The Taming of the Shrew

by William Shakespeare

  Padua, it seems, is that sort of place, a competitive, grasping, cynical, and really rather horrible city.69

  In her 1985 touring production, Di Trevis claimed that the play was "not so much about the position of women as about wealth and class, about people being treated as objects by others in more powerful positions."70 She believed it was "about power, not gender. Power resides in economic status. The main plot is a play-within-a-play which I see as a rich man's joke."71 Set in the early to mid-nineteenth century, the play reflected a time when "women were treated as chattels, when the gulf between the agricultural poor and the city rich was widening, and there was a marked political swing to the right."72 The play-within-the-play ended with a wedding tableau, rose petals, and music, but the performance was not over. The players took their bows and went off to change, but Sly's own fiction had not ended. After the confusion of the congratulation of the players, and their subsequent exit, Sly and his "lady" moved toward each other. Sly was gentle and loving. He believed in his role, and he had seen that respect and affection between men and women was possible. Then the page threw off his wig and ran away, laughing mockingly. Sly watched, grief-stricken, and the genuine lord contemptuously threw a few coins at his feet. Sly had fulfilled his part as entertainer. Now he was being paid.

  Some of the players returned to collect props and costumes. An actress got down on her hands and knees to clean the floor. The actress who had played Kate entered. She looked humble and downtrodden now. There was no trace of her courage and vivacity as Kate. In her arms she held the baby she had carried at the beginning of the performance as she pulled the cart. As the lights faded for the final time, Sly stretched out his hand to this actress, offering her as a gift one of the coins that had been tossed to him.

  A poor man had learned something through the experience of watching the play, but he was without power. He was a man, but he was not rich, and within the society the production depicted both qualities were necessary before a human being was considered of real worth.73

  3. Di Trevis production, 1985: a humble and downtrodden Kate "held the baby she had carried at the beginning of the performance as she pulled the cart," very much in the manner of Brecht's Mother Courage.

  Birds of Prey Are Never Truly Tame74

  Playing games is something Petruchio does throughout the play, whether the games are funny or dark, and he sets the tone as soon as he arrives.75

  Petruchio's motivation for his actions toward Katherina radically alters what the audience feels about the more brutal scenes in the play. Likewise, Katherina's response to his behavior, her awareness and understanding, or lack of it, will determine just how funny the play remains. Because of the ambiguity inherent in the text the relationship between these two misfits can be interpreted in many ways. It offers a precarious balance in characterization which can determine whether or not the audience sees a love story or disturbing account of spousal abuse.

  In 1987 Jonathan Miller turned his psychologist's eye to the play, finding the crux of the problem in the fact that Katherina was an unwanted and neglected child:

  Dr Miller ... is interested as always in the clinical psychology underlying the text. He has been talking of the behaviour patterns of unloved children. Katherina has every reason to resent being her father's unfavourite daughter. By being as "froward" as she knows how, she is showing just how unlovable she can be if she chooses. "It's not that she needs taming, she needs releasing," reflects Fiona Shaw [who played Katherina]. "She behaves badly because of being imprisoned by her society--being offered round by a father who says, in effect, "Which of you chaps will have Kate?--otherwise nobody gets Bianca."76

  Fiona Shaw's Katherina was a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, unable to be a complete person in a repressive society: "After a while, when people are calling you a shrew, you start living the name. If you're told you're ugly, you start acting ugly."77 Her psychological state was even reflected in the stage design of Stefanos Lazaridis:

  The Shrew is also about upstarts and outsiders, an unruly woman and a subversive suitor who affront decorum and knock Padua off its level footing. Miller's set demonstrated this too. It put Padua on a steep slope, its street a vertiginous rake.... [Kate] finally appeared, behind the rest, self-absorbed, teetering down the steep edge of the steep verge, arms outstretched like a tightrope walker. On one side was High Street Padua, on the other, a sheer drop. This woman was on the brink. While the suitors bickered, Fiona [Shaw's] Kate ranged behind them, flashing her embroidery scissors, gouging initials into the walls and hacking off handfuls of hair.

