Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England.

Publication: Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England

Publication Date: 01-JAN-06

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Better a Shrew than a Sheep: Women, Drama, and the Culture of Jest in Early Modern England, by Pamela Allen Brown. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 263. Cloth $ 49.95. Paper $ 19.95.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that women have no sense of humor. Like Bob Dole, they just can't laugh. Irony is an unknown quantity in their lives. Indeed, even some feminists frown on laughter, claiming that a world awash with misogynist humor is no place for women to crack jokes in. In this lively and engaging book, Pamela Allen Brown energetically refutes a stance of this kind as "dangerously defeatist" (29). It is to her lasting credit that she offers a glimpse of early modern society as a world resounding with women's laughter. But women were not just avid consumers of humor purveyed in the new mass media of cheap print and the stage. They were actively involved in a wide range of activity that spurred laughter--such as skimmingtons, horn fairs, Hocktide binding, riddling, rhyming mock verses, and even performing in jigs. Within these social performances or dramas of everyday life, women were often the winners in battles of wits with men, and the ones who got the laugh.

Brown combines a look at phenomena of popular culture with an analysis of an impressive variety of texts, including jest books and drama, coining the term "jesting literature" to encompass the entire field of laughter. For Brown, women's culture of jest was a source of social power and resistance to the constraints of patriarchal society. One important factor that bolsters her argument is the truism that laughter is always a communal affair. It was the social network of women in the village or the neighborhood that provided a vital support for early modern women, particularly in the case of domestic violence. Close communal surveillance has often been described in negative terms by cultural historians, but...

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