67 pages • 2 hours read
William ShakespeareA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
When men in this play muse on women’s behavior, they often compare women to hawks or falcons—powerful, dangerous birds that can nevertheless learn to hunt with humans.
There’s something both complimentary and insulting about this comparison. Take Petruchio’s line about Katherine as he develops his plan to “tame” her: “My falcon now is sharp and passing empty, / And, till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged” (4.1.190-91). He’s at once suggesting that Katherine’s temper will one day make her an admirable hunting bird, full of fight—and thinking of her in the same terms he’d think of a pet, an animal he possesses. Just because this pet is valuable, beautiful, and excitingly wild doesn’t mean it isn’t a little bit less than human.
Images of falconry thus gesture at the complicated place women held in the Elizabethan world. On one hand, a falcon is a beautiful and expensive treasure. On the other, it’s not an equal, it’s a possession—one that needs to be broken, bent to its tamer’s will.
By William Shakespeare
All's Well That Ends Well
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 1
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 2
William Shakespeare
Henry V
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 1
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 3
William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare
King John
William Shakespeare
King Lear
William Shakespeare
Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
William Shakespeare
Measure For Measure
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare
Books Made into Movies
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Comedies & Satirical Plays
View Collection
Elizabethan Era
View Collection
Laugh-out-Loud Books
View Collection
Marriage
View Collection
Required Reading Lists
View Collection
Romance
View Collection
Shakespeare
View Collection