The Taming of the Shrew (17 page)

Lines 172–196:
Petruchio outlines his plan to “tame” Katherina by depriving her of food and sleep, while claiming he is doing it out of “reverend care.” He uses the metaphor of a wild hunting hawk, a “haggard,” who will learn to come to her “keeper’s call.”

Lines 1–43:
In Padua, Hortensio/Litio convinces Tranio/Lucentio that Bianca favors “Cambio” and reveals his true identity. Tranio feigns shock and announces his intention to “Forswear Bianca and her love forever,” encouraging Hortensio to do the same. Hortensio agrees and announces that he will marry “a wealthy widow” instead.

Lines 44–125:
Tranio informs Bianca she is free from Hortensio, who has gone to Petruchio’s “taming school” to learn how to tame his “lusty widow.” Biondello has found someone to play Vincentio, a “Pedant” who has a “gait and countenance surely like a father.” Tranio greets the Pedant and asks where he is from and pretends to be shocked, inventing a quarrel between the Dukes of Padua and Mantua, making it “death” for the Pedant to be there. He offers sanctuary in his home, where the Pedant will be safely disguised as Lucentio’s father. As part of this disguise, he will need to pass “assurance of a dower” with Baptista.

There are tensions in the character of Katherina in this scene as she shifts between desperate attempts to assert herself, sometimes through reasoning, sometimes aggression, and an imposed submissiveness to Petruchio. She complains that she is “starved for meat, giddy for lack of sleep” and asks Grumio to bring her food. He taunts her by suggesting various dishes and then inventing excuses why she may not have them, until Katherina strikes him. Hortensio and Petruchio arrive with food, which Katherina may have only when she thanks her husband. He secretly instructs Hortensio to eat it, and Hortensio shows some discomfort at the situation, saying that Petruchio is “to blame.” Petruchio tells Katherina that they are to
visit her father, lavishly describing the new clothes she will have for the occasion.

The arrival of the tailor provides visual emphasis of the play’s clothing imagery and associated themes. He displays a cap and gown for Katherina, but Petruchio rejects both, on the grounds that they are not good enough for his wife to wear. Katherina attempts to express her opinion, claiming that she will “be free … in words,” and claims that Petruchio means to “make a puppet” of her, but she is thwarted every time. The tailor is dismissed and Petruchio announces that they will go in their “honest mean habiliments,” asserting that “ ’tis the mind that makes the body rich,” implying that true identity is more important than external appearance.

Lines 1–72:
Tranio and the Pedant (disguised as Vincentio) arrive at Baptista’s. They “rehearse” what he is to say, and when Baptista arrives they agree to make the transactions at Lucentio’s lodgings. Baptista sends Cambio to fetch Bianca.

Lines 73–103:
Biondello informs Lucentio that while Tranio has Baptista safely at his house, a church and priest have been arranged so that he may elope with Bianca.

Petruchio asserts his will over Katherina by forcing her to agree with him and refusing to continue the journey to Baptista’s unless she does so, despite asserting deliberate and contradictory untruths, such as the brightness of the moon in bright daylight. Katherina is forced to agree that it is the moon, even though she says, “I know it is the sun,” and thus contradicts Petruchio’s earlier assertions concerning appearance and identity, as he denies Katherina external expression of her internal self and her personal conviction. Hortensio comments that Petruchio has “won,” but Katherina is tested once more when they meet the real Vincentio and Petruchio makes her greet him as if he were a young girl. Vincentio tells them that he is
going to visit his son, Lucentio, in Padua, and Petruchio congratulates him on the marriage of his son to Bianca. Hortensio leaves to woo his widow, vowing to use the techniques he has learned from Petruchio.

Lines 1–50:
Lucentio and Bianca leave for the church as Petruchio and Katherina arrive with Vincentio. They knock at Lucentio’s door and the Pedant looks out the window, demanding to know who is there. Petruchio says that it is Lucentio’s father, but the Pedant claims that he is Vincentio. When Biondello arrives he exclaims that they are “undone,” but denies recognizing the real Vincentio. Petruchio draws Katherina aside to watch, forming another onstage “audience.”

