Day 8: The Taming of the Shrew

[a_t_rain]

I feel rather guilty about liking this play, as if it makes me a Bad Feminist. (I’m also unreasonably fond of the Stones’ “Under My Thumb,” as long as we’re getting Bad Feminist Confessions out of the way, and had fantasies of doing an ironic, gender-switched cover version back when I was fourteen and wanted to be a rock star.) Nevertheless, I think there are a lot of elements that redeem the gender politics, or at least complicate them. (I have a hard time taking Petruchio seriously as a domestic abuser when his Grand Plan to tame Katharina by depriving her of food and sleep involves doing exactly the same thing to himself.) And hell, it’s just too much of a romp not to enjoy, what with all of those fake schoolmasters, and that completely daft wedding, and Lucentio’s two fathers.



What I love about this play: The Christopher Sly framework, for a start. (I have yet to see a stage or film version with the full Induction, which saddens me because I have a soft spot for metatheater. I do own a DVD of a Stratford Festival production from the 1980s that includes a bit of it, but the main action is framed as Sly’s drunken dream rather than an actual play.) I imagine it becomes quite a different play when the entire plot is presented as a purposefully constructed fiction – and there are so many other characters engaging in various sorts of role-playing and fiction-crafting that it must work like a set of nesting dolls.

The other bit that I really like – and which redeems a LOT of the potentially uncomfortable moments for me – that scene on the road to Padua when Katharina and Petruchio stop being adversaries and become co-conspirators. (And yes, I think she is a free and voluntary participant in the game – she’s clearly having far too much fun hailing the old man as “young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet,” and “Happy the man, whom favorable stars / Allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow!” is her own elaboration – Petruchio doesn’t tell her to go that far!) In Petruchio-land, words don’t have to correspond to anything real, and Katharina is finally getting this and starting to grasp the possibilities. Since both of these characters have shown so much delight in speaking absurdities with a straight face, I feel perfectly free to read the “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper” speech as one of those absurdities rather than a serious homily.

Favorite memory: I was going to say that I didn’t have one, but then I remembered that Shrew plays a big part in the abortive novel I wrote when I was nineteen, the one that was going to be a lesbian Catcher in the Rye. (Why I decided to pursue such a project when I wasn’t actually a lesbian is something of a mystery, as is the fact that I decided to set it at a snooty girl’s boarding school, a world that I knew nothing about.) My protagonist, a rebellious teenager obsessed with Shakespeare and secretly in love with her roommate, has an evil stepfather who tries to molest her, stroking her hair. In a fit of revulsion, she runs off to the nearest hairdresser and gets it all shaved off, and then pretends – for some reason – to have cancer. This garners her a lot of sympathy from her schoolmates, but when they discover she’s faking it, they all turn against her. She runs away to the nearest large city and hides in a theater, where she watches a performance of The Taming of the Shrew. The actor playing Petruchio eventually discovers her, realizes she’s in trouble, and brings her back to his apartment. Petruchio’s boyfriend arrives, who happens, by an extraordinary coincidence, to be the protagonist’s favorite teacher from prep school. He briefly freaks out, because he doesn’t want anyone at the school to know he’s gay; Petruchio calms him down, and then – for no apparent reason whatsoever – launches into a two-page monologue about the gender politics in the play. Then the protagonist’s mother arrives, and announces that a) she’s pregnant; and b) the evil stepfather has been arrested for having sex with a thirteen-year-old prostitute in Vietnam. (What the heck was he doing in Vietnam? I haven’t the foggiest.)

At this point, wisely, I realized I wasn’t cut out for novel-writing, abandoned the project, and decided to pursue a career in which it actually makes sense to pontificate about Shakespeare at random moments.

Comments

[froda-baggins.livejournal.com]

I feel perfectly free to read the “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper” speech as one of those absurdities rather than a serious homily.

