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have shown that Shakespeare’s comic heroines accommodate themselves to a society in which the husband’s role replicates that of the father. Disney’s Ariel, after resisting the authority of her male parent with energetic independence, accordingly subordinates herself to the male authority of her husband: she learns to follow the rules and manners of his world. Joining this new patriarchal order in the human realm means subduing all that Ursula represents and winning a sexualized competition with her for Prince Eric, and for larger goals—to prevent the witch from emasculating the King and, by taking his Triton, dominating his realm. Disney uses Shakespeare’s text and structure to focus more on the disciplining of Ursula and of female bodies than on the exchange of Triton’s patriarchal system for that of Ariel’s husband. Indeed, youth and patriarchy are reconciled only after the inflation and explosion of Ursula’s body during the final battle. Not until Ursula’s body, and the female sexual energies it signifies, are gone can Ariel successfully join Eric’s class-inflected patriarchy.

Shakespeare enables Disney to bring female bodily pleasure into alignment with standardized social orders. Cynthia Serz, in People Magazine, quotes Pat Carroll, who provided the voice of Ursula, as saying that she played the sea witch ‘‘as a has-been Shakespearean actress.” Whether or not so directed by the writers, Carroll was speaking to Shakespeare’s position as a double signifier when quoted by late-twentieth-century popular films: he displays cultural capital by signifying “high-culture” taste or “objective” standards; but used episodically to denote character, he also signifies theatricality and its transgressiveness. To rein in transgressive sexualities, including female desire, Disney uses Shakespeare, often against himself. This dynamic informs not only The Little Mermaid, but also The Lion King.

In The Lion King, Ursula’s spiritual brothers, Scar and Timon, signify Shakespearean transgression. Although he is very genial and his fate is happier than Ursula’s, Timon’s influence as a facilitator of desire is as short-lived as hers. In the film, Prince Simba is weighed down by guilt because he mistakenly believes that he killed his father. But when young Simba runs from his past and denies his royal duties, he moves from Hamlet to 1 Henry IV via Timon of Athens. A comic version of the philosophy found in Shakespeare’s tragic Timon of Athens enters The Lion King through the misanthrope’s Disney namesake, the meercat Timon, who fittingly teaches Simba that “when the past turns its back on you, you need to turn your back on it.” While Shakespeare’s tragic hero enacts this attitude by turning

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