The Taming of the Shrew Anna Kamaralli Shakespeare

The Taming of the Shrew

Anna Kamaralli, Shakespeare and the Shrew Bitch, hag, nag, crone, virago, harridan, harpy, scold; the terms go in and out of fashion, and ‘shrew’ itself is rarely used today, but the power of the concept remains unchanged since Shakespeare first created his remarkable range of vocal women; women who continue to speak their truth about the world, no matter what means others employ to silence them. It has never been considered a particular virtue for a man to be silent, though one who chose to might be admired as saintly or remarkable; for women, throughout European history, however, the primary virtues were given as obedience, chastity and silence (the need to instruct women in these virtues itself reveals the fear of their likely neglect), with the added assumption that the three were related. 1

The shrew’s rejection of silence could be enough to call into doubt her claim to any other virtues, regardless of the validity of what she had to say. Shakespeare’s shrews repeatedly frustrate that tradition by making obvious the harmfulness of the double standard that applies when judging men by what they say, women for the fact that they speak at all. When Shakespeare’s women speak and we see them criticized for speaking, and yet we know that what they are saying is true and just, we are forced to confront the error of judging a woman’s value according to her willingness to keep silent.

There is its dictionary definition and its place as a pejorative slang expression and a somewhat archaic insult, but there is also its identity as a conventional theatrical type, which carries connotations much richer and more directly pertinent to this study. The Oxford English Dictionary gives for the word ‘a woman given to railing or scolding or other perverse or malignant behaviour; a scolding or turbulent wife’ (though the shorter edition gives the definition simply as ‘a badtempered woman’). 3 Other definitions include: ‘a woman of vexatious, nagging or violent disposition; a scolding or brawling female’; 4 ‘a scolding, nagging bad-tempered woman’; 5 ‘an offensive term referring to a woman who is regarded asquarrelsome, nagging or ill-tempered’;

…a woman of violent temper and speech’. 7 Although ‘shrew’ began as a gender-neutral term, Shakespeare uses the word only in application to women, 8 and certainly today the subject is assumed to be female. The term is clear both in its specific application to women and also in its emphasis on speech, on noise. It refers not to a merely sulky, obstinate or intractable woman but one who is verbally critical, who will not remain quiet or limit herself to speaking pleasingly. In the time Shakespeare was writing, the shrew was as familiar a theatrical archetype as the tyrant, the lover or the clown,

Katherine It may be difficult to believe given her reputation and performance history, but Katherine is not really much of a shrew, particularly not on a scale of Shakespeare’s shrews. All the available definitions of the word ’shrew’ relate to the idea of a woman who is unruly, rather than just unruled; a woman who rails, who creates scenes. Stubbornly resisting authority or refusing to participate in the norms of society is not enough for a woman to be labelled a shrew; the term is specifically attached to a brawling, bad-tempered or argumentative woman, a noisy woman (notice Benedick’s referral to Beatrice as ‘My Lady Tongue’). And yet Katherine speaks a paltry 8 per cent of her play’s lines, no more than Hortensio, less than Tranio, and nothing like Petruchio’s 22 percent.

Katherina speaks so little, and often not at all at what appear to be crucial points in the narrative, that an actor in practical terms has no choice but to make decisions from few or no textual clues. Katherine demonstrates for women how easy it is to acquire the label, and how subsequently hard it will be to escape it. She does not interrupt anyone, rarely cuts anyone off, and her encounter with her sister in II. 1 is the only instance where her hostility seems to be taking the initiative, rather than being a response to a provocation. The first time she appears, in I. 1, she does not speak until she has been insulted by Gremio, and she then responds to a further insult from Hortensio.

The paradox of The Taming of the Shrew is that if we are meant to take Katherine’s experiences as funny and the final scene as moving and romantic, then the play is offensive, but if it is not meant to be funny and romantic then it obviously is not a romantic comedy. Being Shakespeare, this is not altogether a surprise. Just as comedy works its way into the very sinews of tragedy in plays such as Titus Andronicus and Romeo and Juliet, so there are comedies that will not allow the tragic to be dispelled. Shakespeare was a shrewd commercial showman, easily clever enough to write plays that allowed those who approved of the status quo to go away feeling they had got exactly what they wanted, while those who liked things more provocative also got fed enough to chew on.

SCENE V. A public road. Enter PETRUCHIO, KATHARINA, HORTENSIO, and Servants PETRUCHIO Come on, i' God's name; once more toward our father's. Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon! KATHARINA The moon! the sun: it is not moonlight now. PETRUCHIO I say it is the moon that shines so bright. KATHARINA I know it is the sun that shines so bright. PETRUCHIO Now, by my mother's son, and that's myself, It shall be moon, or star, or what I list, Or ere I journey to your father's house. Go on, and fetch our horses back again. Evermore cross'd and cross'd; nothing but cross'd! HORTENSIO Say as he says, or we shall never go.

KATHARINA Forward, I pray, since we have come so far, And be it moon, or sun, or what you please: An if you please to call it a rush-candle, Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me. PETRUCHIO I say it is the moon. KATHARINA I know it is the moon. PETRUCHIO Nay, then you lie: it is the blessed sun.

KATHARINA Then, God be bless'd, it is the blessed sun: But sun it is not, when you say it is not; And the moon changes even as your mind. What you will have it named, even that it is; And so it shall be so for Katharina. HORTENSIO Petruchio, go thy ways; the field is won. PETRUCHIO Well, forward! thus the bowl should run, And not unluckily against the bias. But, soft! company is coming here. Enter VINCENTIO

Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow, And dart not scornful glances from those eyes, To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor: It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads, Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds, And in no sense is meet or amiable. A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty; And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it. Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee, And for thy maintenance commits his body To painful labour both by sea and land, To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe; And craves no other tribute at thy hands

But love, fair looks and true obedience; Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince Even such a woman oweth to her husband; And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour, And not obedient to his honest will, What is she but a foul contending rebel And graceless traitor to her loving lord? I am ashamed that women are so simple To offer war where they should kneel for peace; Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway, When they are bound to serve, love and obey. Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth, Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,

But that our soft conditions and our hearts Should well agree with our external parts? Come, come, you froward and unable worms! My mind hath been as big as one of yours, My heart as great, my reason haply more, To bandy word for word and frown for frown; But now 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. Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot, And place your hands below your husband's foot: In token of which duty, if he please, My hand is ready; may it do him ease.

a general summary of the various possible conclusions might look like this: she is sincere, and this makes it a happy ending, she has become a better, happier and freer person; she is sincere, and this makes it a tragic ending, she has had her spirit broken and is now merely Petruchio’s puppet; she doesn’t really mean it, but is allowing Petruchio to think he has his way, knowing that this is the way to get the best of him; she doesn’t really mean it, and is sharing a private agenda with Petruchio to score points on the others; she is stating the formal Renaissance position on marriage, explaining to the other women what their lot will inevitably be in this world and/or posing Petruchio the question of whether this is really what he wants; or finally the actual content of the speech is irrelevant, the important thing is the gesture where someone proves the unselfishness of true love by showing that they are willing to do and exceed whatever their loved one asks of them.