This. My dream production of this play is one in which Kate and Petruchio play the final speech as some kind of inside joke - everyone else is like "heh, yeah, absolutely!" and they're sort of snickering at each other behind everyone's backs.

[cisic.livejournal.com]

Really? Because I've seen like five productions of Taming of the Shrew and this is always how they play it, so I'm surprised that you've never seen it done that way. It seems to be the thing to do right now. For me, it has never worked.

[rowena742.livejournal.com]

In my version of Taming of the Shrew, Kate always comes back on stage at the end and splits the take with Petruchio.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

when his Grand Plan to tame Katharina by depriving her of food and sleep involves doing exactly the same thing to himself

Not that I think this applies to Petruchio, as such, but a particularly nasty abuse case in the big town nearest mine involved doing exactly this. The abuser would take speed and terrorise his partner (and her kids, until she sent them away) because no-one could eat or sleep until he did.

[alba-merula.livejournal.com]

Yeah... For me, it still is abuse, because Petrucchio CHOSE not to, and in her place I'd be hungry and sleepy, therefore fuming with an extra amout of rage (the gimme-food-and-bed! sort).

On the other hand, I always imagined her as as someone being hungry for undivided attention - for being the first for someone she cares for. Maybe from the first live performace I've seen, where the theatre froze at her first outburst, when she yelled to her father that he had always loved Biance better, but for me the key to understand things between her and Petrucchio was attention. Petrucchio acted silly, and many times deliberately played parctical jokes on her - but he did choose her over her sister. And the rumpus about the food and the bad was about that it wasn't good enough for her? - which was obviously not true and left her hungry and angry, but still, can be perceived as a twisted kind of compliment (just like a boy in first grade who pulls your hair in lack of a better way to express himself).

But I mustt admit I fell in love with the transalation of yours, Rain... The inside jokes all around version of them is lovely, and hillarious.

Please, continoue writing these posts... And in case you run out of Shakespeare's plays,I'd love to see other dramas. Or films. Whatever. (Eg. there was a time when you quite often mentioned Orlando Furioso - but I cannot recall whether you detailed why you liked it...)

[sixth-light.livejournal.com]

. (Why I decided to pursue such a project when I wasn’t actually a lesbian is something of a mystery

...because it sounded mysterious and interesting? The world would be a pretty boring place if everyone stuck to writing characters of their own sexuality.

[ozma-katiebell.livejournal.com]

You mean I don't get to read the rest of your novel?

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

Trust me, nobody in their right mind would want to read it :)

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

But without Taming of the Shrew we would have no Kiss Me Kate! There's a framing device for you, and actually a much more regressive ending. But such great lyrics from Cole Porter.

One of my most intense high school experiences was a drama class performance of the scene where Kate and Petruchio meet. My Petruchio was my boyfriend's best friend, adding a serious triangular quality. I learned a lot from that, and I don't just mean iambic pentameter.

[helenseidolon.livejournal.com]

I, too, have deep ambivalence about my love for "Under My Thumb".

[tempestsarekind.livejournal.com]

I think your novel sounds cracky and awesome! And I love that you picked up on the metatheatrical aspects of the play and put them in the novel. My nineteen-year-old self, had she felt compelled to write Shakespeare-themed novels, would probably have just written soppy retellings.

(The thing *I* learned about myself through teenage novel-writing is that I am not actually all that interested in quest fantasy. I kept thinking that's what "fantasy" was all about, so I kept trying to write them, but spent zero time on the magical objects, or why anyone would be looking for them, and just wrote about various characters meeting each other.)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I imagine it becomes quite a different play when the entire plot is presented as a purposefully constructed fiction

West Yorkshire Playhouse did a production in the early 90s, and it worked pretty effectively, in that having the overt frame meant that they didn't do what a lot of other productions seem to feel obliged to, and frame the action within the play as "we don't really mean it" - in context, everything absolutely was meant. I do remember at the end the entire audience practically spitting with rage wanting to shout "Don't do it, Kate!".