My progress:
Shakespeare Reading Project
Henry VI, parts 1, 2, 3 and Richard III
Two Gentlemen of Verona

The Taming of the Shrew

A popular one, but a tough one! There are elements in Petruchio and Katherina’s dynamic which we will see centuries later in 1930s screwball comedy: where two people who seemingly despise each other are actually sparking with attraction, and the fun of it is seeing the hate turned to love. You could see this as an early “draft” of Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado, whose war against not just each other – but the opposite sex in general – is a mask for the deep tender love they have for one another. It’s an extremely effective dynamic. But that’s not all there is with Shrew, and productions that don’t contend with it tend to falter, or … it seems like they are trying to retro-active the whole thing, and somehow gloss over all the “wives obey their husbands” blather, not to mention the fact that Petruchio literally starves her, imprisons, her, beats her … I mean, it’s awful!

The whole play ends with a lengthy monologue from Kate where she urges women to obey their husbands. This is why trying to make this into some female-empowerment proto-feminist piece doesn’t really work. It’s kind of like Rhett Butler raping his wife into loving him. I’m sorry but I just go by the text.

On the flip side: Petruchio and Katherina aren’t even really IN this all that much. They have two major scenes, but their shenanigans are mostly off-stage, like their chaotic wedding, and a lot of the abuse. We hear about these things, as the very complicated plot – which has nothing to do with them – swirls on around them.

It does feel like something has been unleashed here. Chronology is just guess-work, but whatever way you slice it, Taming of the Shrew breaks new important ground. In Shakespeare’s other early plays – the Henry VIs, Titus Andronicus, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Comedy of Errors – Shakespeare reaches back into either Greek/Roman antiquity or “recent” English history (200, 300 years ago). The plays take place in Italy, or in medieval England. The English plays focus on monarchy, so everyone in it is a King or Queen. Lofty ground. The “Induction” for Taming of the Shrew though appears to take place right now. You feel the closeness of Chaucer’s England, the pubs and townspeople and bawdy joking around and drunkenness. Not rich people, not monarchs. We haven’t seen this before (and, actually we don’t see this all that much in Shakespeare, in general). The Induction is the framing device for Shrew (although we never come back to the story! The frame is incomplete! Like, what happened??)

The actual “taming of the shrew” is the play within the play, and the play within the play takes place in Italy, so it’s almost like Shakespeare is revealing the artifice of his own theatrical tradition. The Induction goes on for a long time with multiple scenes, feeling very close to the ground and so real there’s confusion as to why the play never returns to the device. There’s lots of speculation about a missing epilogue, etc.

The play is filled with “suitors” in disguise. Everyone dresses up like a tutor of some sort. How many tutors do two shrewish sisters need?

Because that’s really the big reveal. Bianca is seen as the nice desired daughter. Kate is uncontrollable. But honestly, Kate’s behavior seems understandable at first: she knows she isn’t loved or valued by her parents. And by the end, the super “nice” Bianca is revealed as even worse!

Quotes on the play

 

“The most striking example among his early works of so contriving a play that it should mean, to those who might choose to take it so, the precise opposite of what he knew it would mean to the multitudes. This interpretation has the advantage of bringing the play into line with all the other comedies in which Shakespeare gives a distinct edge to his heroine. Otherwise it’s an unacceptable exception and regresses to the wholly un-Shakespearean doctrine of male superiority, a view which there is not the slightest evidence elsewhere Shakespeare ever held.”
— Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare

Katherine is “a clear first draft and frank anticipation of Beatrice.”
— Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare

“… almost the only one of Shakespeare’s comedies that has a regular plot, and downright moral.”
— William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays

Petruchio is “a very honest fellow who hardly speaks a word of truth.”
— William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays

“There is no contending with a person on whom nothing makes any impression but his own purposes.”
— William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays, on Petruchio

“The whole is carried on with equal spirit, as if the poet’s comic Muse had wings of fire. It is strange how one man could be so many things, but so it is.”
— William Hazlitt, Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays

“It is the only play of Shakespeare’s that is a complete failure, though Titus Andronicus may be another. The plot of Taming of the Shrew belongs to farce, and Shakespeare is not a writer of farce.”
— W.H. Auden, 1946 lecture

“Petruchio is a hero of a farce, not of a romance.”
— Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare

“Love stories are never so engaging as when their principals do not wish to love, and particularly when it is their power that prevents them … The best lovers are witty lovers who bury their perturbation under abuse; at least this is true for comedy…”
— Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare

“Shakespeare has done what he has done somewhat as a general takes a city: by sheer strength, in utter confidence, and with the soundest knowledge of our outstanding weakness.”
— Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare

“There is no longer a question of ‘taming’. This is a marriage, one consummated in couplets as well as quips.”
— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All

“… it is suddenly far from clear who is the real ‘shrew’ of the play’s title.”
— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All

“Such premature overconfidence on the part of Shakespeare’s lovers will show itself toward the close of many of his romantic comedies, including Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice.”
— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All

“There is no single ‘right’ point of view. Indeed, it is one of Shakespeare’s brilliant gifts as a dramatist to provide, in almost every case, a credible contrary argument, onstage, to what might seem to be a prevailing viewpoint.”
— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All

“Like The Comedy of Errors, [Shrew] displays a complete assurance of technique within limits admittedly narrower, closer to farce, than those of the comedies Shakespeare was to write later in the decade.”
— Anne Barton, Riverside Shakespeare

