1. • The Taming of the Shrew
    1. General themes and issues
      1. performance: Metatheatre: illusion, reality, dream, madness, power, trickery, escape
      2. illusion of power and control: Sly as male and Lord; the lord as sponsor of theatre; the actors as artists; Petruchio over Kate
        1. reinforced by Bianca/Lucentio plot
      3. Sh. our contemporary or from another time and place
      4. lots of servant-master hijinks--from New Comedy
      5. multiplicity of genres and performance styles: romance, farce, history
      6. sexual politics
        1. quote from GBS:
        2. social history: Hill, Stone, Boose
          1. changes in institution of marriage
          2. Hill: sexual revolution which replaced property marriage by monogamous partnership
          3. Stone: dynastic and familial concept giving way to "companionate marriage" and "nuclear family," enhancing patriarchal power
          4. Belsey: contest for meaning of marriage in 16 and 17 c.
          5. Miller's interp of Petruchio as Puritan and new marriage doesn't hold up, since in the play its contractural with father and not freely entered
        3. unlikely that the play is rejection of patriarchy, yet its crude affirmation of it doesn't seem plausible either
        4. women in audience and several classes:"sharpness of sexual politrcs ...make the play provocative and polemical rather than persuasive; offering different kinds of challenge to both genders in the audience." Holderness 24--cf. Chaucer doing this in battle of sexes, Querelle des Femmes, traditions
        5. at the end of Taming of a Shrew, Sly goes off to tame his wife
        6. open script, both in original text(s) and in later receptions
    2. • Induction i.--English setting and time; here an alehouse
      1. • Hostess and Beggar
        1. • Sly:
          1. • drunk, braggart, Norman background--look in the chronicles
          2. • wont pay his bill; shrewish; let the world slide--devil may care
        2. • She invokes authority to get him to pay
        3. • Going to sleep; dream
        4. • power of alcohol: dead or drunk; makes comfortable in cold; brave and proud in misery
      2. • The Lord and train--Constructing Class identity
        1. • Compassion and love for his hounds
        2. • Sees man as "monstrous beast" "swine; grim death's loathsome image
        3. • without break leads to "practise" "jest"; transformation; "would not the beggar then forget himself?" 40 Ovid, Metamorphoses
          1. • flattring dream, worthless fancy--MND theme
          2. • creating detailed conditions of aristocracy: chamber, wanton picutres, balm warm distilled waters, sweet wood, dulcet music, submissive reverence, costly suit, hounds and horse
      3. • Enter the players--at the point where "some noble gentleman" expected--sandwiched between construction of class and gender
        1. • he mobilizes players for his play on Sly; insists on their discretion--do players control audience or vice versa
      4. • Barthlomew page is to be dressed like a lady--Constructing Gender
        1. • "bear himself with honorable action/such as he hath observed in noble ladies unto their lords...show her duty, make known her love..
        2. • woman's role is to convince her lord he's something that he's not
        3. • "to rain a shower of commanded tears/an onion will do well..."
        4. • I know the boy will well usurp the grace/Voice gait and action of a gentlewoman/I long to hear him call the drunkard hausband/And how my men will stay themselves from laughter
        5. • Final step: "haply my presence/May well abate the over merry spleen/ which ot herwise would grow into extremes"
      5. • Theme:
        1. • The importance of class and gender in construction of identity and society; the tenuousness and manipulability of this identity--cf. Christianity, the Queen, the Reformation, the decline of feudalism
        2. • The Lord's class and gender status, created by society, enables him to create class and gender roles that are false and therefore enjoyable to all, but he has to control the extent of the enjoyment.
    3. • Induction ii.--enter aloft--in the Lord's bedroom, also in disguise
      1. • metatheatrical entrance into the play, like opening of HV
        1. • the chorus, then the bishops, then the court; same place as Olivier's Bishops--play within play observed by Lord as audience; this is what Sly will observe
      2. • Class contrasts
        1. • ale vs. sack, conserves, etc. funny and pithy statements of being low class and known as cheat to his neighbors; doesn't want to relinquish it at first, any more than his Norman lineage
        2. • evocations of aristocratic luxury: music, bed, horse, hawk, pictures, sex, Ovid, poetry--all about rape, aesthetically done; this is theme of "Shrew."