  Shaw described how she "wanted to give the effect of a woman mutilating herself like some women in prison do. I wanted to use the scissors to cut my arm--I thought about women in crisis who, far from being aggressive towards other people, are very often aggressive towards themselves."78 When this Katherina meets Petruchio, she finds, for the first time in her life, somebody who genuinely wants her:

  It may only be for her money and services ... but at least she will be valued for something.... The scene then develops between standard hostilities and moments of astonishment and delighted intoxication, which she then chokes down to renew the combat. Miss Shaw plays this beautifully; but most of her acting has to be between the lines, with many a pause for conflicting emotions to pass over her face before the action resumes.79

  She comes in--and is talked to by a man for the first time; that's what disorientates her. Not his violence but his gentleness.80

  Brian Cox's Petruchio uses violence to instruct, to throw a reflection of Katherina's behavior back at herself so that she can learn that violence against others is only really violence against herself. With this damaged Kate, extreme methods were needed to break her anger and own self-destructive behavior:

  He means to be taken seriously--when Kate slaps him, there is a deadly purr in his voice which tells us she would be very unwise to do it again--but cruelty disgusts him.... Petruchio is usually played as an engaging sadist. Cox makes him a shrewd eccentric, a man who brawls and shouts to parody behaviour he detests.81

  She comes in wrecked from the journey, still in her wedding dress, and what happens next is that her expectations of normal life are totally undermined. She who has been characterized by violence now has to observe what violence really is.... He shouts at the servants.... He beats them up and says, "Nay, Kate, be merry!" ... It's a nightmare. Because the tamer is a man who says, "You want violence? Look at this, what d'you think of this? Bang!" So much so that the only lines Kate speaks in that scene are defending the servant! "Patience, I pray you, 'twas a fault unwilling." For the first time she is the one who's tempering. For the first time Petruchio makes contact with her civilizedness.82

  4. Jonathan Miller production, 1987: Fiona Shaw as Katherina and Brian Cox as Petruchio. "With this damaged Kate, extreme methods were needed to break her anger and own self-destructive behaviour."

  Alternatively, when the "taming" of Katherina is portrayed as Sly's twisted male fantasy the misogynistic elements of the relationship are often emphasized by the overt use of physical and mental abuse. In Michael Bogdanov's provocative modern-dress production (1978) Jonathan Pryce was a

  brutish Petruchio/Sly, both of whom used violence crudely. The brutishness in men was socially unacceptable under the veneer of conventional behaviour and was indicated in the final scene, set in a traditionally male club-like setting with a large green baize table, with men smoking, drinking port or brandy, and casually gambling, a society "in which well-fed men slouch indolently over their port, baying 'hear, hear' when one of their number extracts a particularly ignominious confession of inferiority from his woman."83

  Paola Dionisotti, who played Katherina, found the contemporary setting a stumbling block, as she felt a woman of her character would simply not put up with Petruchio's behavior in the modern world. However, many felt that the production successfully set out to reflect the exploitation of power in our own times:

  This p
roduction's contemporary setting generated a provocative and demanding relevance, presenting the taming story as a distasteful exhibition of male chauvinism and exploitation. The huntsmen threw a vixen's body pelt down upon the sleeping drunkard and instead of a play within a play the ensuing action took the form of Sly-as-Petruchio's fantasy of domination and power.84

  5. Michael Bogdanov production, 1978: Jonathan Pryce as a "brutish Petruchio/Sly" who "uses violence crudely." The final scene was set "in a traditionally male club-like setting with a large green baize table, with men smoking, drinking port or brandy, and casually gambling."