Lines 51–129:
Baptista, Tranio, and the Pedant arrive, and Vincentio sees through Tranio’s disguise. Enraged when Tranio refuses to recognize him, he concludes that Lucentio has been murdered by his servants. Tranio calls for Vincentio to be taken to prison, but Lucentio and Bianca arrive, and Tranio, Biondello, and the Pedant run away. Lucentio begs his father’s pardon, reveals his true identity to Baptista, and announces his marriage to Bianca. Vincentio promises to “content” Baptista, but both fathers vow revenge on Tranio. Before they follow the others, Petruchio demands that Kate kiss him. At first she refuses, but then complies in a romantic exchange contrasting with their previous encounters.

At the wedding feast, a public ceremony marking a return to order, Hortensio’s “lusty widow” suggests that Petruchio is “troubled with a shrew” as a wife. Katherina retaliates, but they are encouraged to withdraw by Bianca. Once the women are gone, the men discuss their wives, employing hunting imagery once more as Tranio suggests that Petruchio’s “deer” holds him “at a bay.” Petruchio proposes a wager: “he whose wife is most obedient / To come at first
when he doth send for her,” will win. One hundred crowns is agreed on, and Biondello is sent to fetch Bianca, the Widow and Katherina in turn. Bianca and the Widow both refuse their husbands’ commands, but Katherina obeys, much to everyone’s surprise. Petruchio sends her to fetch the other two women and, again, she does as she is told. When she returns with Bianca and the Widow, Petruchio orders Katherina to remove her cap and “throw it underfoot.” She obeys and the other women claim that she is “silly” and “foolish.” Lucentio expresses a wish that Bianca would be more “foolish,” as her disobedience has cost him one hundred crowns, but in a manner more associated with Katherina at the beginning of the play, she tells him that he is the fool. Petruchio instructs Katherina to tell the other women “What duty they do owe their lords and husbands.” She gives a speech asserting that “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, / Thy head, thy sovereign.” This presents a problematic end to the play and the audience are left to decide for themselves whether Katherina has really changed or whether she is simply playing along with Petruchio.

The best way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or ideally to participate in it. By examining a range of productions, we may gain a sense of the extraordinary variety of approaches and interpretations that are possible—a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made “our contemporary” four centuries after his death.

We begin with a brief overview of the play’s theatrical and cinematic life, offering historical perspectives on how it has been performed. We then analyze in more detail a series of productions staged over the last half-century by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The sense of dialogue between productions that can only occur when a company is dedicated to the revival and investigation of the Shakespeare canon over a long period, together with the uniquely comprehensive archival resource of promptbooks, program notes, reviews, and interviews held on behalf of the RSC at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, allows an “RSC stage history” to become a crucible in which the chemistry of the play can be explored.

Finally, we go to the horse’s mouth. Modern theater is dominated by the figure of the director, who must hold together the whole play, whereas the actor must concentrate on his or her part. The director’s viewpoint is therefore especially valuable. Shakespeare’s plasticity is wonderfully revealed when we hear directors of highly successful productions answering the same questions in very different ways. We also hear from a Kate about the experience of playing “the shrew.”

The early performance and textual history of
The Taming of the Shrew,
believed to be one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, are clouded with
confusion over the precise nature of its relationship with
The Taming of a Shrew
. It is not clear, for example, whether the 1594 performance of
The Taming of a Shrew
recorded in Philip Henslowe’s diary at Newington Butts in south London by the “Right Honourable the Earl of Pembroke’s Men” (Shakespeare’s Company) was Shakespeare’s play therefore, although scholars believe it probably was. The title page of the 1631 Quarto of
The Shrew
which claims it was performed by the King’s Men at the Globe and Blackfriars theaters and a court performance before Charles I in 1633 indicate that it continued in the company repertoire. The popularity of and interest in Shakespeare’s play is also suggested by John Fletcher’s sequel
The Woman’s Prize
or
The Tamer Tamed
(written around 1611) in which widower Petruchio is remarried, to Maria, and subjected in turn to his new wife’s taming regime.

Shakespeare’s play was not produced in its entirety from then until the mid–nineteenth century. Instead audiences from the Restoration onward saw partial performances of Shakespeare’s text in numerous adaptations. While these testify to the popularity and familiarity of characters and plot, they suggest unease with its complex interweaving of narrative strands. Apart from the anonymous
A Shrew
which features a complete Sly framework, none of these adaptations treats both the induction and the Katherina/Petruchio plot together. Sometimes they treat the induction material relating to Christopher Sly, in which case the focus is on class, but more commonly the induction has been ignored and the focus is on gender.