      3. • Having a beautiful lady is what makes him lord, said by Lord, and bringing about his reversal of belief. 73
        1. • all brainwashing and lies, that make the sun the moon and black white; mention and then purging of all his former reality; a pious, religious affirmation: "Now Lord be thanked for my good amends. Amen"
        2. • Wife calls him lord, he wants to be husband; being told what to call her--Madam [= my dame]
        3. • this is opposite of his relation to Hostess; being a Lord is being Lord of a lady
      4. • But he cant get sex from his [false] wife, so takes the play as substitute
        1. • if he rules, he wants her to undress; she convinces him to postpone gratification: "I will tarry in despite of teh lfesh and the blood." (125)
        2. • Accepts the play as amusement--kontie, historie, gambold,--"let the world slip; we shall ne'er be younger" cf. tempus fugit in 12N
    4. • I,i. Lucentio and Tranio enter Padua
      1. • Praise of father and of the study of the arts, ethics, philosophy, virtue, duty, depth
        1. • underlying tone of irony: rebel against father; partying student--"suck the sweets of sweet philosophy"
        2. • Tranio advises Ovid over Aristotle, rhetoric in daily life, pleasure necessary; emotions as well as reason; dulce et utile
      2. • Enter Baptista and Bianca's suitors Gremio and Hortensio; Kate must go first and acts tough; the suitors are fearful; two daughters are froward [bad] vs. silent [good]
        1. • Bianca acts goody goody; the guys put down Kate as terror
        2. • Baptista wants liberal arts education for both (92)
        3. • Lucentio falls in love; Tranio conceives plot of master-servant reversal; L. will become schoolmaster instead of reluctant pupil; Tranio [manipulating L. into thinking its his idea, will play the role of master]; emphasis on chaning costume -cf. Sly
          1. • "Let me be a slave, t'achieve that maid 220
          2. • Biondello told about reversal but for false reason--like the pedant will later be deceived
      3. • Sly's falling asleep, makes believe he lives it.
    5. • I,ii. Petruchio and Grumio enter--the courtship rivalry
      1. • knockabout between master and slave; contrast to Tranio/Lucentio, Petruchio rules by beating up Grumio
      2. • another contrast, Petruchio's father has died; he's got the money; he's looking for a rich wife rather than romantic love. [cf. MAAN, contrasting the "Hero-Cloudy" with BB couples; contrast also to Lucentio student idealism
      3. • more account of Kate's shrewishness; Gremio and Hortensio rival for Bianca-farce exhanges; they they go off to drink together
    6. • II,i. Baptista's house--Kate courted
      1. • Bianca like Lucentio: "I know my duty to my elders"
      2. • Kate makes her a bondmaid and a slave; strikes her; "her silence flouts me" (?); acts enraged and jealous; no respect for father either
      3. • two tutors presented to Baptista; Petruchio negotiates for Kate, but only if her love is attained
      4. • P. says he's as headstrong as she
      5. • Hortensio's beat with lute
      6. • Issue is again and again learning--165
      7. • P. announces he will flatter her in despite of her abuse and does so
      8. • They battle verbally and physically, she rude and yielding, he polite and dominant; she strikes him; he threatens; she resists, he holds her; finally tells her father has given him; she's furious; he denies her behavior and denial and insists he'll transform her, as later he does; he silences her and lies saying her resistance is a lie and an act--cf. acting
      9. • NB: relation to HV's wooing of the other Kate; also the men's comments about her in the French court
      10. • Gremio and supposed Lucentio, Tranio, bid for Bianca
      11. • Issue of old vs. young, fathers getting children or vice versa
    7. • III,i. Baptista's House--Chaucerian fabliau
      1. • Lucentio vs Hortensio--comedy of rival tutors: philosophy vs. music
      2. • Bianca here insists that she's in charge: "I am no breeching scholar in the schools./I'll not be tied to hours nor 'pointed times,/But learn my lessons as I please myself. (20)
      3. • Lucentio, hiding in Latin explains his disguise and contempt for the father; Bianca answers with scepticism and craft "...presume not, despair not."
