Shakespeare and Xanthippe

Reader James Drake posed the following question for me:

Speaking of Greek philosophy, in a discussion of Shakespeare yesterday the question came up of how familiar his likely audience would be with the shrewish reputation of Socrates' wife, Xanthippe. Can you point me to any evidence either way?

Beyond knowing that Xanthippe was Socrates’s wife and a vague recollection that she was a shrew – though this isn’t from Plato – what did I know? Her name means “yellow horse,” which isn’t so unusual. Lots of people in ancient Greece had horse names. (Plato’s nephew, who was a philosopher in his own right, was named Speusippus, which means “eager horse.”) It generally means the person is an aristocrat. Then what?

I looked up Xanthippe in the third edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, and she wasn’t there. What the ...? I tried the second edition. Same thing. Ok, I tried Wikipedia, and it has a long, and as far as I can tell, good entry on her, though it says her name means “blond horse.” Well, all right, so I’m not so good with color words for horses. And it says that the story of Xanthippe’s shrewishness comes from Xenophon’s Symposium.

Now the question becomes, when after the fall of the Roman Empire did Xenophon’s works reach Western Europe? A good guess is a couple hundred years before Shakespeare, because that is when the classical revival was in full swing. I have to admit I don’t know much about how all this came about, though I’ve read a couple books on the subject (Aristotle’s Children and Sailing from Byzantium). And I did have a post on this subject a while back (here). I couldn’t tell you if Xenophon’s works came to us by way of the Byzantines, the Arabs, or the Carolingians. So, I’m doing nothing more than taking an educated guess on the date.

The final (and most important) question then becomes what did Shakespeare’s audiences know about Xanthippe, and I’m way out of my area of expertise on this one. I would guess the educated ones knew, and the others didn’t. But, James, you’ll really need to turn to an expert on Elizabethan England for this one. For all I know someone had done a play on Socrates and Xanthippe prior to Shakespeare, and everyone knew about her.

Comments

[Steve Burri]

Even though your comments couldn't help James out a great deal, it did me a world of good. People often call me Horse's Ass and it used to bother me a great deal. Now, thanks to you, I realize I'm in pretty good ancient company!

[John Pepple]

There's plenty of horse names in ancient Greece, though Philip, lover of horses, is the only one that seems to have made it into English.

As for horse's ass, I guess it would be Proctippus (see proctologist). So you can use that on those who call you a horse's ass, and then laugh as they try to figure it out!

[Steve Burri]

Or Hippoproctomus?

[John Pepple]

Very clever! Not quite grammatically accurate because it would have to be hippoproctus, but not many would know that.