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Undoing the Body Politic: Representing Rape in Women Beware Women
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
Extract
In 1986 Howard Barker abridged Thomas Middleton's tragedy Women Beware Women and wrote a new ending. This version was published and staged as a collaboration between the Jacobean and the modern playwright. There are a number of differences, but also points of connection between Barker's version and Middleton's Jacobean tragedy. Middleton sets out a moral fable on the corrupting nature of desire and greed. Leantio, a clerk, falls in love with Bianca, a rich man's daughter. They elope and live in secrecy with Leantio's mother. Despite her husband's exhortations to keep herself private, Bianca is spotted by the Duke of Florence, who determines to make her his. A wealthy neighbour, the widow, Livia, aids him in this, luring Bianca and the mother to her house where Bianca is raped by the Duke. Bianca's story is mirrored by that of Isabella, who is being ‘sold’ into marriage with a rich fool and is tricked into an incestuous relationship with her uncle Hippolito. Bianca leaves her husband to become the Duke's mistress. Leantio is taken up by Livia.
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References
Notes
1. The references to the two versions of Women Beware Women are Middleton, Thomas, Women Beware Women in Jacobean Tragedies, edited by Gomme, A. H. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar and Barker, Howard & Middleton, Thomas, Women Beware Women (London: John Calder 1989).Google Scholar All future references will be given in the text.
2. Dunn, Tony, ‘Howard Barker: Socialist Playwright For Our Times’ in GAMBIT 41 (London: lohn Calder, 1984).Google Scholar
3. Gurr, Andrew, The Shakespearean Stage 1574–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) p. 198.Google Scholar
4. Zimmerman, Susan, ‘Disruptive Desire in Jacobean Comedy’ in Erotic Politics: Desire on the Renaissance Stage (London: Routledge 1992) p. 43.Google Scholar
5. See Gossett, Suzanne's essay, ‘Best Men are Molded out of Faults: Marrying the Rapist in Jacobean Drama’ in Renaissance Historicism, edited by Kinney, Arthur F. & Collons, Dan S. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987).Google Scholar
6. Brownmiller, Susan, Against Our Will: Men, Women & Rape: (London: Secker & Warburg, 1975), p. 333.Google Scholar
7. Specifically the character of the Ward.
8. Zizek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1991), p. 75Google Scholar
9. Barker, Howard, Arguments For A Theatre (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 57.Google Scholar
10. The idea of the death of the victim being the most ‘acceptable’ fate for women can be seen in narratives as diverse as Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece and the symbolic rape/stabbing in Hitchcock's Psycho.
11. See especially Brownmiller, Susan, Against Our Will – Men, Women & RapeGoogle Scholar, and Hester, Marianne, Lewd Women & Wicked Witches, Chapters 4 & 5.Google Scholar
12. Barker, , Arguments for a Theatre (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 27.Google Scholar
13. ‘Women on the Market’ and ‘Commodities Amongst Themselves’ in This Sex Which Is Not One (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985). Both chapters consider points from Marx, 's CapitalGoogle Scholar, section 1, chapter 1 in relation to Irigaray's reconsideration of Western metaphysics from a feminist perspective.
14. Irigaray, Luce, This Sex Which Is Not One (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 193.Google Scholar
15. Barker, ‘Conversation with a dead poet’, in Arguments for a Theatre, p. 28.Google Scholar
16. Barker, , Don't Exaggerate (London: Calder, 1985), p. 16.Google Scholar
17. Rabey, David Ian, Howard Barker – Politics and Desire (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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