  When asked about the harshness of Petruchio's depiction, Bogdanov explained:

  The violence in my production was meant to engage the audience on an emotional level, to the extent of asking the audience to stand up and be counted. To ask what you really believe, are you really sitting comfortably in your seats, or is there something else that theatre makes you do? Makes you angry, makes you fear, challenges you, and finally makes you want to do something to change the world. Catharsis has no meaning for me. I'm not interested in people purging their emotions in the theatre and then walking away without a care in the world. I am only interested in theatre that excites people enough to make them want to cheer, or be angry enough to walk out.85

  Stuart McQuarrie's Petruchio in Lindsay Posner's 1999 production was also repellent in his violence toward his servants and his wife, described by one reviewer as "a charming, volatile, sunken-eyed monster who will go to any lengths to assert his authority."86 There was even a suggestion of offstage violence when Katherina appeared with a "large red weal on her arm after her marriage."87 As his sustained campaign of abuse went on, the production became decidedly less humorous:

  Posner's key idea is that Petruchio himself is really the one with problems: transmogrifying from Sly into Petruchio, Stuart McQuarrie plays the latter as a pathologically violent figure who beats up Grumio with the same sadistic relish he shows towards Kate.... You don't feel this is a Petruchio whose long-range strategy is to offer Kate a mirror image of her own madness: he simply seems a charmless bully who enjoys tormenting people.... Posner simply leaves us with a coldly brutal tale about psychological cruelty.... But if Shakespeare's central text is no more than the moral equivalent of a sexually chauvinist video, you wonder why anyone today would choose to watch it.88

  The excruciating final scene is well done. Dolan's Katherine recites her submissive speech like a Stepford Wife (Referring to the film The Stepford Wives in which men in an American small town kill and replace their wives with robotic copies who act like every man's dream of the 'perfect' wife.) and the assembled guests look on in horror. Posner almost wimps out, hinting that Kate's surrender is an in-joke, that husband and wife have come to some mysterious, us-against-the-world understanding. But nothing can disguise the naked triumphalism of McQuarrie's Petruchio.89

  When discussing his performance as Petruchio, Michael Siberry discussed the dilemma of reaching a balance between cruelty and humor:

  If you really start putting on the pressure, being really cruel--for which you have the language and the structure of the speeches to support you--it becomes simply too dark and bleak. So much cruelty is implicit in what you say and do anyway, that to play it too strongly is to overstate the obvious.... If, on the other hand, you try to keep it light, if you look as if you are thinking "this is wonderful and I'm more and more drawn to her by the way she deals with this experience or that" (and I think that is what is happening to him), if you look as if you are enjoying yourself and not simply putting pressure on Kate in a nasty, vindictive way, the result is much more interesting ... no matter how good your comedy techniques are, the shadows are still there; you have to acknowledge them, but play against them too.90

  In Gregory Doran's 2003 production, Jasper Britton played Petruchio as a man as emotionally lost after the death of his father as Katherina is by the absence of love from hers:

  Initially, Britton comes over as a swaggering soldier of fortune, arriving in a seedy Padua that's all peeling doors, scraggy gowns and shameless lovemaking. Yet underneath this Petruchio is also emotionally shaky, still wearing a black armband for his father's death. His first wooing scene with [Alexandra] Gilbreath is astonishingly romantic. He floors her in a childish rough-and-tumble, tickling her foot till she roars with laughter. Then he holds her face in his hand with overwhelming tenderness. She is smitten by that, not by manhandling. Her show of obedience is a game whose rules they both understand, while his later bullying is partly explained by a drink problem and falling-back on the tough falcon-training creed of his father.91

  There was a real sense of two people finding each other with a gradual realization that they could create a world outside of the normal rules of their society. Katherina and Petruchio were more equally dependent on each other for salvation than usual. It prompted one reviewer to comment: "I have never seen the 'wooing' scene more breathtakingly played: instead of barbaric knockabout, we see a damaged couple finding mutual support."92

