Now a word or two about Adriana. Shakespeare makes her a jealous,
nagging, violent scold, who will have her husband arrested for debt,
though she will give money to free him. But the comedy of the play would
be better brought out if Adriana were pictured as loving and constant,
inflicting her inconvenient affection upon the false husband as upon the
true. Why did Shakespeare want to paint this unpleasant bitter-tongued
wife?
When Adriana appears in the first scene of the second act she is at once
sketched in her impatience and jealousy. She wants to know why her
husband should have more liberty than she has, and declares that none
but asses will be bridled so. Then she will strike her servant. In the
first five minutes of this act she is sketched to the life, and
Shakespeare does nothing afterwards but repeat and deepen the same
strokes: it seems as if he knew nothing about her or would depict
nothing of her except her jealousy and nagging, her impatience and
violence. We have had occasion to notice more than once that when
Shakespeare repeats touches in this way, he is drawing from life, from
memory, and not from imagination.
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