THE TAMING of the (TRUE) SHREW Maya Tzur Honors Thesis

THE TAMING OF THE (TRUE) SHREW Maya Tzur Honors Thesis Fall 2013 Professor Homan, Professor Shoaf CONTENTS Introduction 3 All the World’s A Stage – Staging the Play 4 Is She the Worst? - Analyzing Katherina the Curst 7 The Not-So-Sly Aspects of the Christopher Sly Induction 10 Bianca: The True Shrew 13 Conclusion 33 Works Cited 35 2 Tzur Honors Thesis Introduction Literature, when written effectively, can be as illusionary as pulling a rabbit from a hat. One can believe and see that an ordinary top hat is empty; yet, the magician will still make a hare appear from thin air. It takes a moment to realize that the trick is being completed in plain sight, the rabbit never having left the hat. Comparatively, one is made to believe that, because Bianca Minola in William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is famed for her beauty and innocence, it means that her reputation defines her personality. However, by Act V, she seems to have developed a sense of sass and disobedience for no concrete reason. With all the main protagonists, including the youngest Minola, receiving what they covet most—true love—why does Bianca suddenly go from being the fair, docile daughter to being “headstrong” (V.ii.134)? With analysis of the text, it is clear that Bianca has duped not only the audience, but her peers and husband as well: In reality, she was the true shrew all along. My approach to this project comes from both a literary and theatrical sense. While fluent with the play beforehand—having studied it in three of my Literature classes within a year—throughout my time 3 Tzur Honors Thesis studying the play, I never had any cause to doubt Bianca’s innocence. I wrote a final paper in a previous class about how different versions of The Taming of the Shrew across media platforms portrayed Katherina as the shrew. Unfortunately, I never made the connection of a role switch between Katherina and Bianca, as I did not condition myself to read between the lines of the text. So, a beneficial and necessary aspect of conducting the research for this paper was having the unique opportunity to portray Bianca in a reader’s theater production of The Taming of the Shrew this past April. The Taming of the Shrew focuses on the parallel stories of two sisters, Katherina and Bianca Minola. Katherina is the older and less favored sibling; due to her erratic behavior, she is infamously and disparagingly known to those who surround her as “the shrew.” Bianca, who appears to be demure, is revered for her iridescent beauty, and is the object of desire for many men across the land. Nevertheless, all is not what it seems: it was only after I was able to personally step into the metaphorical shoes of the character that I began to realize how she is a more powerful antagonist than her sister, which was completely the opposite of everything I knew and read about her. I realized that for my purposes, portraying Bianca as an innocent victim was not the most organic path. The way she lied to her father, misled Gremio and Hortensio, and directly defied Lucentio after their wedding directly tainted the 4 Tzur Honors Thesis innocent image I had imagined. The title does insinuate that a shrew has undergone a taming process; yet, it does not delegate when this occurs or whom the title is talking about. There can be two options as to how the play’s name can be interpreted. The first option is that The Taming of the Shrew’s title is summary of the play: Katherina is the shrew and the events of the play revolve around her taming process. With the use of synonyms, a second translation can be made: the suppression of the shrew. With this inference, Bianca essentially puts on the mask of innocence throughout the play’s events, with her true self begging to reach the surface. Naturally, the first translation is the most historically common take on the story, as it is only natural to think that the title would be talking about the person who is constantly deemed the shrew. I will discuss how literally this assumption can be inferred, as well as how it can also be equally plausible that Bianca can be the shrew. All the World’s A Stage – Staging the Play The idea of staging the play first came about after a performance of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia that I starred in at Ustler Hall (the Women’s Studies center). I gathered with two MFA Theater candidates named Joseph Urick and Sunny Smith to discuss the possibilities of staging a play that accentuates the struggle and eventual empowerment of women. They both agreed that the theater department needed a way outside of the regular 5 Tzur Honors Thesis performance schedule to speak out about these themes; as an English Literature major and an actress, I agreed