著者

小野 良子

出版者

桃山学院大学

雑誌

英米評論 = English review (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

no.28, pp.5-35, 2014-03

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Introduction 1. Feminine Mystique: American women in 1950s 2. The Second Wave of Feminist Movement: American women in 1960s 3. Hollywood Shakespeare and its Artistic Limitation: Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew Conclusion Notes Bibliography This paper is an attempt to examine whether the feminist movements of the 1960s had a particular impact on Franco Zeffirelli's filmed production of The Taming of the Shrew in 1967. The play was first performed on Elizabethan stage and reflected gender politics of the Elizabethan age. The story portrayed the process how the shrew was instructed and molded to the ideal wife by her newly wedded husband. Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew created the taming plot as comedy with a happy ending of the married couple. Zeffirelli's Shakespearean comedy expected an utterly different audience living in the age of women's liberation. The feminist's movement prompted re-evaluation of the existing social framework authorized by the patriarchal ideology. Zeffirelli's adaptation was a farcical comedy with an ambiguous ending, presenting both the latest feminist's reading and antifeminist backlash on screen. Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew was never an academic reproduction of Shakespearean work, but a Hollywood commodity that sells Shakespeare for huge commercial profits.