Subverting the master discourse?: The power of women's words in Shakespeare's The 'Taming of the Shrew' and Fletcher's The 'Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed'

This essay examines the relationship between Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and Fletcher's The Woman's Prize, arguing that the latter is not so much a continuation of the earlier play, but an interpretation that provides a specific answer. Specific emphasis is placed on the role of rhetoric in both plays, particularly on the subversion of 'male discourse', but analysis will show that Fletcher's The Woman's Prize is not the proto-feminist reversal of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew it has often been taken for, since it effectually ends with a display of female submission and the re-institution of male power.