Plausible Obedience: Female Strategies of Deception in Shakespeare’s Problem Comedies

In Measure for Measure (MM), Isabella is taught to trick her male tormentor by feigning “a plausible
obedience”, this instruction offers a useful lens through which to examine female characters’
negotiation/evasion of, conversational and societal norms of truthfulness both in MM and All’s
Well That Ends Well (AW). From Lakoff (1973) to more recent studies gender has been
considered an important variable in linguistics. There are observable, gender-specific differences
in female-talk and male-talk in early modern texts. Quantitative data from the pragma-stylistic
analysis of deception in MM and AW indicates that women prefer ORVD (off-record verbal
deception) strategies while their male counterparts privilege blatant (on-record) lying. The present
study aims to reveal and account for Shakespeare’s female characters’ divergent pragmatic
strategies in the selected problem comedies, in the light of genre and gender conventions, in
order to understand how Shakespeare’s women perform pseudo-cooperation within the
comedies.