Does anyone else have a problem with this play?

[Beewulf]

"The Sly bit isn't actually an act; it's an induction, basically a framing device for the play. Because it's so long, as an audience you get attached to Sly or you are at least amused enough to want to see Sly's reaction; however as it is the induction, the characters all disappear."

The notion that the opening scenes of Shrew comprise an "induction" that is distinct from the action that follows is the result of modern attempts to regularize the play's structure. Exactly how Shakespeare viewed the material involving Christopher Sly is unknown, but it appears that those scenes were not considered a framing device during Shakespeare's career because the First Folio of 1623 integrates Sly's scenes into the first act. If you examine a folio facsimile you'll find that Sly's line, "let the world slip; we shall nere be younger" flows without interruption into Lucentio's entrance and first line.

Moreover, after the Petruchio/Kate plot line begins, Shakespeare doesn't eliminate Sly from the play. He and The Lady have a short exchange of dialogue immediately before Petruchio and Grumio enter. Then, according to the minimal stage directions of the Folio, Sly and The Lady stay on stage and watch the rest of the play.

Another element that suggests Sly was at some point conceived as an integral element of the play is the way in which Shakespeare portrays Sly as Kate's mirror image. Recall that when The Lord comes upon the passed-out Sly he conceives of a method to reform the miscreant:

O monstrous beast! how like a swine he lies!
Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!
Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man.
What think you, if he were convey'd to bed,
Wrapp'd in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers,
A most delicious banquet by his bed,
And brave attendants near him when he wakes,
Would not the beggar then forget himself?

In other words, The Lord will use the ploy of exaggerated decorum to see if he can turn a beast into a gentleman. In later scenes, Petruchio will employ the mirror opposite of the Lord's approach, using the ploy of exaggerated coarseness to "curb [Kate's] mad and headstrong humor" and turn a shrew into a gentlewoman.

There is evidence, then, that the scenes involving Sly are something more an introductory device . . . of course, the problem still remains--why did Shakespeare eventually abandon Sly?

[kelby_lake]

I'm thinking that he wanted to do a play-within-a-play style thing, where the characters watching the play would have reactions and interactions reflecting the characters in the play, but perhaps was not skilled enough/didn't know how to weave it in properly without slowing down the 'play' (Shrew's an early comedy and you can see the play-within-a-play device used much more satisfactorily in later plays).

Or perhaps he got so interested in the 'play' that he abandoned Sly. Personally I think it was a bad mistake, as the action is set up so that Sly is the main character and Kate and the others are 'characters' in a play. Sly's parts are important as they reflect themes in the play- and they're just funny- the Induction is often cut by a director but by doing this, it makes the play seem serious and so it comes across as dated or misogynistic.

[michelledale]

I, personally, have only read the play in a class. I found the play to be an enjoyable read in and of itself. I find that that there is nothing wrong with the written play. Sure, Petruchio uses high handed methods with Kate when he marries her but keep this in mind, Shakespeare lived in a different time period where the Church made women out to possessions. Women had no power over what happens to them back then. In fact, it was a lucky fate that Kate found someone to marry her, if she had not been married Kate would have be an old spinster that no one would have wanted to marry. A woman's purpose was to marry and have children, not be a 'shrew'. Taming of the Shrew is a great play, as long as we don't try to put our views of today on a play that was written the 16th century.

[roobert629]

I agree with Shakespeare on this play. Kate was being unruly an deserved what she got. He never actually hit her which is better than what most people do today.

[Dark Muse]

I agree with Shakespeare on this play. Kate was being unruly an deserved what she got. He never actually hit her which is better than what most people do today.

I am not quite sure that depraving her of food and sleep is much of an improvement over not hitting her, considering that sleep and food deprivation are methods that have been used against prisoners of war.

[xman]

I'm going to agree with you DM. I have seen and read this play a few times each and every time it strikes me as unsavoury. The only way to make it palatable is to paste a dumb show on the end to compliment the induction and basically show that if Sly agrees with the sentiments presented in the play, the actors do not, but that is making assumptions about the piece and painting a mustache on it.

X

[kelby_lake]

I, personally, have only read the play in a class. I found the play to be an enjoyable read in and of itself. I find that that there is nothing wrong with the written play. Sure, Petruchio uses high handed methods with Kate when he marries her but keep this in mind, Shakespeare lived in a different time period where the Church made women out to possessions. Women had no power over what happens to them back then. In fact, it was a lucky fate that Kate found someone to marry her, if she had not been married Kate would have be an old spinster that no one would have wanted to marry. A woman's purpose was to marry and have children, not be a 'shrew'. Taming of the Shrew is a great play, as long as we don't try to put our views of today on a play that was written the 16th century.

This is such a poor argument. Black people were slaves and racism was rife centuries ago- does that mean that we can accept it because it was 'of the time'? What about 'The Black and White Minstrel Show'? People might have found it funny back then but nowadays most people would find it repugnant.
Taming of The Shrew is much better than that but still- just because we can, and must, appreciate that people held different views a long time ago, it doesn't mean that we can't question it.

I'm pretty sure that Shakespeare is portraying the play as being the fantasy of Sly- or at least, Sly would certainly misinterpret it. Let's face it, if we were staging Taming of the Shrew now, we would stage it in a more ironic way than back then.

