her father’s will regardless of her
personal desires: “Your eyes must with his judgment look” (1.1.57). However, later in the play
as Theseus’ own wedding day dawns, he is overcome by his own emotions and projects them
onto the situation of the young lovers. He tells the father, “Egeus, I will overbear your will”
(4.1.182), and suspends the law of Athens in order to allow the lovers to be united. Theseus, as
the father of Athens, undergoes a transformation from a representation of pure, cold law to the
balance of law and emotion that is necessary for effective governance.
There are a few other parents who are mentioned briefly in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Peter Quince tells us at the casting call for “Pyramus and Thisby” that Tom Snout will play
Pyramus’ father, Robin Starveling will play Thisby’s mother, and he, himself, will play Thisby’s
father. And yet, as the rehearsals for the play-within-the-play progress and various obstacles are
encountered, it is decided that the parents in the play should be cut entirely in order for
Starveling and Snout to play the infinitely more important roles of Moonshine and Wall, and for
Quince to read the Prologue, where he can explain these contrivances to the audience. The
parents are cut entirely out of the play in favor of more romantic elements—the Moonshine that
shined on the lovers when they met, and the Wall through which they whispered their sweet
words—although these elements are taken to ridiculous extremes by the Mechanicals, who could
easily have used props to achieve the desired effects. In essence, the love of Pyramus and
Thisby becomes the ultimate authority in the play-within-a-play, and the parents are deemed so
insubstantial that they can be completely eliminated.
The parents in The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream appear in
many different roles, but they are all ultimately denied true parental authority in the plays. Love
is shown to be the true parent in the play, in that it is the only real consideration in the children’s
actions and the one factor that determines their future happiness and success above all others.
Love is the great unifier that brings feuding relatives back together, dodges the pitfalls of
unhappy relationships, and unites those truly destined for each other. The parents all submit to
love in the end, usually out of affection for the children or, in the case of Egeus, out of deference
to governmental authority. However, parents are not completely without value. As providers,
educators, match-makers, financial backers, and law-enforcers, parents do serve as valuable
resources to their children and help prepare them for the loves they will eventually find. The
sole instance where the parents are omitted, the play-within-a-play, ends in tragic results for the
star crossed lovers, Pyramus and Thisby.
This leads us to believe that, although parental
authority and approval are subject to love, they are necessary, nonetheless, or the children’s
loves will end tragically. Ultimately, the role of a parent in the plays is to try and see the love
not through the lens of worldly wisdom or parental position, but through the child’s own eyes—
not so much to govern children in love, but to accept the loves that children find for themselves.
Outline:
•
Intro
o Comedies mock social conventions
o Changing role of patriarchy in Elizabethan times
o Thesis: Parents are portrayed in various roles, but are ultimately seen as subject
to love and important not in their authority over their children, but in their
acceptance of their children’s loves.
•
Baptista
o Provider
o Educator
o Matchmaker
o Accepts matches in the end
•
Vincentio
o Money / Title
o Buffoon
o Accepts his son’s love marriage
•
Egeus
o “All powerful” father figure
o Eventually succumbs to will of Theseus
•
Theseus
o Father of Athens
o Transformation from all law to balance of law and emotion
•
Play-within-a-play
o Utter unimportance of parental figures
o Love is supreme
•
Conclusion
o Parents are subject to love, yet not completely unimportant
o The true role of a parent is not to govern, but to accept the child’s love and try to
see it through their eyes