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Katherina / Kate THE PLAY “THE TAMING OF THE SHREW” THE WOMAN KATHERINA / KATE THE FACTS WRITTEN: “The Taming of the Shrew” was completed in 1594 although Shakespeare may have begun to write it as early as 1590…. In the twelve months spanning the end of 1593 and the start of 1594 the young William Shakespeare was particularly prolific in the London theater scene. In addition to composing five plays he also completed his two long narrative poems “Venus and Adonis” and “The Rape of Lucrece”. PUBLISHED: The play was first published in the famous First Folio of 1923 AGE: The Bard was only approaching his 30th birthday when he completed the play. (Born 1564-Died 1616) CHRONO: Completed early in his career, the play falls in line as his eighth play in his full canon of 39 plays; the comedy followed on the heels of the “apprentice tragedy” of “Titus Andronicus” and was followed by the poetic romance, “Love’s Labour’s Lost.” GENRE: “The Taming of the Shrew” often finds its place in the category of the “Early Comedies” with “The Comedy of Errors” and “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.” SOURCE: Although there is no direct literary source for the “Induction”, the tale of a commoner being duped into believing he is a lord is one found in many literary traditions. Regarding the Petruchio and Katherina story, there are a variety of possible influences, but no one specific source. Oddly, another play, “A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called the taming of a Shrew (note the letter “a” and not the word “the”) was performed as early as 1592 which may be either the source of Shakespeare’s broad comedy or – and this is more probable – a corrupt, pirated edition of the original text. Page 2 TIMELINE: The pace of the play moves along with such comic speed that one expects the total action to have covered barely a fortnight. One must, however, account for the journey to and fro of Petruchio and Katherina between Padua and Petruchio’s home in Verona located forth miles west….travelled on horseback. FIRST PERFORMANCE: The earliest known performance of the play is recorded in Philip Henslowe's diary on 11 June 1594, performed by the Lord Admiral's Men and the Lord Chamberlain's Men at Newington Butts Theatre. “This could have been either A Shrew or The Shrew, but as the Lord Chamberlain's Men were sharing the theatre at the time, and as such Shakespeare himself would have been there, scholars tend to assume it was The Shrew.” “INDUCTION”: The “framing story” of Christopher Sly which begins the play was a quite common device during the Elizabethan era. It is worth noting the connotations of the word “induction” – as if the audience were being “inducted” into a ceremony or institution in our honor. Shakespeare engages the paradox at the heart of theater: Sly is forced to "forget himself" (Ind.1: 40), to suspend disbelief, in order to make any sense of his new surroundings. In the same way, any audience member submits to the theatrical illusion despite its falseness. The Induction contains many specific explorations of these questions of theater and illusion. Note that when Sly accepts his role as a lord - signified when he says, "Am I a lord?" (Ind.2: 68) - he immediately launches into a passage of blank verse that recalls the true Lord's poetic speech patterns. For instance, Sly says, "I smell sweet savors, and I feel soft things." (Ind.2: 71) Thus Shakespeare suggests that aristocracy is principally a matter of costume and dialogue - in other words, nothing more than a theatrical illusion. (Shakespeare’s mockery of aristocracy appears often in many of the many genres within the canon.) Many stage and film productions of the play completely eliminate the Induction and dive into the fast-paced action. RESPONSE: Despite the forever-commented-upon raucous-even-abusive relationship between Katherine and Petruchio the play has been a rollicking success from its first performance to this very day. However, British drama historian critic J. C. Trewin (1908-1990) claimed that the play “prospered down the years, though for a long time only in adaptations. In fact, possibly the first return to Shakespeare’s text was in 1844 with a production at the Haymarket in neo-Elizabethan fashion, at that period astonishing.” Over the years, productions have garnered such descriptions as: “rough-house, Crazy-Gang”, “relishing swirl”, “vigorous enjoyment” way down to “oddly dispiriting”. Page 3 “The Taming of the Shrew” is often considering the main-stay and most often- produced comedy of Shakespeare companies worldwide. CRITICISM: Despite its outstanding popular history it is no surprise to note that criticism of the play over the past 427 years has often focused on at least one if not both of the key issues of the oddly-attached