your least favourite shakespeare play ?

[MorpheusSandman]

The "punchline" at the end of Shrew is basically "torture against strong-willed women is OK because they learn their place," and it seems to be provoking laughter with you and Pompey.

[Clopin]

I've actually never read it, but maybe I will tonight and post my thoughts then. If you read Pompey's posts though I'm not sure that is exactly what he finds comedic in the play.

[Pompey Bum]

The "punchline" at the end of Shrew is basically "torture against strong-willed women is OK because they learn their place," and it seems to be provoking laughter with you and Pompey.

But only if you shoot their dogs!

[Pompey Bum]

I've actually never read it, but maybe I will tonight and post my thoughts then. If you read Pompey's posts though I'm not sure that is exactly what he finds comedic in the play.

The Taming of the Shrew is one of the few Shakespearian plays that (in my opinion) really begs to be produced; it needs a handsome, vain Petruchio and a sexy Kate for the physical comedy. But read it tonight in any case. It's a pretty funny play just the way it is.

[Ecurb]

It is certainly true that some humor goes out of fashion because it is "politically incorrect" (isn't that just a dismissive phrase that means "offensive"?). Step 'N Fetch It humor used to be common, and you could argue that it made fun of white people's stereotypical misconceptions about black people, rather than making fun of black people. Nonetheless, it is jarring -- offensive enough that we no longer laugh.

I remember some John Wayne comedies in which Wayne spanked his romantic interest (Donavan's Reef and McClintock). Yuk, yuk, I suppose, but it's jarring today. The scenes are sufficiently disturbing that it's difficult to laugh.

As Mortal pointed out, the Freudian theory of humor is that laughter is the id bubbling irrepressibly up from the subconscious. Good humor is often on the borderline of good taste. We all, deep inside, want to abuse our significant others, perhaps.

In the case of TOTS, it's possible the joke is on Petrucchio -- we laugh not because Katherine is the stereotypical shrew taught how to be a woman, but because Petrucchio is (like us all, deep inside) a funny stereotype, crude, domineering, and vain. If we could be confident that this was Shakespeare's point, perhaps the abuse would be less distracting. IN any case, it's a reasonable reaction to the play to be unable to enjoy it completely because the abuse is jarring.

ON the other hand, the play spawned "Kiss Me Kate", with some great Cole Porter tunes, and a movie version that's well worth watching despite starring Kathryn Grayson. Bianca is Ann Miller, and her suitors are Tommy Rall, Bobby Van and a young Bob Fosse. "From this Moment On" is a truly great dance number, and the Cole Porter tune "BRush up Your Shakespeare" might appeal to some Litnet members.

[Jackson Richardson]

Kiss Me Kate together with Verdi's Falstaff may well be another case were the musical is better than the original.

I have read Taming of the Shrew recently and seen it acted in my time, and in neither case was I over impressed.

I'd be interested to hear a woman's comments on it.

The Oxford World Classics edition notes that it is a play that has remained far more popular in the theatre than it is for academic study.

Humour, like sex, only works when there is an undercurrent of something dangerous (even Bertie Wooster is constantly worried his world is going to fall apart).

[Pompey Bum]

So Jonathan, how come you don't like Richard III?

[Jackson Richardson]

I was waiting for someone to ask that. Dunno, I just don't. I feel protective towards early immature works. But Dicky 3 has always been a favourite with actors and audiences - the Colley Cibber version that held the stage for the C18 was not as far from the mark as Nahum Tate's notorious King Lear with a happy ending.

I tend to suspect unduly popular works, just as in opera I'm not a fan at all of Puccini's La boheme or with novels David Copperfield, which in my youth was regarded as Dickens' masterpiece.

Richard says "I am determined to prove myself a villlain" and then goes on to work that out in a play nearly as long as Hamlet and with far less variety.

There are great fans of Richard as an historical person, but I'm not one of those. I found Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time in which her usual whodunnit detective proves that Richard couldn't have murdered his nephews let a nasty taste in my mouth.