  Katherina's angry scorn quickly yields to surprised interest as she realises that this new wooer will engage with her, tease her and praise her. It is their shared sense of humour that connects them, becoming most clear on Katherina's roar of ribald laughter at Petruchio's joke about his tongue being in her tail--a joke which more commonly draws shocked outrage from the lady.... Her earlier anger and tension, which had been painfully visible in her aggressive posture and unkempt appearance, are replaced by playfulness, laughter and a fearful joy as she falls in love.93

  ... in place of an offensive comedy about "curative" wife-taming, we see Kate trying to rescue a madman she genuinely loves.... Packed with insight, this Shrew is a life-enhancing comedy about the triumph of marriage over paternal oppression.94

  The final submission speech was viewed with envy by all present, for it was obvious that these two outsiders had found a way of loving which far excelled anything that they could hope for within society's normal restrictions. For her final speech Gilbreath was dressed in

  a strange combination of corset, petticoats, breeches and unlaced boots, unburdened by any care for how the world might judge her. Her lack of decorum echoes her husband's outrageous appearance at their wedding, which he defended with the words "To me she's married not unto my clothes." ... Katherina enters gladly through the central door in obedience to her husband's command and delivers her speech of wifely duty with heartfelt sincerity and love. In response to her husband, she discards the cap and, with a playful care, treads it into the ground. Petruchio carefully picks it up and dusts it off, placing it beside him on the table. She proffers her hand to "do him ease" with a big gesture. He remains seated and raises his booted foot, saying "Come on" as if demanding that she publicly take her obedience to the extreme and humiliate herself by literally placing herself beneath his foot. Katherina's face betrays the cost of such a demand as, after a short pause, she moves towards him to obey, only to be intercepted as he sweeps her into an embrace and finally completes his line " ... and kiss me, Kate."95

  "Being a Winner" (5.1.199)

  On one level Shrew is about the power of theatre to change people, to actually make people see themselves, and you, through seeing life reproduced on the stage.96

  The playwright John Arden writing about Henry V suggested: "one is forced to wonder if the author had not written a secret play inside the official one," and it may be that one has to question The Taming of the Shrew in the same way. Are the problems of sexism and chauvinistic behavior a problem at all when most right-minded people watching it are genuinely appalled by them anyway?

  When directing another play about the Elizabethan attitudes to marriage, Michael Bogdanov commented that whether Shakespeare is examining personal and/or sociopolitical concerns, he is,

  all the time, analysing the nature of power and the way that it corrupts man. It is as if he were trying to find another society that could exist outside of this Elizabethan one of
greed and avarice.... As long as there is a society where fathers are allowed to barter their daughters to the highest bidder, then tragedies like Romeo and Juliet are going to occur.97

  Economics and class should not enter into the realms of emotion but they still do. Money traps the humanity of both rich and poor: the rich because the world for them, including personal relationships, becomes a matter of economics, the poor, because without money they are powerless and at the mercy of those who will use them without consequence. The question which we are left with in modern productions of The Taming of the Shrew is whether or not two people who love each other can break free of their restrictive milieu and challenge society's perceptions, or whether they are trapped by the established order into destructive patterns of behavior. Shakespeare's text has enabled directors to explore these possibilities in a way that is entirely relevant despite our assumption that we live in more enlightened times.

  THE DIRECTOR'S CUT: INTERVIEWS WITH GREGORY DORAN AND PHYLLIDA LLOYD

  Gregory Doran, born in 1958, studied at Bristol University and the Bristol Old Vic theater school. He began his career as an actor, before becoming Associate Director at the Nottingham Playhouse. He played some minor roles in the RSC ensemble before directing for the company, first as a freelance, then as Associate and subsequently Chief Associate Director. His productions, several of which have starred his partner Antony Sher, are characterized by extreme intelligence and lucidity. He has made a particular mark with several of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays and the revival of works by his Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries. He talks here about his 2003 RSC production of The Taming of the Shrew, with Alexandra Gilbreath as Kate and Jasper Britton as Petruchio.