your least favourite shakespeare play ?

[mortalterror]

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.

Would it? Funny modern examples of domestic violence or men hitting women some NSFW:

Family Guy - Family Fight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06c7_5pH6O0

The Way of the Gun opening with Sarah Silverman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xsaMcw69D8

Total Recall - Consider that a divorce
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYtQMhnBtTw

From Dusk Till Dawn - Welcome to Slavery
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtjCVRm2DAM

The Mud Wrestling Scene from Stripes with John Candy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-tPJYlcYvc

Not really funny, but this scene in Kingpin is played for laughs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Uqa-Vilvg0

Nearly forgot Andy Kaufman wrestling women
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uQlB99WCuk

Just remembered that slap scene from Airplane!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0GW0Vnr9Yc

Ace Ventura fight scene at the end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZMuJw5JYvQ

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:

So you are okay with the double standard where the woman beats and dominates the man? The Chester Mystery Play Noah where Noah's wife drinks and beats her husband is funny? Or with how in Gargantua and Pantagruel Panurge's wife cheats on him and beats him? But as soon as Ricky won't let Lucy be in his big show, he's torturing her? "Waaaaaaah!"

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.

I suppose you could play any archaic assumption modern audiences no longer hold ironically, but I think I prefer the historically informed approach. I saw Al Pacino butcher an adaptation of The Merchant of Venice by being too sympathetic to Shylock and emphasizing the racism, which made the play a tragedy instead of a comedy. In that case, it's best to see Shylock as an example of the stock character the Miser, who greedily hoards his money and wishes people ill. If you took his religion out of the play, that's what he'd be, a miser who plots to kill someone. Similarly, if you swap out Kate's gender, it would quickly become apparent that she's a brash loud mouth who's hard to get along with. If she were a man, there would be no white knighting necessary.

[Ecurb]

Well, if you want to claim that Taming of the Shrew is every bit as funny (and unobjectionable) as "The Way of the Gun" (which I've never seen) you won't get any argument from me. That doesn't seem like a rave endorsement, though. Also, although I have nothing against Ace Ventura, the fight scene at the end just isn't very funny.

I never thought TOTS was so politically incorrect that I couldn't enjoy it (if you noticed, I enjoyed the John Ford movies) -- but I never thought the "torture" scenes that Pompey likes were all that funny, either. My comments about sexy, experienced, fast-talking women from the movies in the '30s were meant to expand the conversation to involve changing tastes and changing male fantasies. Perhaps "taming" shrewish women was a male fantasy in Elizabethan times -- perhaps it is today, for some men. Not for me, though.

[mortalterror]

Well, if you want to claim that Taming of the Shrew is every bit as funny (and unobjectionable) as "The Way of the Gun" (which I've never seen) you won't get any argument from me. That doesn't seem like a rave endorsement, though. Also, although I have nothing against Ace Ventura, the fight scene at the end just isn't very funny.

I never thought TOTS was so politically incorrect that I couldn't enjoy it (if you noticed, I enjoyed the John Ford movies) -- but I never thought the "torture" scenes that Pompey likes were all that funny, either. My comments about sexy, experienced, fast-talking women from the movies in the '30s were meant to expand the conversation to involve changing tastes and changing male fantasies. Perhaps "taming" shrewish women was a male fantasy in Elizabethan times -- perhaps it is today, for some men. Not for me, though.

I don't think it is even about male fantasies of dominating women. I think what's going on in Taming of the Shrew is the same thing as when everyone messes with Falstaff at the end of Merry Wives of Windsor or tormenting the steward Malvolio in Twelfth Night. There's a character with an obvious social failing who is made the butt of a joke by the community. In terms of the battle of the sexes and mutual arrogance I don't see The Taming of the Shrew as being much different than Much Ado About Nothing. I think this is just typical commedia dell'arte stuff, with stock characters and situations an audience in Shakespeare's time would have understood, without overlaying it with our social justice concerns.

[Pompey Bum]

Well, if you want to claim that Taming of the Shrew is every bit as funny (and unobjectionable) as "The Way of the Gun" (which I've never seen) you won't get any argument from me. That doesn't seem like a rave endorsement, though. Also, although I have nothing against Ace Ventura, the fight scene at the end just isn't very funny.

I never thought TOTS was so politically incorrect that I couldn't enjoy it (if you noticed, I enjoyed the John Ford movies) -- but I never thought the "torture" scenes that Pompey likes were all that funny, either. My comments about sexy, experienced, fast-talking women from the movies in the '30s were meant to expand the conversation to involve changing tastes and changing male fantasies. Perhaps "taming" shrewish women was a male fantasy in Elizabethan times -- perhaps it is today, for some men. Not for me, though.

So we go from an unsupported calumny that men (as a group) fantasize about beating their wives to an unsupported calumny that men (as a group) fantasize about dominating women, to your own last minute opting out of the oppressor category (cute); which somehow leaves us with an equally unsupported calumny against me personally--that I enjoy (non-existant) torture scenes in The Taming of the Shrew. Badly reasoned and DEEPLY insulting. Please save your baiting for someone who's interested.