Induction and, with far more fervor, the very “taming of the shrew.” (Turn to the document “Katherina - Some Explorations” in this collection of pre- course reading materials for some insightful comments from scholars and critics.) Unlikely critic, Navy Admiralty administrator and famous diary-keeper Samuel Pepys, wrote of the play in his diary on 9 April 1667: “To the King’s house, and there saw ‘The Tameing of the Shrew’, which hath some very good pieces in it, but generally is but a mean play.” George Bernard Shaw wrote in 1897 that "no man with any decency of feeling can sit it out in the company of a woman without being extremely ashamed of the lord-of-creation moral implied in the wager and the speech put into the woman's own mouth.” Criticism has indeed varied from one extreme to another especially reflecting the temper of the times regarding male-female courting and marriage “guidelines”. Contemporary critic Harold Bloom noted in his 1998 book “Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human”: “Since Kate and Petruchio are social equals, their own dislocation may be their shared, quite violent forms of expression, which Petruchio ‘cures” in Kate at the high cost of augmenting his own boisterousness to an extreme where it hardly can be distinguished from a paranoid mania. Who cures, and who is cured, remains a disturbing matter in this marriage, which doubtless will maintain itself against a cowed world by a common front of formidable pugnacity (much more cunning in Kate than in her roaring boy of a husband). “ ACTORS: Theater programs from the early 17th century through early 2020 boast the names of stars in the much-coveted albeit athletic roles of Katherine and Petruchio. Famous 20th century actresses tackling the part included Mary Pickford (“winked at Bianca indicating she did not mean a word of what she was saying”), Dame Edith Evans (“a tornado”), Vanessa Redgrave (“in a surf of tangerine”) and Lynn Fontaine (“in relishing swirl”). And, of course, Elizabeth Taylor took the world by storm in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1967 film production. Page 4 Peter O’Toole is the actor who played Petruchio in the “rough-house, Crazy-Gang treatment” of the play with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960. And, who best to play opposite his feisty wife than Richard Burton in the Zeffirelli’s film?! Highly-respected contemporary actress Meryl Streep played Katherina in 1978 at the Shakespeare in the Park festival; she said of the play then "really what matters is that they have an incredible passion and love; it's not something that Katherina admits to right away, but it does provide the source of her change." FAMOUS LINES: O this learning, what a thing it is! (Gremio, Act 1, Scene 2) No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en: In brief, sir, study what you most affect. (Tranio, Act 1 Scene 1) There's small choice in rotten apples. (Hortensio, Act 1 Scene 1) You lie, in faith, for you are called plain Kate, And bonny Kate and sometimes Kate the curst, But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom, Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate (Petruchio, Act 2 Scene 1) If I be waspish, best beware my sting. (Katherina, Act 2 Scene 1) Forward, I pray, since we have come so far, And be it moon, or sun, or what you please. And if you please to call it a rush-candle, Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me. (Katherina, Act 4 Scene 5) 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? (Katherina, Act 5 Scene 1) Page 5 Why, there’s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate. (Petruchio, Act 5 Scene 1) THEMES: The play's most obvious main themes include gender politics, female submissiveness and the motivation of money. FILM: There have been numerous on screen adaptations of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The best known cinematic adaptations are Sam Taylor's 1929 The Taming of the Shrew and Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 The Taming of the Shrew, both of which starred the most famous celebrity couples of their era; Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks in 1929 and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in 1967. On television, perhaps the most significant adaptation is the 1980 BBC Television Shakespeare version, directed by Jonathan Miller and starring John Cleese and Sarah Badel. The play has also been reworked numerous times for both cinema and television. Some of the better known adaptations include Kiss Me Kate, a 1953 filmic adaptation of Cole Porter's 1948 musical based on the play, McLintock! (1963), Il Bisbetico Domato (1980), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Deliver Us from Eva (2003) and Isi Life Mein...! (2010).
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