Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
It is interesting to me how much of what we are discussing and learning in the manosphere is actually relearning what our ancestors already knew. I’ve already shared examples of this with Brothers Grimm and DH Lawrence.
Quite a few of Shakespeare’s most famous plays also are very relevant from a game/manosphere perspective.
Take for example The Taming of the Shrew. This play is wildly popular and yet vexing for anyone with a feminist mindset. The quote below from Wiki perhaps best sums this up (emphasis mine):
The history of the analysis of The Taming of the Shrew is saturated with controversy almost from its inception, something Stevie Davies summarises when she writes that response to The Shrew “is dominated by feelings of unease and embarrassment, accompanied by the desire to prove that Shakespeare cannot have meant what he seems to be saying; and that therefore he cannot really be saying it.”
When I studied the play 20 years ago in college we were taught that the seeming transformation of Kate from a shrew to a submissive wife surely was some sort of joke Kate and Petruchio were playing on the other characters in the play as well as on the reader. This explanation never made sense to me however, because it didn’t explain why the unruly and headstrong Kate would suddenly want to appear submissive for a man the argument assumes hadn’t tamed her.
Only with an understanding of game does the completeness of Kate’s transformation make any sense. In Petruchio we have perhaps the most alpha character in literature. His game is so good and his frame is so strong he can will Kate to redefine her own reality. By the end of the process she is willing to say the sun is the moon, or whatever he tells her it is:
Now, by my mother’s son, and that’s myself,
It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,
Or ere I journey to your father’s house.
Go on, and fetch our horses back again.
Evermore cross’d and cross’d; nothing but cross’d!
Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please:
An if you please to call it a rush-candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.
Then, God be bless’d, it is the blessed sun:
But sun it is not, when you say it is not;
And the moon changes even as your mind.
What you will have it named, even that it is;
And so it shall be so for Katharina.
While Taming of the Shrew has a happy ending thanks to Petruchio’s outstanding game, many of the more tragic Shakespeare plays are examples of the danger of a man becoming too beta. The comments by Anonymous Reader on the Spearhead capture the essence of the problem:
Game makes it clear that any man who puts a woman on a pedestal, or who assumes that she’s more moral than he is, is not only fooling himself, he’s setting himself up for any of several bad results.
King Lear
Lear foolishly gives up his power to his daughters, thinking they will appreciate his gesture. He fails a series of shit tests from his two daughters, giving up the remainder of what Shakespeare would call his “power” (armed men). The famous quote from his daughter Regan sums it up quite well:
But as game would predict his choice to become weak is met with contempt. This leads to unspeakable cruelty, with Kent being placed in the stocks, Gloucester having his eyes gouged out, and Lear going mad.
Romeo and Juliette
Young Romeo’s oneitis for a 14 year old girl he has only met once ultimately leads to him committing suicide.
Othello
Alpha by position, the general Othello lets his beta side get the best of him when he pedestalizes Desdemona. All it takes are rumors that she loves another man and he strangles her, leading to his own downfall.
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