2:38 The Taming of the Shrew

Day 2 of 38:38
The Taming of the Shrew

Shrew is a play that I have very, very strong feelings about. I am willing to accept different interpretations of most Shakespeare plays, but not this one. But let me explain why. I have seen Shrew, on film and on stage, more than any other Shakespeare play (though Hamlet is starting to catch up). Not by choice, it's just happened. I have seen well directed, well acted, well thought out productions, but never until I saw Ed Hall's all-male production in 2007 did I understand or have any affection for this play.

Except for Ed Hall's production, the film and stage versions I have seen have been exactly the same in two respects. One, Katherine was always played by a vivacious actress in her 30's. Two, the ending, though it may have caused some pain to Katherine, was always played as a knowing joke between Katherine and Petruchio, as Katherine joining him to win money from the others, because the two of them were truly in love. Everyone always wants to make this play a romantic comedy. And so I could never get behind this play. Because each production would come to the last scene and I would wince. Repeatedly. And not because the production and director wanted me not to wince, but because they wanted me to be okay with how it ended.

Even the video of the production the American Conservatory Theatre did in the 70's, which has the single most brilliant staging of the courtship scene you will ever find, and which I whip out to show to friends when they visit, even this production left me cold at the end. I couldn't stay with it.

Then in 2007 I saw a production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, touring from England, directed by Ed Hall, and performed by the all-male company Propeller. And everything I thought I knew about this play changed. Leaving the all-male aspect aside (which perhaps helped Ed Hall do this production since no women were involved critics didn't accuse Hall of you know, imposing his feminist perspective on the play), this production did two things differently from every other production I've seen.

One, Simon Scarfield played Katherine as a teenager, probably about 18. Thus Bianca was a silly girl about 16. This makes so much sense textually, as people were wedded earlier in the Early Modern era, and why would Baptista need tutors for his daughters if they were in their 30's?

Two, the production wasn't afraid to go dark. It was still very, very funny. Very, very energetic. Very, very entertaining. But it was also sad, terrible, and therefore affecting and memorable in a way no other production of Shrew has been for me. This was the first and only time The Taming of the Shrew has rung true for me from beginning to end. I always find the "happy ending Shrew" to feel forced and unnatural. In this version, Katherine was in dirty rags. She hadn't eaten. She was scared. She felt alone. She was a child who wanted to be loved. A man came along that seemed to offer that love, and then denied it. When she did that final speech, she was broken. And it was true. And I was convinced that this is the way Shrew is supposed to be.

To be fair, Ed Hall was not able to achieve his perfect vision without some doctoring of the text. He brought in later induction scenes from the anonymous The Taming of A Shrew, since Sly and his part of the story completely disappear in the Shakespearean version that we have today.

The final scene of A Shrew reads:
SLY. GI'S SOME MORE WINE! WHAT'S ALL THE PLAYERS GONE?
AM NOT I A LORD?
TAPSTER. A LORD, WITH A MURRAIN! COME, ART THOU DRUNKEN STILL?
SLY. WHO'S THIS? TAPSTER? OH, LORD, SIRRAH, I HAVE HAD
THE BRAVEST DREAM TONIGHT, THAT EVER THOU
HEARDEST IN ALL THY LIFE!
TAPSTER. AY, MARRY, BUT YOU HAD BEST GET YOU HOME,
FOR YOUR WIFE WILL COURSE YOU FOR DREAMING HERE TONIGHT.
SLY. WILL SHE? I KNOW NOW HOW TO TAME A SHREW!
I DREAMT UPON IT ALL THIS NIGHT TILL NOW,
AND THOU HAST WAKED ME OUT OF THE BEST DREAM
THAT EVER I HAD IN MY LIFE.
BUT I'LL TO MY WIFE PRESENTLY
AND TAME HER TOO, AND IF SHE ANGER ME.
TAPSTER. ANY, TARRY, SLY, FOR I'LL GO HOME WITH THEE,
AND HEAR THE REST THAT THOU HAST DREAMT TONIGHT.