to act in the play. Together, we decided to stage The Taming of the Shrew and have the play’s performances directly coincide with International Women’s Month. Our main message was to accentuate the harms that verbal, emotional and physical abuse can cause women, as well as to show how negative odds and circumstances can be combated. In terms of casting, we decided to combine the theater departments with the Classics and English departments, as Shakespeare’s works are as prominent in the theater world as they are within literature. The representatives of the English Department were Professor Homan, and my self (Vincentio and Bianca, respectively). In addition, my classmate and colleague, Jeff Jurgens, was cast as Gremio. Joseph Urick (a classically trained actor and 3rd year MFA candidate who performed The Taming of the Shrew Off-Broadway) played Petruchio. Urick was also the primary director, so Professor Homan directed any scenes starring Petruchio. Baptista’s gender was switched in order to accentuate the themes of feminine presence in theater and literature; Karelisa Hartigan, a Classics Professor, undertook the role. Sunny Smith, also an MFA candidate, was cast as Katherina. The actors playing Tranio, the widow, Grumio, Lucentio, and Hortensio were all MFA, BFA and BA theater students; since the theater department had several performances scheduled in March, the two 6 Tzur Honors Thesis performances of The Taming of the Shrew were pushed to April. In order to make the play revolve around the themes of feminism, Sunny and I played Katherina and Bianca wanted our acting to portray strong leading women. I decided to portray Bianca as an insufferable, disobedient girl, in order lend the cause for Katherina to create an identity outside of the shrew. There were so many hoops and obstacles Katherina had to jump because of Bianca’s behavior, such as living in the shadow of her sister, maintaining her individuality in spite of outsider abuse, and being forced to succumb to an societal expectation of her gender that she does not relate to. Her character’s development in Act V is laudable, because she has a plethora of negative influences to overcome. As exemplified by a quote by Peter Alexander, Katherina defeats the contrived identity of the shrew, rather than allow it to overtake her permanently. “Though [Katherina’s] role is ridgidly prescribed by the plot, [she] shows a strength and independence that makes us wish that Shakespeare could have contrived in the end to show more clearly that she stoops to conquer” (67). Both of our depictions purposely were meant to show the importance of powerful women in literature and theater; if we played Bianca as innocent and Katherina as meaninglessly devilish, there would be no poignant female protagonists within true moral fiber of the play. The director, as well as Sunny and I, felt the need to pay homage to 7 Tzur Honors Thesis strong women in Shakespearean literary history by ensuring that Katherina and Bianca both had opposing personality arcs. As we can see in subsequent works, with characters like Viola in Twelfth Night, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, to name a few, it would be uncharacteristic of Shakespeare to create two weak, defenseless female characters. Viola takes initiative after her brother’s death and uses her insight in order to dress as a man and live within the kingdom of Duke Orsino. Beatrice’s relationship with Benedick can allude to Katherina’s with Petruchio: both are marked with witty, quick banter and graduate from enmity to endearment. Both characters gain fulfillment by the end of the play, and retained their composure and strength as long as they were on stage. To the creative crew of our show, Bianca and Katherina both should exhibit these behaviors of independence and strength against all odds, as it would be a perfect metaphor for the importance of Women’s Month. Is She the Worst? - Analyzing Katherina the Curst During the play, Katherina is known as “a devil, a devil, the devil’s dam,” and no one can seem to subdue her erratic behavior (III.ii.129). To Baptista and the suitors, Katherina’s purpose is to find a husband so her sister can be eligible for marriage, in spite of the fact that they think it is impossible to find a willing, compatible husband. When Hortensio is talking to Petruchio about Katherina, he remarks that Katherina, although beautiful and from a respectably wealthy family, her reputation holds firm 8 Tzur Honors Thesis that is not marriage material. “Her only fault, and that is faults enough, / Is that she is intolerable curst / And shrewd and froward, so beyond all measure / That, were my state far worser than it is, / I would not wed her for a mine of gold” (I.ii.84-88).

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