[Ecurb]

You're taking this way to personally, Pompey. I didn't mean to suggest that you fantasize about dominating women -- I simply mentioned that you thought some scenes in TOTS were funny that I didn't think were very funny. Humor is a matter of personal taste. The discussion about (possible) changing male fantasies is completely separate from the discussion of whether that particular scene is funny, or even whether you or anyone else enjoys any particular play or movie.

You are conflating two different subjects, and my posts were not "badly reasoned" although they may have been unclear. In addition, I don't dislike TOTS because it is politically incorrect, but I think it is a reasonable reaction to the play, so I was defending Morpheus' right to have that reaction. If you read my post again, I suggest the possibility that TOTS offers a theme that may have been fashionable (to use a different term than "plays to male fantasies") in 1600, just as fast-talking, aggressive women were fashionable in movies in the '30s, but not in the '50s.

In addition, I never mentioned "men beating their wives". Instead I put the word "torture" in quotes, because that same word had been used by someone else (maybe even you) earlier in the thread. It was merely descriptive of which scenes we were discussing. Finally, based on the Forster quote I provided, I am not the only person who thinks that men sometimes want to govern women. So my position is, at least, "supported" by a character in one famous novel. Yet you call it "unsupported". Are my posts (hardly calumnies) badly reasoned, Pompey, or is that a description of your last post?

Finally, I do think some men fantasize about "taming", "governing", and (as Jane Austen suggests) educating women (although I have no idea if Pompey does, nor do I think such fantasies are a requirement for liking TOTS). Maybe I'm wrong, but my notion is not "unsupported". I apologize if I seemed self congratulatory by writing "not for me". That was true, but (I'll grant) a little (just a little, Pompey) pompous.

[mortalterror]

You're taking this way to personally, Pompey.

Yeah, it's not like he shot your dog. Besides, I think he was trying to imply that I was the misogynist pig/caveman who enjoys dominating women.

[Pompey Bum]

Are my posts (hardly calumnies) badly reasoned, Pompey, or is that a description of your last post?

We all, deep inside, want to abuse our significant others, perhaps.

No, looks like it's yours. Feel free to speak for yourself, Ecurb, but please refrain from any further references to my (or anyone else's) wife. As for your later innuendo (and the baiting you just edited into your post), as I said before, I'm not playing.

[Pompey Bum]

Yeah, it's not like he shot your dog.

Okay, the man knows funny.

[Ecurb]

No, looks like it's yours. Feel free to speak for yourself, Ecurb, but please refrain from any further references to my (or anyone else's) wife. As for your later innuendo (and the baiting you just edited into your post), as I said before, I'm not playing.

Well, I forgot I wrote that. But I'm surprised you're insulted by it. "Perhaps"?

[mona amon]

I don't think it is even about male fantasies of dominating women. I think what's going on in Taming of the Shrew is the same thing as when everyone messes with Falstaff at the end of Merry Wives of Windsor or tormenting the steward Malvolio in Twelfth Night. There's a character with an obvious social failing who is made the butt of a joke by the community. In terms of the battle of the sexes and mutual arrogance I don't see The Taming of the Shrew as being much different than Much Ado About Nothing. I think this is just typical commedia dell'arte stuff, with stock characters and situations an audience in Shakespeare's time would have understood, without overlaying it with our social justice concerns.

I read TOTM a long time back, and the lines

"Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign;"

made me wince, but we have to remember she was bad tempered, violent, and a terrible person, who in the end comes to realize the error of her ways. How bad can that be? From a horrible shrew whom nobody likes she becomes a better behaved, beloved woman, and she's so thrilled about it she goes a bit too far in the opposite direction - the overzealousness of the new convert. I do not remember feeling that her will or spirit was broken in any way. Anyway, surely we aren't meant to take it too seriously, the play being a joke within a joke or something - anything so lightly constructed is bound to lose its charm if handled too much.

[Eiseabhal]

Macbeth. Written to deform history into the propaganda required by his royalist patrons The crawler!

[Pompey Bum]

but we have to remember she was bad tempered, violent, and a terrible person

Am I the only one who actually likes Kate? She's strong, she's witty, she's not afraid to be herself. Yes she has her faults (comedy is about faults), but Petruchio's way over the top, too. In the end, they sort of deserve each other. I'd love to see a sequel--Kate and Pet 20 years later, driven gray by their teenage kids.

Anyway, surely we aren't meant to take it too seriously, the play being a joke within a joke or something - anything so lightly constructed is bound to lose its charm if handled too much.

Ah, the voice of sanity at last! Thanks Mona.

[MorpheusSandman]

Like most of the early silent films, it's actually pretty dull.