I saw it acted in an all male production here in London at the Globe. I've always found the actor who was Richard irritating (he played it for laughs) and noted that the only characters who stood up to Richard were the women. Since they were all played by men in drag they barely moved in their stiff costumes, which made their resistance to him more impressive. (Edwards IV's widow was played by Samuel Barnett who first made his name playing the gay pupil in Alan Bennett's The History Boys.)

PS Some years ago the Globe, aware that putting on all male productions was not providing work for female actors (or actresses as I knew them) did an all female production of The Taming of the Shrew. I didn't see it.

[Pompey Bum]

You can't say actresses anymore? O mores! (Still an all female Taming of the Shrew sounds like fun).

Richard III was the first Shakespearian play I read, way back in the mists of time. I didn't start with the idea that I was going to like Shakespeare just because he was Shakespeare, but I was hit square in the jaw by the beauty of the following, and the weirdness of its imagery, and I never looked back. So maybe it's like a first lover to me.

Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
Which woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by.

[MorpheusSandman]

Appreciate your contributions, Ecurb and Jonathan; very interesting.

I've always considered Richard III a bit of a guilty pleasure. I recognize that it is not one of Shakespeare's more mature, complex, or deep plays, but I've always thought that the joy Shakepseare had writing such an obvious, self-admitted villain shown through in it; it's such a FUN play. I also think it was important in Shakespeare's development as it was his first attempt at depicting the dynamic between a key outsider and their society, how that outsider goes about manipulating others because of their ability to see it from the outside in. I tend to think Shakespeare, as so many artists, identified with that perspective and saw a connection between such leaders as manipulators of people and artists as manipulators of audiences, albeit to very different ends. I also always found Richard III interesting because it seems almost like he gets swallowed up in the world of the play as it progresses, as if he gets caught in and crushed under the wheels of the machine he himself set in motion.

[MorpheusSandman]

...I was hit square in the jaw by the beauty of the following, and the weirdness of its imagery, and I never looked back. So maybe it's like a first lover to me.

Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!
What ugly sights of death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea:
Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
Which woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by.

Indeed. Poe gets all the credit, but I'm not sure there was ever a better poet of the grotesque than Shakespeare.

[mortalterror]

I was not arguing that the objectionable aspect of Birth of a Nation was its lack of historicity (although I'm sure it's quite limited); simply that claims to the same sort of authenticity did not pertain to both works, making the comparison you sought somewhat facile. A historian would no doubt make mincemeat out of Birth of a Nation, but a high degree of historicity is not necessary to a successful work of art. Richard III, for example, is a Tudor whitewash, but poetically it is to die for--Jonathan's eccentric disdain notwithstanding. (If you are reading this Jonathan, please explain! ) Likewise the Battles of Harfleur and Agincourt were fought with sword and longbow not canon and ball (no breach for the dear friends to charge unto once more).

I've never watched Birth of a Nation, but the parts I have seen are unconscionable. Even worse, since cinema was new when it was released, throngs of relatively naive Americans--many without advanced education--were literally ushered into a dark room to receive the myth of the heroic Klansman; no doubt with deadly consequences to some. I can see its use today by history teachers in showing how Reconstruction was perceived by many in the early 20th, and how the those perceptions helped fuel violent conflict and laid the background for the Civil Rights struggle. Since I haven't seen the whole film (or even very much of it), I can't speak to its artistic value.

Like most of the early silent films, it's actually pretty dull. But there are a couple of scenes, or shots where you go "ah ha" that make it somewhat memorable. That said, that scene at the end where the black union soldiers are trying to rape the white woman and the Klan rides in on white horses to save the day is pretty over the top. I remember wondering how and why one of the soldiers had climbed atop the house so as to jump and gesticulate like a chimpanzee and thinking it was pretty bad. Griffith was portraying black people as sub-human.

I got that same queasy feeling watching the film 300. Afterwards, I was like "That was the most racist film I've ever seen." The Spartans are these chiseled Adonis-like super humans, and the Persians are all ghoulish misshapen evil monsters. That's supposed to be based on history. I wasn't expecting a documentary, but I wasn't prepared for that.

