Brick Shakespeare: The ComediesA Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Taming of the Shrew (77 page)

BENEDICK

Think not on him till to-morrow:

I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him.

Strike up, pipers.

The Taming of the Shrew

I
NTRODUCTION

T
he Taming of the Shrew
is one of Shakespeare’s most well-known and frequently adapted comedies. First scrawled sometime between 1590 and 1592, this play depicts one man’s attempt at domesticating the wild-hearted and outspoken Katharina and the suitors who stumble over one another to marry her younger sister. The play explores the more businesslike aspects of marriage and uses silly disguises and comic role-playing to reflect on and explore the social rules in Elizabethan times.

The play centers on two sisters, Katharina and Bianca. Many wealthy and impressive men want the chance to marry beautiful Bianca, but her overbearing father says that her older sister must be married first. The determined Petruchio takes on the task to marry the “shrew” Katharina, but mostly because the idea of “taming” an unconventional woman seems like an amusing contest to be won. Petruchio mirrors Katharina’s dominant and blunt personality to trick her into becoming more submissive and agreeable. The wordplay with these interactions is funny and borders on the ridiculous, but it is somewhat disappointing from a modern perspective to watch the defeat of the independent Katharina. Bianca’s potential husbands, Hortensio and Lucentio, dress up as scholars to spend more time with her right under her father’s nose. The role-playing and dress-up of the characters make great slapstick comedy and witty dialogue but also give them the rare opportunity to shift between social classes in their attempts to get what they want.

The Taming of the Shrew
departs from most of Shakespeare’s comedies, as the central focus is not on the romances between the main characters but on the commerce of marriage itself. Since the play continues on after the wedding day—the typical marker of a happy ending in Shakespearean comedies—the play shows that the
happily ever after
is instead a long and sometimes amusing negotiation of how to survive a marriage.
The Taming of the Shrew
is an unconventional comedy that is both entertaining and thought provoking. While concepts like dowries and servitude are outdated, larger themes like gender roles and relationships still ring true for today’s audiences, and the play is still a favorite to be adapted, modernized, and played out on stage and screen.

D
RAMATIS
P
ERSONAE