[Redzeppelin]

"Taming" is a farce - just as "Married With Children" and many other sit-coms on TV are farces. As such, when Al Bundy gets tossed out of a window and we see him land in the back yard from the second floor, we are not outraged at his sufferings, nor are we worried about his health. We know that in a farce that the suffering isn't real - it isn't life threatening, it isn't painful. If Kate is truly suffering via the food and sleep deprivation, why doesn't Shakespeare give us that indication? He was a good writer - why leave that out? The reality is that the "violence" of the play is sit-com violence - the play was not depicting the "torture" of a woman. People who take it that way are simply trying to turn a Renaissance sit-com into a tragedy because the political correctness of our current culture detests seeing a woman in Kate's position; the problem is that we let our cultural blinders lead us to interpretations that are inconsistent with the work itself. There is nothing even remotely serious in this work so why should be decide that the parts we don't like are to be taken seriously?

[Dark Muse]

"Taming" is a farce - just as "Married With Children" and many other sit-coms on TV are farces. As such, when Al Bundy gets tossed out of a window and we see him land in the back yard from the second floor, we are not outraged at his sufferings, nor are we worried about his health. We know that in a farce that the suffering isn't real - it isn't life threatening, it isn't painful. If Kate is truly suffering via the food and sleep deprivation, why doesn't Shakespeare give us that indication? He was a good writer - why leave that out? The reality is that the "violence" of the play is sit-com violence - the play was not depicting the "torture" of a woman. People who take it that way are simply trying to turn a Renaissance sit-com into a tragedy because the political correctness of our current culture detests seeing a woman in Kate's position; the problem is that we let our cultural blinders lead us to interpretations that are inconsistent with the work itself. There is nothing even remotely serious in this work so why should be decide that the parts we don't like are to be taken seriously?

Actually you bring up a very good point! I rather like your sit-com explanation of the play and I find it one of the better arguments in favor of the play which have been presented.

It had not occurred to me to view it in that light, probably because a mix of both my own personal emotional reactions and the fact that I think the rendition of the play I saw was a particularly bad one and I have not yet had the opportunity to actually read the play itself.

But I rather like the idea of it all just being a face, like watching cartoons, and considering the violent nature of so many comedies today than indeed I would agree that by not accepting the comic aspect of the play ( in spite of what our modern perspectives might be screaming at us) is it an attempt to turn it into something more serious than it was intended to be, considering that indeed the play was written as a comedy, all aspects of it showed than be viewed in a comic light even if in this day and age it is more difficult to accept some of those ideologies as being comedic.

[kev67]

I watched this play this afternoon at The Globe theatre, standing up for £5. It was actually a practice run for a 50th birthday excursion. I wanted to check how to get there, what it was like standing up for 90 minutes or whether it would be better to get seats. Anyway...

I did not know what to make of it. Like Dark Muse says, Petruchio, breaks his wife's will by starving her and depriving her of sleep. I wondered whether we were being invited to approve or disapprove. When Kate made her big speech at the end about submitting to husbands, I noticed the other actresses looked upset and the actors seemed silenced and taken aback for a moment. It looked like she had started to love Petruchio, or was it just the Stockhausen Syndrome? I found it really odd. If the message of the play was that you can cure a woman's bad temper by mistreating her until she submits, like breaking a wild horse, and thereby make her fall in love with you, then I am surprised you can find any modern day actresses who be prepared to play the parts. Maybe Shakespeare did not mean this, but it was not obvious to me.

Edit: I had some other thoughts.

Shakespeare is deified, but I suppose this play shows he was a man of his times, and could write things we would not approve of, especially in his early career. I was reminded of the antisemitism in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist.

Art can still be art even when the sentiment is bad. I was reminded of the psalm on which the Boney M song Rivers of Babylon was based. The last lines of that psalm are about killing Babylonian children. I heard that psalm sung by a choir on the radio. It sounded great although the sentiment was shocking. The priest said the point of the psalm was to bring you up short and reflect on your humanity. Maybe that is its effect, but I doubt that is what was intended when the song was composed. Another example, I watched a program about the Mayan civilization, who were very inventive torturers. They even made artwork about it. Therefore, even if the sentiment of The Taming of the Shrew is bad, the play may have the unintended effect on making you reflect.

Some writers make their characters do and says things they clearly do not approve of. I was thinking of a 60's sitcom there was here called Till Death Do Us Part. The main character, Alf Garnet, is a bigot and a racist. He is always arguing with his family who are appalled by what he says, although I expect quite a lot of viewers agreed with him. In the film Get Carter (SPOILER) you start by thinking Jack Carter is an anti-hero. He is capable of violence, sure, but only in line with his underworld activities. You don't take seriously the warnings about him being a killer and a bastard, but as the film goes on, you get the uncomfortable feeling that you have misjudged him as he is a seriously nasty guy. The thing is, there were hints at the start of the film about Jack Carter's real character. I am not sure there is anything in The Taming of the Shrew that gives away that Shakespeare disapproves of Petruchio's actions. Wikipedia says the induction might be read that way.

Accepting that Kate did have a serious personality flaw that would spoil her life and others'. It would need some very transformative process to cure her. From a feminist perspective, it is objectionable that the person who transforms her is a man, and that he transforms her by denying her food and sleep and by other acts of cruelty. In a Christmas Carol, Scrooge undergoes a very harrowing transformative experience. In his case, his transformation is conducted by benign spirits, presumably authorized by God. Scrooge is shown the wrong steps he made all those years ago, and the consequences for himself and other people. He is persuaded rather than tortured to change.