1. On Zeffirelli's Shrew
1. From viewing
1. Saturnalia replaces induction
2. Emphasis on sexualized atmosphere
1. the whore, erectile toys, boys after Bianca
3. Realistic setting of Italian town, market, buuildings, costume, music
4. Farce atmosphere: Baptista bumbles
5. Kate the curst: eye through door; anger, pouting, rudeness, depression--very neurotic
6. Disordered hierarchy; opposite of the peace Petruchio eventually desires
7. Petruchio is also demento, not only as an act.
1. alcoholic
2. crazy servants
3. demonic laugh
4. depression at final feast
5. he needs a challenge, someone to beat up on
8. Both are neurotic, non-conformist, but end up affirming the conventions that others weakly follow
9. Resolution: Sex and procreation
1. Kates desire for children in the party at the end; biological clock ticking; this tied in with unconsummated sexual desire first raised in the wool scene when he humps her; both break it off at various times--she hits him with the warming pan
2. Jorgens essay
1. the play
1. different from later comedies and MND: less complexity and warmth, less sentimental about love; more cruel about Sly and main plot; also Lucentio, Bianca
2. not in neverland, but real settings, bourgeois urban strain, crass materialism; goes inside marriage
3. feminist issues: "male chauvinist wishful thinking, asserting that woman's will can be broken and in the end both she and theman will be the happier for it, or it si a confirmation that the rebel in comedy...must ultimately toe the mark." 67
4. interpretations of Kate:
1. "a real shrew full of self-hatred, contempt for kindness and love, and iuncotdrollable rage, who is shouted down by a male shrew, trained by a lion tamer, or subjected to primal scram therapy by "Dr. Petruchio."
2. neglected daughter who envies the favorite Bianca and seeks both the love and the figure of authroity in a husband that she missed in her father
3. not a shrew at all, but merely shrewd, plauying the same game Bianca plays but angling in a different way and for a better prize
5. a farce; doesn't matter who wins; knockabout gratification
2. the film
1. Z. plays up romance and farce, tones down realism
1. "ironic perspective Sh. provided by making the main action a creude entertainment for a drunkend, deluded tinker trying in vain to get his "wife" into bed is gone.." 71
2. farce:
1. harmless violence and festive destruction
2. keystone cops chases
3. P and K are in love at first sight; "struggle is mutual taming; they school each other (the other school masters are fakes).
4. Z. makes Shrew a Saturnalian comedy rather than a satirical one [ contra Bamber 211-212]; "As Zeffirelli sees it, the comedy is not primarily about a taming, but about a release of Dionysian energies."
1. emphasizing carnival mockery of education, of fathers, of church, of respectability, and making P. and K. lord and lady of misrule
2. This is all established in the opening sequence of carnival that substitutes for the Induction; travesty and sacrilege; challenge to the old order [cf. Zeff.'s RJ]; mock funeral and mock wedding; the mock chivalric wooing and challenge of the enemy in the fort
3. travel to Petruchio's house is to a green world of disorder where things are rearranged; P. and K. are both brought to order; and then they return and reorganize the disorder in Padua
4. concluding banquet celebrates new harmony betwen parents and children, old order and new
2. P's character development:
1. "crass, drunken , self-serving and materislistic at the beginning, P...becomes civilized, witty and dignified by the end. ...he learns as he teaches
2. P plays the plebian, teaching her about humility patience, recognizing a will ohter than her own; the bohemian, teaching her to disdain wealth and luscury, to avoid the bourg. obvsession with appearances...by subjecting her to weness, cold, fatiguqe, hunger, pain and ridicule of inferiors [cf. Duke Senior]
3. playful actor, unlike the uncreative maskers and unconscious hypocrites of Padua, enjoys taking roles, is self-aware and has a sense of irony.
3. Kate
1. Twice K. chooses him--by remaining silent when he announces their wedding (?) and by following him in the rain
2. "encased in role of "shrew," cast in it by frightened, ineffectual mean and crafty...Baianca and kept in it by her refusal to capitulate...trapped in a negative image of everything in Padua
3. Traversi: P revealing the real Kate to herself
1. he shows her her own image
2. in fighting him she's more alive than than in dealing with lesser men
3. she learns not to be tied to the literal; learns that husbands commands are invitation to humorous invention
4. submission at the end is rite de pasage; demonstration she understands what P has been trying to teach her
1. her irony in describing the frailty of women
2. using new found sense of role playing [NNNBBB--Sly] she uncovers the real shrews and feeds the males present such an eloquent and unconcditional surrender...that they are all taken in. But speech isnt really to them ; it is to P. Beneath her ironhy, she enunciates the paradox at the heart of love in all of sh. romantic comedies: give all andyou will get all.
3. farewell to narrowness and rigidiiteis of Kate the shrew...gratitude; no hesitation in kiss; makes him chase her at end