Ed Hall gave the Tapster lines to the actor playing Katherine. (But since it's a frame he wasn't Katherine, just the male actor that had been through playing Katherine in the charade. In Hall's staging, Sly entered the inner play, taking Petrucio's part.) The end of the Propeller staging went thus:

Sly: Are the players all gone?
I’ve had the bravest dream that ever you
Heard in all your life!
(Kate): Ay, marry, but you had best get you home,
For your wife will course you for dreaming here tonight.
Sly: Will she? I know now how to tame a shrew!
I dreamt upon it all this time till now,
But I'll home with my wife presently
And tame her too, and if she anger me. (The actor said all this proudly, clearly suggesting that he would go home and treat his wife the exact way Petruchio treated Katherine).
(Kate): (The Kate actor was disgusted) Come art thou drunken still? This was but a play. (and he left slamming a door, leaving a bewildered Petruchio/Sly onstage. The message was clear. This is not the way to treat women. This is not the way to treat anybody.)

So sure, some people will protest that with these changes, Ed Hall's Shrew was not Shakespeare's Shrew. But how is Hall's adding of lines any more objectionable to most director's removing of the Sly plot all together? And how can you argue with what works? This production was revolutionary for me.

I absolutely cannot accept the argument that "in Shakespeare's day, women were expected to act that way, and so the audience would have had no problem with that final speech of Katherine's." How can we claim that Shakespeare believed that men were higher or somehow better than women? We must remember that this is the same playwright who wrote Emilia in Othello -- "Let husbands know / Their wives have sense like them." It's certainly not as if there were no strong women onstage until Ibsen! Also, the argument that this ending would have been acceptable to an Early Modern audience (also used in reference to the ending of Measure for Measure), just doesn't make sense since we have hundreds of years of critics wrestling with it. Do we think there was some magic year where suddenly these endings became a problem? If we wrestle so much with this today, why do we think no one would have wrestled with it when it was written? Do we really think human nature has changed so much?

I maintain, and always will, that the problem plays were meant to be a problem. The one thing Shakespeare never did was provide easy answers.

Plus, the problem with most modern productions is that with men playing men and women playing women and then cutting the induction scenes, is that they are losing entirely what Shakespeare is doing with theatricality, reality vs. performance, etc. Sly is told he is a lord, so he believes he is. We are told Katherine is a shrew, and that Bianca is mild-mannered, so we believe them to be. But how much of that characterization is truly shown in their actions? Bianca is far from a "tradition female" saint; she gets married without her father's approval, and coquettish with her suitors. I think there is something very important in that. I don't think the Katherine-Petruchio plot was ever meant to be taken "straight" and that is almost all we ever see these days.

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Favorite Female Character:
Katherina, but played by me, copying Simon Scarfield, as a teenager, and very unhappy at the end.
Favorite Male Character:
Grumio, by virtue of being the least annoying "clown" in Shakespeare (I generally hate the clown characters).
Laugh out loud:
Page Ay, and the time seems thirty unto me,
Being all this time abandoned from your bed.
Sly 'Tis much. Servants, leave me and her alone.
Madam, undress you and come now to bed.
Oh, misogyny:
Petruchio I will be master of what is mine own.
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything;
And here she stands, touch her whoever dare
Down with the Patriarchy:
Katherina I see a woman may be made a fool
If she had not a spirit to resist.
"That's what she said!":
Petruchio A hundred marks, my Kate does put her down.
Hortensio That's my office.
Favorite Moment/Line:
To me, a key moment, and further indication that we aren't supposed to "accept" the taming of Katherine.
Lucentio The wisdom of your duty, fair Bianca,
Hath cost me five hundred crowns since suppertime.
Bianca The more fool you for laying on my duty.

Also, the final speech of Katherine's of course makes me uncomfortable, but the part that truly makes me sad is:

But not I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.

How is this a "happy" ending????