Play Review: The Taming of the Shrew is an amazing play, if for no other reason than it still creates real drama and controversy for us 424 years later. My reading of the play is colored by my belief that Shakespeare is too talented, original, and clever a writer to create a play where a man simply dominates a woman; that would only take a simpleton, which Shakespeare was not. Of course, we all have to note that those were different times, when women could actually be arraigned for shrewishness.
Bianca's suitors seek a champion. Petruchio is the mouse who will bell the cat, the only man brave enough (even if driven by filthy lucre) to confront Katherine (the Shrew). Gremio believes only a "devil" would marry Katherine. Petruchio is that devil. He is willing to challenge her, to break all the rules ("he is more shrew than she") even as she breaks all the rules ("of all mad matches never was the like"). Bianca describes Katherine "as being mad she's madly mated," at her marriage with Petruchio. Tranio describes Kate as "stark mad," and Petruchio behaves madly at his wedding, shocking the wedding guests and his father in law, later acting madly with the haberdasher and tailor. Petruchio will go his own way, just as Katherine does, saying he is "as peremptory as she proud-minded." Petruchio compares himself and Kate to "two raging fires" meeting together. When they banter, it's apparent that they are intellectual equals, that Kate can give as good as she gets. They are well matched, and he cannot best her with his mind or his words.
Petruchio begins by saying his weapon will be absurdity, that he will woo Katherine by saying she's sweet when she rails, looks clear when she frowns, is voluble when mute; by calling her the opposite of what she is, he will woo and break her. This is the method he uses when they meet, calling her gentle and pleasant, and toward the end of the play on the road to Padua when he calls the moon the sun and expects Kate to do likewise. He doesn't expect Katherine to believe these things (he knows she doesn't), but simply assent to them, thus accepting the superficial and false appearance of truth. This is truth disguised, as echoed and mirrored in the subplot as Bianca's suitors (and others) affect misdirection and disguise and are not who they appear to be. But Petruchio's antics are ludicrous and over the top, as he becomes a parody of himself (at least a parody of a loutish man), who no one believes unless they think him mad. All the while he insists it's all for Katherine's benefit, acting the perfect husband, which no one believes either. In a key line on the road to Padua, Hortensio advises Katherine, "Say as he says, or we shall never go." Katherine, indeed, adopts this advice as an expedient, but she's aware of Petruchio's game. There's no indication that she believes it or has been tamed or broken. Just another compromise of married life in 1593, as she must live with a mad man.
Katherine suffers when Petruchio also resorts to what today we would call "brainwashing," denying her food and sleep till she is in extremis ("I ... am starved for meat, giddy for lack of sleep"). But although Katherine may, starving and exhausted as a prisoner of war, now be willing to say anything, there's no indication that she actually believes the words that Petruchio wants her to say. She knows what's going on, calling Grumio a "false deluding slave." She isn't broken intellectually, her mind is free. Instead she and Petruchio again play at absurdity, creating a charade, a facade, a farce, so as to have a truce in the war between the sexes.
At the beginning of the play, Katherine is none too sympathetic a character: she rails at her father (no Fifth Commandment for her), she strikes her bound, helpless sister (what, is she the Marquise de Sade?). But by the end of the play I expect the entire audience is rooting for her, and a goodly number are disappointed when she appears so compliant. But as Kate finds a way to live in peace, two new Shrews appear in the (suddenly appearing) widow and Bianca (actually Bianca first showed her mettle much earlier with her two "tutors": "I am no breeching scholar in the schools"). My reading of Katherine's final speech is that it is too over the top, goes too far, that she is exaggerating for effect, playing at absurdity, that she is once more putting up the facade, the charade the farce as she and Petruchio have bantered back and forth previously and repeatedly. There is nothing prior to this scene indicating that Kate has succumbed or broken, or believes any such words as she speaks. If only we had a TARDIS and could see The Taming of the Shrew as it was played in Shakespeare's time. Tellingly, Lucentio in the last line of the play, has doubts about the taming of shrews: "'Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so."
Plays are difficult to read and review. A play is intended to be performed, where the viewer is part of a group, experiencing both the play and the audience at the same time. The crowd is part of the work. A play is not meant to be a silent, private experience, alone with only pages and a book. As such I watched a couple of productions just to see how it was played. What is impressive is how timely it is, even if read anachronistically, and how well it plays today. Some may question the play's validity as a comedy, which makes me think the Bard knew it was a only a short, perhaps nonexistent, distance between comedy and tragedy. If Shakespeare ever wrote a bad play, this isn't it. [4★]
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