    8. • III,ii. Street--Kate's wedding
      1. • K. weeps about rudesby who's late
      2. • Biondello describes P's. antic COSTUME; he enters and acts as if nothing's wrong--everybody else is mad--cf. Sly and Lord--creating wonder, appealing to deeper standard: "To me she's married, not unto my clothes." (128)
      3. • Tranio plots to create a new Vincentio
      4. • Gremio describes church service: "'tis a groom indeed..curster than she" (150); Petruchio beat up the priest; kissed the bride clamorously; a "mad marriage."
      5. • P. refuses to stay at party; Kate refuses to go and throws her weight around: "I see a woman may be made a fool/If she had not a spirit to resist." He takes possession: "I will be master of what is mine own.. She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house..." and abducts her.
      6. • Everybody else laughs and feasts.
    9. • IV,i. Petruchio's Country House--Kate married
      1. • servant complains of cold:"winter tames man, woman, and beast."
      2. • Grumio strikes Curtis; tells story of horse falling on Kate, P. striking Grumio, not helping K.
      3. • assembling servants to greet her; ganging up, just like Lord on Sly
      4. • Petruch. abuses servants [to tame Grumio, who needs it, and to frighten Kate; but this is what she's done to servants]
      5. • she has compassion for servants. Servant, child and spousal abuse; verbal and physical
      6. • long speech to audience: deprives her of food, saying its not good; getting her, like Sly, completely disoriented; tells audience his method of taming, like training hawk: no food or sleep; kill a wife with kindness. (200)
    10. • IV, ii. Street in Padua
      1. • Hortensio disposed of as suitor because he's tricked by seeing Cambio courting Bianca, seeing her as slut. Petruchio is the master of the taming school.
      2. • Tranio tricks pedant--a stupid schoolmaster--into being Vincentio to save himself from harm as Mantuan; another disguise and transformation with clothing
    11. • IV, iii. P's house
      1. • Kate is starving, begs for help from Grumio; identifies with beggars; Grumio now tortures her; she beats him for "triumph upon my misery." (32)
      2. • P. enters with friend Hortensio; forces K. to thank him and then takes away food. Then tempts her with nice clothing that turns her on, before he tears it apart, paying the tailor in secret through Hortensio and mouthing puritan homilies.
      3. • Everytime she tries to say anything he contradicts her and coerces her into agreeing with him. Excision of power of speech.
    12. • IV,iv. Padua street
      1. • Baptista and pedant make the deal: "Baptista is safe, talking with the deceiving father of a deceiving son." (83)
    13. • IV,v. The Road to Padua
      1. • Petruchio, backed by Hortensio forces Kate to say the sun's the moon. "But sun it is not when you say it is not./And the moon changes even as your mind."
      2. • "Petruchio go thy ways the field is won." (23)
      3. • P. makes a young woman of Vincentio, the old man--cf. gender construction; this is like the Lord with Bartholomew and the players; Kate goes in on it; then "I perceive thou art a reverend father."
      4. • Revealed as Vincentio
    14. • V,i. Padua street
      1. • Vin. invites Pet. in to Lucentio's lodging for a drink. False Vicentio looks out window, claiming he's Vicentio; then beats Biondello; Vincentio, a furious father: "While I play the good husband at home, my son and my servant spend all at the university." (72) Officer called
      2. • Lucentio enters with Bianca, recognizes father, confesses all and asks forgiveness.
      3. • Petruchio and Kate watching all this long scene silently
      4. • She gives him order to follow, he says only if she'll kiss him in middle of street. [cf. HV] She objects but submits.
    15. • V,ii. Lucentio's house
      1. • Banquet: men are placing bets on women [like hoorses]; Kate and widow are fighting about who's the shrew; men want to bet on the fight; bets continue on who has most obedient wife; Hortensio and Lucentio lose; yet more bets.
      2. • Petruchio: "K. I charge thee, tell these headstrong women/What duty they do owe their lords and husbands.
      3. • Kate's final speech: "Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, thy head, thy soverign...such duty as a subject owes the prince, Even such a woman owes her husband" [Henry V's speech aboutg the sprince staying awake at night for his people] "Shy are our bodies soft and weak and smooth/Unapt to toil and toruble in the world/But that our soft ocnditions and our hearts/Shou well agree with our external parts?"
      4. • Vincentio: "Tis a good hearing when children are toward
      5. • Come Kate, we'll to bed.