“No other play by Shakespeare depends so heavily upon theatrical realization as opposed to mere reading.”
— Anne Barton, Riverside Shakespeare

“[Kate] is, in fact, a far more honest and interesting person than her apparently docile and much-admired sister Bianca, although Petruchio is the only person in Padua, at least until Act V, to see that this is true.”
— Anne Barton, Riverside Shakespeare

“[Kate] is an important first study for Benedick’s exasperating sparring partner, another woman who shelters behind a false aggressiveness and has to be tricked into accepting a man’s love.”
— Anne Barton, Riverside Shakespeare

Quotes from the plays

Seeing too much sadness hath congeal’d your blood
And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.
— MESSENGER, Induction, sc ii, 132-33

Melancholy really IS the nurse of frenzy. This is the Bipolar Experience.

Tell me her father’s name, and ’tis enough;
For I will board her, though she cides as loud
As thunder when the clouds in autumn crack.
— PETRUCHIO, Act I, sc ii, 94-96

^^ Say that out loud. It’s fun to say.

Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puffed up with winds,
Rage like an angry boar chafèd with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field
And heaven’s artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in a pitchèd battle heard
Loud ’larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?
And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to hear
As will a chestnut in a farmer’s fire?
— PETRUCHIO, Act I, sc ii, 199-209

And do as adversaries do in law.
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
— TRANIO, Act I, sc ii, 276-277

What, will you not suffer me? Nay, now I see
She is your treasure, she must have a husband,
I must dance barefoot on her wedding day,
And for your love to her lead apes in hell.
Talk not to me, I will go sit and weep,
Till I can find occasion of revenge.
— KATHERINA, Act II, sc i, 31-36

I am as peremptory as she proud-minded;
And where two raging fires meet together,
They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.
Though little fire grows great with little wind,
Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all.
So I to her and so she yields to me,
For I am rough and woo not like a babe.
PETRUCHIO, Act II, sc i, 131-137

First of all, that’s hot, but I also love the imagery of the “two raging fires” – which shows the observatory power of what actually happens – scientifically – with two fires.

… as mountains are for winds,
That shake not, though they blow perpetually.
— PETRUCHIO, Act II, sc i, 140-141

And through the instrument my pate made way.
And there I stood, amazed for a while,
As on a pillory, looking through the lute.
— HORTENSIO, Act II, sc i, 154-156

^^ Hortensio describing the outrageous chaotic wedding ceremony when a lute crashed onto his head. You wish you could see this scene! But they do make you feel like you’ve seen it, with images like this.

If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
— KATHERINA, Act II, scene i, line 223

Call you me daughter? Now I promise you
You have show’d a tender fatherly regard,
To wish me wed to one half lunatic,
A madcap ruffian and a swearing Jack,
That thinks with oaths to face the matter out.
— KATHERINA, Act II, sc i, 285-289

Sounds … fun?

Be patient, gentlemen, I choose her for myself.
If she and I be pleas’d, what’s that to you?
— PETRUCHIO, Act II, sc i, 302-303

My lessons make no music in three parts.
— HORTENSIO, Act III, sc i, 60

^^ The fake tutor comes up with a funny way to say “Stop cock-blocking me.”

I must, forsooth, be forc’d
To give my hand, oppos’d against my heart,
Unto a mad-brain rudesby, full of spleen,
Who woo’d in haste and means to wed at leisure.
I told you, I, he was a frantic fool,
Hiding his bitter jests in blunt behavior,
And, to be noted for a merry man,
He’ll woo a thousand, ’point the day of marriage,
Make friends, invite, and proclaim the banns,
Yet never means to wed where he hath woo’d.
— KATHERINA, Act III, sc ii, 8-17

I see a woman may be made a fool,
If she had not spirit to resist.
— KATHERINA, Act III, sc ii, 220-221

CURTIS: Who is that calls so coldly?
GRUMIO: A piece of ice. If thou doubt it, thou mayst slide from my shoulder to my heel with no greater a run but my head and my neck.
— Act IV, sc i, 12-15

KATHERINA: Husband, let’s follow to see the end of this ado.
PETRUCHIO: First kiss me, Kate, and we will.
KATHERINA: What, in the midst of the street?
PETRUCHIO : What, art thou ashamed of me?
KATHERINA: No, sir, God forbid, but ashamed to kiss.
PETRUCHIO :Why, then, let’s home again. [To Grumio.] Come, sirrah, let’s away.
KATHERINA: Nay, I will give thee a kiss. [Kiss]
Now pray thee, love, stay.
— Act V, sc i, 143-148

“He that is giddy thinks the world turn round.”
I pray you tell me what you mean by that.
KATHERINA, Act V, sc ii, 26-27

^^ This kind of thing shows the character listening and thinking. This is new territory, we see a lot of it. It makes scenes easier to play. Shakespeare is aware of this. Dialogue is meant to be spoken by living people.

TRANIO: O, sir, Lucentio slipp’d me like his greyhound,
Which runs himself, and catches for his master.
PETRUCHIO: A good swift simile, but something currish.
— Act V, sc ii, 53-54

More of the same: people talking, other people responding immediately. You can feel the listening-and-talking.

A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, think bereft of beauty,
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip, or touch one drop of it.
KATHERINA, Act V, sc ii, 142-145

Come, Kate, we’ll to bed.
— PETRUCHIO, Act V, sc ii, 184