Taming of the Shrew didn't do that to me. I felt like everyone in the play is a fool. The women gave as good as they got, and were shown to be strong characters full of arrogance and conceit the same as the males. Also, while I agree with you that the funniest part of the play is when her husband is trying to drive Kate mad, or in this case sane, I wouldn't call what he does torture the way Morpheus puts it. I don't remember him even hitting her. He just does things like throws food away because he says it isn't good enough for her or tears up her new dress because it isn't pretty enough. Then he gives her a new dress and new food. Also, I seem to recall this labor of taming Kate taking a taxing toll on him too. I think there is even a scene where he's exhausted because while he's been keeping his wife from eating and sleeping, he has been going without rest or refreshment too. It's not torture, it's more like a battle of wills. And he's curing Kate of her shrewish behavior by becoming a mirror for it. Once they both agree to stop being selfish and temperamental they function as the model couple at the end.

What blatant hypocrisy? You criticised humour which is delivered without the social agenda of battling 'privilege'; or at least you suggested that toppling existing social strictures is the primary function of humour. This is a lunatic concept, and a point of view which deserves scorn.

I wouldn't say that it deserves scorn, since it's a common mistake. However, I think the view deserves correction when it is encountered.

Or, as one comedian said: "Being PC is what we used to call 'not being an a--hole.'"

I don't know about that. Some of the biggest *******s I've known have been very PC. And at the risk of committing the no true Scotsman fallacy, I can't think of any really good comedians who are politically correct.

Firstly, I assumed we were talking about comedy that actually IS aimed at certain groups, which would exclude bodily functions and dead baby jokes. There's certainly plenty of comedy to be found that doesn't have to do social structures. Secondly, I'm not sure what you're referring to about the homeless, drug addicts, and fools being familiar "targets" in comedy. Frequently there are homeless, addicts, and fool characters that are sources of comedy, but this is distinctly different than comedy that targeted at denouncing those groups. I doubt very few that watched Chaplin thought it good that there were homeless people, or watched Cheech and Chong and thought all stoners needed to be locked away, or read Lear and thought the fool deserved beating. The question is entirely whether or not TOTS is a play promoting the idea of torturing the will out of strong-willed women in order to keep them in their place. If you don't see the difference between that and the above examples, then I don't know what to say.

Maybe, some people think the play is funny because they think that the "strong willed woman" is a shrew, who like all foolish types deserve a comedic comeuppance or correction. Would you feel less offended if Kate's mean spirited behavior were punished by a woman instead of a man? Is that what this is about?

BTW, I feel compelled to repeat that TOTS is, perhaps intentionally ironically, at its most hilarious when Katherina and Petruchio are on an even playing field. I haven't actually seen anyone here dispute that. The question is what to make out of the actual taming and the conclusion.

Nah, I'm with Pompey. The funniest part is when Petruchio is trying to drive Kate mad.

On the PC issue, I am definitely with Mort and Clopin. Humor is anarchic and often seems mean, but it has also been said (and I believe) that the measure of a free society is the extent to which it tolerates an Aristophanes

Remember that scene in The Clouds where the son is beating the father? I guess that's not funny either now.

Not gonna quote Clopin's post but his pick of comedians is on point: Simpsons, South Park, Seinfeld, Chappelle Show = some of the funniest ever, just got to add All in the Family.

When you can find an example of Chappelle suggesting slavery was OK because blacks should know their place, or Allen suggesting the Holocaust was OK because Jews are indeed lesser human beings, or Sienfield suggesting that homelessness is no real problem or that the homeless should be tortured or put to slavery... then you might have a relevant example.

Now, there's a modest proposal.

[mortalterror]

It is certainly true that some humor goes out of fashion because it is "politically incorrect" (isn't that just a dismissive phrase that means "offensive"?). Step 'N Fetch It humor used to be common, and you could argue that it made fun of white people's stereotypical misconceptions about black people, rather than making fun of black people. Nonetheless, it is jarring -- offensive enough that we no longer laugh.

I've seen black and white people play that same character recently. Just go watch modern films like Scary Movie. It's perennial.

I remember some John Wayne comedies in which Wayne spanked his romantic interest (Donavan's Reef and McClintock). Yuk, yuk, I suppose, but it's jarring today. The scenes are sufficiently disturbing that it's difficult to laugh.

