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3
Romancing the Bard

LAURIE E.OSBORNE

Shakespearean references appear frequently in that most vilified of American genres, the romance novel. Jayne Ann Krentz even uses Shakespeare to define one typical romance narrative— “the familiar battle between the sexes, or The Taming of the Shrew story… [where] the man is the one who, for once, is forced to find a way to make the relationship work” (1992b:139). Shakespeare appears most often in two subgenres, Regencies and historical romances. Both genres are overtly, even aggressively patriarchal in their double standards and policing of female virtue. Both offer dominant men who are subdued and matched by women who effectively subvert masculine control over their lives and marital choices. Since marriage remains the goal and resolution, however, patriarchy remains intact. Shakespearean allusions become pivotal in this paradoxical combination of female agency and patriarchal dynastic demands.

I argue that Shakespeare in contemporary American romance serves the needs of (a) authors, by bolstering their status and offering the private pleasures of erudition; (b) characters, by modeling strategies for creating both emotional distance and cultural connections; and (c) readers, by at once reinforcing and challenging the culturally conservative codes of the romance. On one level, Shakespearean references affirm the literary range of professional novelists well aware of the continuing low status of their genre

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