In 1698 John Lacey produced
Sauny the Scott or The Taming of the Shrew,
a bawdy farce in which the main character is a Scots servant named Sauny (the Grumio role in
The Shrew
)—from “Sander,” the character’s name in
A Shrew
. Written in prose, it has no induction or framework. It’s set in London and most of the names are anglicized except Petruchio, Tranio, and Biancha
(sic).
Katherina becomes Margaret/Peg; Baptista, Lord Beaufoy; Lucentio, Winlove, and so on. The rough outline of Shakespeare’s play is adhered to but with an emphasis on physical violence. Petruchio threatens to beat Peg with a stick in the second act, and once in his country house she is not only deprived of food and sleep but is threatened with being undressed by Sauny and forced to sit up, drink beer, and smoke tobacco. Margaret
is not tamed by this treatment though, and when she and Petruchio return to her father’s, she counsels her sister to rebel against her new husband. When she refuses to speak to Petruchio a barber is brought in to extract a tooth. Petruchio pretends that Peg is dead and is going to have her buried, at which point Margaret capitulates. Her final speech is reduced to “Fy Ladys, for shame, How dare you infringe that Duty which you justly owe your Husbands, they are our Lords and we must pay ’em Service.” The writing and characterization are unsophisticated, with the comic emphasis divided between Sauny’s bawdy and Margaret’s humiliation.

Charles Johnson’s
The Cobbler of Preston
(1716) is a dramatic response to contemporary political events—the first Jacobite rebellion of the previous year (Battle of Preston, 1715). Johnson was a lawyer turned playwright through his acquaintance with the actor Robert Wilks, joint manager of Drury Lane. He uses the induction from
The Shrew,
making Kit Sly a drunken cobbler from Preston whom Sir Charles Briton decides to teach a lesson. A rival version written and produced by Christopher Bullock at Lincoln’s Inn Fields proved more successful, however, and was regularly revived until 1759.

James Worsdale’s
A Cure for a Scold
(1735) is an anglicized version of
Sauny the Scott,
which takes place in polite society and is brought into line with the dramatic unities. The text is stripped right down and filled out with twenty-three songs plus dancing. There is no induction or Sly frame. Baptista has become Sir William Worthy; Petruchio Mr. Manly, now an old friend of Sir William’s, and Grumio Archer (Manly’s friend rather than a servant); Lucentio is called Gainlove and there is no disguising subplot, although he does run off and marry Flora (Bianca); Katherina is Margaret/Peg as in
Sauny
. The Tranio role is omitted but some of his functions are taken over by Flora’s maid, Lucy. The language in this version has been cleaned up—there is none of the bawdy of the original or vulgarity of
Sauny,
and there are picturesque archaisms, but despite this and the expression of egalitarian sentiments, the violent potential of the original is exploited and Margaret’s physical humiliation relished.

The most famous and popular adaptation was David Garrick’s
Catherine and Petruchio
(1756), frequently played in a double bill with
his similarly abridged version of
The Winter’s Tale, Florizel and Perdita
. Garrick cut the Sly frame and returned the play to Padua. Petruchio is a wealthy man come to Padua to woo Kate. There is no suggestion of any hostility toward her sister or indelicate suggestion that Bianca cannot marry because of Kate. In fact, Bianca is already newly married to Hortensio. Much of Petruchio and Katherina’s dialogue from
The Shrew
is retained but the bawdy innuendo is removed. Garrick’s Catherine keeps the line from
A Shrew
/
Sauny
/
Cure for a Scold
in which she decides to accept Petruchio as a husband. They are to be married the next day and Petruchio turns up unsuitably dressed, as in Shakespeare’s play. Petruchio comes out of the church singing before taking his bride away. Grumio has gone on ahead and describes events to the female Curtis, who strikes him. The scene in Petruchio’s house is much as in Shakespeare’s—the line “ ’Twas a fault unwilling” is one of very few to survive in all versions. With no disguised suitors or pretended fathers, it is her own father that Kate addresses as “Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet” when he, Bianca, and Hortensio come to visit. Kate’s speech is broken up with interjections from her father, sister, and husband. Petruchio turns down the second dowry, claims that he will “doff the lordly husband; / An honest mask, which I throw off with pleasure” and concludes the final speech himself. This is a polite, genteel, and radically simplified version with rather tame shrews, but it nevertheless evoked sufficient anxiety for Garrick to write an Epilogue for Kate in which the actor proclaims, “Thank Heav’n! I’m not the Thing I represented.”