And when I screened The Quiet Man for my friends, and John Wayne is dragging his disobedient wife through the town to confront his no good brother in law everybody howled. The biggest laugh of the film might actually be when the old crone hands the Duke a switch and says "Here mister, a good stick to beat the lovely lady." The reason it's funny, is because in comedies conventions are upended. The world is turned upside down, black is white, right is wrong, etc. The whole film John Wayne is being considered a wimp because he won't stand up for himself. He refuses to fist fight a man who owes him money or to beat his wife, and so she nearly leaves him because she thinks he's a coward with no backbone. Around the same time, there was a song with a similar theme called The Coward of the County.

As Mortal pointed out, the Freudian theory of humor is that laughter is the id bubbling irrepressibly up from the subconscious. Good humor is often on the borderline of good taste. We all, deep inside, want to abuse our significant others, perhaps.

In the case of TOTS, it's possible the joke is on Petrucchio -- we laugh not because Katherine is the stereotypical shrew taught how to be a woman, but because Petrucchio is (like us all, deep inside) a funny stereotype, crude, domineering, and vain. If we could be confident that this was Shakespeare's point, perhaps the abuse would be less distracting. IN any case, it's a reasonable reaction to the play to be unable to enjoy it completely because the abuse is jarring.

Is it jarring though? I don't recall Petruchio beating Kate senseless, or putting cigarettes out on her.

[Poetaster]

I got that same queasy feeling watching the film 300. Afterwards, I was like "That was the most racist film I've ever seen." The Spartans are these chiseled Adonis-like super humans, and the Persians are all ghoulish misshapen evil monsters. That's supposed to be based on history. I wasn't expecting a documentary, but I wasn't prepared for that.

More based on a bad comic book. It's not supposed to be history, instead a stylistic adaptation.

[Ecurb]

It's been several decades since I saw Richard Burton tame a shrewish Elizabeth Taylor, although I've glanced at the play once or twice since. Personally, I like "Quiet Man", "McClintock", and "Donovan's Reef", despite the wife beatings. I see them as dated bits of Americana, when manly men (like John Wayne, and John Ford who directed two of the three) had to prove their manliness in order to win their feisty lovers. My friend Myles -- an actual Irishman -- despises "The Quiet Man". He thinks it portrays Ireland as twee, backwards, sexist and provincial. Perhaps distance helps us avoid being "jarred". If "Taming" were produced in modern dress, it would be more jarring.

The battle of the sexes was a staple of romantic comedy before (and after) Shakespeare's time. I think it reveals something about male fantasies, although I'm not so sure that women want to be "tamed". Men like ruling women (or, at least, fantasizing about ruling women). Personally, I prefer the Cary Grant Romcoms, where the women rule and Grant stumbles about, befuddled by a fast-talking Katherine Hepburn or Jean Arthur or Mae West. WE think of ourselves as more advanced than Americans of 70 years ago in terms of sexual equality, but those romantic comedies of the 30s were replete with feisty, witty, sexually aggressive women, and passive men like Cary Grant or Henry Fonda. In two recent movies I've seen (Ex Machina and Her) the hero's love interest is a computer. She's smart, but utterly naive (being newly born). Perhaps the modern computer lovers who like these movies would be deathly afraid of a fast-talking, experienced, tough woman like Mae West in "She Done Him Wrong" or Barbara Stanwyk in Ball of Fire or The Lady Eve (playing opposite a befuddled Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda). This trend reminds me of a Jane Austen line from Northanger Abbey:

The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance.

In "A Room with a View", E.M. Forster addresses the issue. Lucy is talking to George Emerson:

Lucy thought of a very good remark.

"You say Mr. Vyse wants me to listen to him, Mr. Emerson. Pardon me for suggesting that you have caught the habit."

And he took the shoddy reproof and touched it into immortality. He said:

"Yes, I have," and sank down as if suddenly weary. "I'm the same kind of brute at bottom. This desire to govern a woman--it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together before they shall enter the garden."

Do Katherine and Petrucchio "fight it together"? Or does one submit? I suppose the last speech might be taken ironically -- surely Katherine is too headstrong to actually believe that "Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper." Or ask, "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?"

I'd like to see Mae West or Barbara Stanwyk read those lines. The irony, I'm sure, would then be clear.