It's not if you love film as an art-form. To quote James Agee: "He achieved what no other known man has achieved. To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man." But, yeah, it's impossible to dispute that Griffith did indeed portray blacks as sub-human.

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.

Katherina gives as good as she gets until the torture, which is absolutely torture. Petruchio certainly plays it for laughs, but there's no denying that what he's doing would be considered torture even under the loosest of definitions. He starves her and keeps her awake, for Pete's sake!

I seem to recall this labor of taming Kate taking a taxing toll on him too... Once they both agree to stop being selfish and temperamental they function as the model couple at the end.

Awww, the poor misogynistic torturer is tired for his hard day of torturing. Surely what he's suffering is on equal grounds with her. Why, I bet the guards at Abu Ghraib were drop-dead tired after a whole day of waterboarding!

The notion that "both... stop being selfish" is nonsense; the notion that they become "the model couple" is blatantly misogynistic. You seriously think this:

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love and obey.
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?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband's foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease.

bespeaks an ideal couple? This argues for equality? This is the best embodiment of the attitude that feminism fought against, trying to achieve ACTUAL equality at work and at home.

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.

I think you and I probably have very different ideas of what PC is and isn't.

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?

The problem is that "shrew" was synonymous with "strong-willed woman;" there was literally no difference. When you accept the former speech as the "ideal relationship" between men and women, it's clear that any woman who desires to be treated as an equal would be seen as a "shrew." If half the population was intent on keeping me a weak, second-class citizen without the right to vote or have any input on decisions or work, who viewed me as intellectually inferior, I'd be pretty damn shrewish myself.

Not gonna quote Clopin's post but his pick of comedians is on point:

His picks are not promoting stone-age moral systems.

Now, there's a modest proposal.

It's what you'd have to find to have an actual analog to what we're talking about here.

[MorpheusSandman]

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).

I think it reveals common male fantasies, just as cheap romance novels reveal common female fantasies. There are always exceptions, of course: I have never desired to have a submissive wife or girlfriend, but it's blatantly obvious that a great many men do. Hell, such thoughts are found in the majority of religious writing and moral philosophy going back thousands of years, so not only did (most) men desire it, but most felt that's the way things SHOULD be.

I'm with you in loving those Grant Romcoms. Another I'd add to the list would be It Happened One Night, which stars Gable instead.

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?"

Many modern productions have played it ironically, with Katherine winking all the way through. The real question, though, is whether Shakespeare thought it ironic. In a way, Shrew has come to remind me a bit of Titus Andronicus. Both seem to take popular models of entertainment and emphasize their more lurid aspects to such a ridiculous degree that you half-wonder if he was parodying them rather than just following the model. I think of Ebert's review of Julie Taymor's Titus:

"Titus" as "Scream 1593"? Bloom cites the scene where Titus is promised the return of his sons if he will send Saturninus his hand--only to find the hand returned with only the heads of his sons. Grief-stricken, Titus assigns tasks. He, with his remaining hand, will carry one of the heads. He asks his brother to take the other. That leaves the severed hand. At this point in the play, his daughter Lavinia has no hands (or tongue) after being raped and mutilated by Queen Tamora's sons, and so he instructs her, "Bear thou my hand, sweet wench, between thy teeth." Bloom invites scholars to read that line aloud without smiling, and says Shakespeare knew the play "was a howler, and expected the more discerning to wallow in it self-consciously."

Did Shakespeare expect equally discerning audiences to see Shrew as a ridiculous parody of male fantasies of having dominion over women? The prologue seems to suggest so.

[MorpheusSandman]

Would it? Funny modern examples of domestic violence or men hitting women some NSFW:

Context does matter, you know. I mean, you have one clip of Clooney killing a female vampire who's trying to make him a slave; you have another example of Arnold killing a woman who was trying to kill him first. In Ace Vantura, again, you have Carey fighting a woman who was trying to kill him. I must be missing the one that's actually promoting domestic violence as being OK in a normal relationship between normal human beings, because I don't think many feminists would object to a guy killing his girlfriend if his girlfriend turned out to be a vampire. Just sayin'.

In that case, it's best to see Shylock as an example of the stock character the Miser, who greedily hoards his money and wishes people ill. If you took his religion out of the play, that's what he'd be, a miser who plots to kill someone. Similarly, if you swap out Kate's gender, it would quickly become apparent that she's a brash loud mouth who's hard to get along with. If she were a man, there would be no white knighting necessary.

The point Shakespeare makes loud and clear in The Merchant of Venice is that if Shylock is a monster he's been made that way by a society that is no better. Shylock didn't "plot to kill Antonio," Antonio of his own free will signs the contract that if he can't pay back the loan then he forefeits a pound of flesh, and all of this set in motion because Bassanio needs money in order to court a woman. Shakespeare was insightfully aware of the hypocrisy of demonizing the guy that loans money and accepting as good the people that take those loans in order to get rich themselves.

If you "swap Kate's gender" then you'd likely remove her reason for being shrewish in the first place. See my post above.