The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 9.0810  Monday, 7 September 1998.

From:           C. David Frankel <
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
 >
Date:           Sunday, 6 Sep 1998 19:42:07 -0400
Subject:        Trope of Proprietorship

Several of Shakespeare's plays feature what I have begun to think of as
a trope of proprietorship (such as Egeus': As she is mine, I may dispose
of her-MND) set against a trope of partnership (for instance, Oberon:
Now thou and I are new in amity. . . .).  Two questions:

1) How true to the facts of life in Elizabethan England is the trope of
proprietorship (as regards fathers owning daughters and husbands owning
wives)?

2)  Regardless of the "social facts," did other playwrights of the time
use this same trope?

C. David Frankel