Themes
[edit] Cruelty
Some critics believe that cruelty permeates the entire play, including the Induction (Krims 51). The Sly frame, with the Lord's spiteful practical joke, is seen by some to prepare the audience for a play willing to treat cruelty as a comedic matter (Krims 51). A modern audience may find the cruel actions of the main characters comical, but should they consider the situation in reality they would very likely be appalled (Krims 51-52). While Katherina displays physical cruelty on stage - in the tying together of her sister’s hands, the beating of Hortensio with his lute, and the striking of Petruchio -, Petruchio utilizes cruelty as a psychological weapon; he purposely misunderstands, dismisses, and humiliates Katherina, while all the time attempting to project his own wishes onto her (Krims 52). Krims believes such treatment makes Katherina’s final speech seem a forced camouflage of pain as well as a final humiliation (Krims 52, 53). He believes that cruelty is a more important theme than the more often debated controversy surrounding gender as the play portrays a broad representation of human cruelty rather than merely cruelty between the sexes (Krims 59).
[edit] Gender relations
The history of criticism of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is saturated with controversy. It may be assumed that the play was easily received by all in Shakespeare’s time, based on prevailing societal oppression of women and a mostly male theatre audience, but not all critics agree. Aspinall argues that an Elizabethan audience would have been similarly taken aback by the play’s harsh, misogynistic language: “Since its first appearance, Shrew has elicited a panoply of heartily supportive, ethically uneasy, or altogether disgusted responses to its rough-and-tumble treatment of the ‘taming’ of the ‘curst shrew’ Katherina”. She further explains that “arranged marriages began to give way to newer, more romantically informed experiments”, and thus people’s views on women’s position in society and their relationship were in the process of shifting[8].
Davies believes that the modern response to The Shrew “is dominated by feelings of unease and embarrassment, accompanied by the desire to prove that Shakespeare cannot have meant what he seems to be saying; and that therefore he cannot really be saying it”[9].
Evidence of at least some initial societal discomfort with Shrew is that John Fletcher, a contemporary of Shakespeare, felt the need to respond to the play with one of his own. He wrote The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed as a quasi sequel telling the story of Petruchio's remarriage after Katherina's death. In a mirror of the original, his new wife attempts to tame Petruchio - thus the tamer becomes the tamed. Although Fletcher’s sequel is often downplayed as merely a farcical mockery of The Shrew, some critics acknowledge the more serious implications of such a reaction. Linda Boose writes: “Fletcher’s response may in itself reflect the kind of discomfort that Shrew has characteristically provoked in men and why its many revisions since 1594 have repeatedly contrived ways of softening the edges” (179).
After the 17th century, performances of The Taming of the Shrew greatly decreased compared to Shakespeare’s other plays. When performed the play was often an adaptation of Shakespeare’s original. In the 18th century, however, there was a revival of the original text: “As the 18th century demanded a greater realism and a more authentic Shakespeare, both on stage and in print, a newfound admiration for Petruchio accumulated rapidly”, writes Aspinall[8].
As women achieved a more equal social status due to the feminist movements of the twentieth century, reactions to the play evolved. Society's new and progressive views on gender impacted upon the critical approach to The Shrew: “In short, Katherina’s taming was no longer as funny as it once had been for some readers and spectators; her domination became altogether disgusting to modern sensibility”[8]. Thus, in a modern society, with relatively egalitarian perspectives on gender, the staging of Shakespeare's original text presents a moral dilemma. Two methods are most commonly employed when attempting to perform The Shrew while still maintaining faithfulness to the text. The first is the emphasis of the play’s farcical elements, such as Sly's and the metatheatrical nature of the play. The second strategy is steeping "the play in irony, such as Columbia Pictures' 1929 Taming of the Shrew where Katherina winks as she advocates a woman’s submission to her husband”[8]. The treatment of Katherina’s final speech, the most problematic of the play, as purely ironic makes the submissiveness of Katherina’s words more palatable.
Burns claims the speech simultaneously belittles women while also explaining the essential and central place of women in relationships with men (Burns 45). Detmer explains that “rebellious women” were a point of concern for men during the late 16th and early 17th century and thus the issue of gender relations, and therefore domestic violence, comes as little surprise (Detmer 273). Petruchio's treatment of Katherina may well have the effect of making the domination one’s wife seem tolerable, as long as physical force is not used (Detmer 247). The psychological cruelty may be intended to be seen as a more civil way to dominate one’s wife, though to a modern audience at least it is viewed as an equally oppressive form of physical abuse (Detmer 275).
Male perception of women is addressed, albeit through a comedic situation, in the Induction as the Lord explains to his serving man how to believably act like a woman, (Ind I.110-21):
With soft low tongue and lowly courtesy
And say, 'What is't your honour will command
Wherein your lady and your humble wife
May show her duty and make known her love?
And then, with kind embracments, tempting kisses,
And with declining head into his bosom,
Bid him shed tears, as being overjoyed
To see her noble lord restored to health,
Who for this seven years hast esteem'ed him
No better than a poor and loathsome beggar.
And if the boy have not a woman's gift
To rain a shower of commanded tears...
The above represents the Lord's view of how a woman ought to behave; she should be courteous, humble, loyal, and obedient. He also believes that females are emotional - crying is a woman's gift. The Induction acts as suitable preparation for Katherina's character and her disgust for such stereotyping as well as her rebellion against Elizabethan society's gender values.
In the Sixteenth Century it was permissible for men to beat their wives. Rebellious women were a concern for Englishmen because they posed a threat to the patriarchal model of a good household upon which Elizabethan society was built. Some see The Shrew as innovative because, although it does promote male dominance, it does not condone violence towards women per se, an accepted practice of the time. The "play’s attitude was characteristically Elizabethan and was expressed more humanly by Shakespeare than by some of his sources,” (West, 65). Although Petruchio never strikes Katherina, he uses other tactics to physically tame her and thus exert his superiority. Many critics, including Emily Detmer, see this as a modern take on perpetuating male authority “…legitimizing domination as long as it is not physical,” (Detmer, 274). George Bernard Shaw condemned the play in a letter to Pall Mall Gazette as, "one vile insult to womanhood and manhood from the first word to the last"[10].
Other critics, such as Natasha Korda, believe that even though Petruchio does not use force to tame Katherina, his actions are still an active endorsement of patriarchy; Petruchio makes Katherina his property. Two examples present themselves while Katherina and Petruchio are still courting. First, Petruchio offers to marry Katherina and save her from an impending spinsterhood because she has a large dowry. In Elizabethan society, a woman of age was expected to become a wife. Second, Katherina is objectified when they are first introduced: Petruchio wishes to physically judge Katherina and asks her to walk for his observation; he is pleased with her princely gait and she passes the test.
Although Petruchio is not characterized as a violent man, he still embodies the subjugation and objectification of women during the Sixteenth Century: “The object of the tale was simply to put the shrew to work, to restore her (frequently through some gruesome form of punishment) to her proper productive place within the household economy,” (Korda, 110). Harold Bloom, however, reads Katherina's final speech as ironic (see above), proposing that she is explaining that in reality women control men by appearing to obey them.
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