SOURCE: Sperberg-McQueen, M. R. “Deceitful Symmetry in Gryphius's Cardenio und Celinde: Or What Rosina Learned at the Theater and Why She Went.” Chloe 19 (1994): 269-94.

In the following essay, Sperberg-McQueen deliberates upon the “lessons” Cardenio und Celinde imparts to its female audience members: the futility of female independence and the obvious advantages of a patriarchal society. Sperberg-McQueen also theorizes about the reactions to the play of Rosina Major, whose presence at its March 1661 premiere is known through her father's diary.

Take “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” by Keats. The woman destroys, tricks, entices, kills with ashen aftermath of sexual joy. This too is thralldom—of male to female, for it works both ways, this sexual system. But no matter what happens to the knight, he retains cultural control of the story. The knight's paleness and sickly mourning, his compulsive retellings, his projection of the whole landscape as an emblem...