Read The Taming of the Shrew Online
Authors: William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew (21 page)
Alternatively, when the “taming” of Katherina is portrayed as Sly’s twisted male fantasy the misogynistic elements of the relationship are often emphasized by the overt use of physical and mental abuse. In Michael Bogdanov’s provocative modern-dress production (1978) Jonathan Pryce was a
brutish Petruchio/Sly, both of whom used violence crudely. The brutishness in men was socially unacceptable under the veneer of conventional behaviour and was indicated in the final scene, set in a traditionally male club-like setting with a
large green baize table, with men smoking, drinking port or brandy, and casually gambling, a society “in which well-fed men slouch indolently over their port, baying ‘hear, hear’ when one of their number extracts a particularly ignominious confession of inferiority from his woman.”
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Paola Dionisotti, who played Katherina, found the contemporary setting a stumbling block, as she felt a woman of her character would simply not put up with Petruchio’s behavior in the modern world. However, many felt that the production successfully set out to reflect the exploitation of power in our own times:
This production’s contemporary setting generated a provocative and demanding relevance, presenting the taming story as a distasteful exhibition of male chauvinism and exploitation. The huntsmen threw a vixen’s body pelt down upon the sleeping
drunkard and instead of a play within a play the ensuing action took the form of Sly-as-Petruchio’s fantasy of domination and power.
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. Michael Bogdanov production, 1978: Jonathan Pryce as a “brutish Petruchio/Sly” who “uses violence crudely.” The final scene was set “in a traditionally male club-like setting with a large green baize table, with men smoking, drinking port or brandy, and casually gambling.”
When asked about the harshness of Petruchio’s depiction, Bogdanov explained:
The violence in my production was meant to engage the audience on an emotional level, to the extent of asking the audience to stand up and be counted. To ask what you really believe, are you really sitting comfortably in your seats, or is there something else that theatre makes you do? Makes you angry, makes you fear, challenges you, and finally makes you want to do something to change the world. Catharsis has no meaning for me. I’m not interested in people purging their emotions in the theatre and then walking away without a care in the world. I am only interested in theatre that excites people enough to make them want to cheer, or be angry enough to walk out.
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Stuart McQuarrie’s Petruchio in Lindsay Posner’s 1999 production was also repellent in his violence toward his servants and his wife, described by one reviewer as “a charming, volatile, sunken-eyed monster who will go to any lengths to assert his authority.”
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There was even a suggestion of offstage violence when Katherina appeared with a “large red weal on her arm after her marriage.”
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As his sustained campaign of abuse went on, the production became decidedly less humorous:
Posner’s key idea is that Petruchio himself is really the one with problems: transmogrifying from Sly into Petruchio, Stuart McQuarrie plays the latter as a pathologically violent figure who beats up Grumio with the same sadistic relish he shows towards Kate.… You don’t feel this is a Petruchio whose long-range strategy is to offer Kate a mirror image of her own madness: he simply seems a charmless bully who enjoys tormenting people.… Posner simply leaves us with a coldly brutal tale about psychological cruelty.… But if Shakespeare’s central text
is no more than the moral equivalent of a sexually chauvinist video, you wonder why anyone today would choose to watch it.
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The excruciating final scene is well done. Dolan’s Katherine recites her submissive speech like a Stepford Wife (Referring to the film
The Stepford Wives
in which men in an American small town kill and replace their wives with robotic copies who act like every man’s dream of the ‘perfect’ wife.) and the assembled guests look on in horror. Posner almost wimps out, hinting that Kate’s surrender is an in-joke, that husband and wife have come to some mysterious, us-against-the-world understanding. But nothing can disguise the naked triumphalism of McQuarrie’s Petruchio.
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When discussing his performance as Petruchio, Michael Siberry discussed the dilemma of reaching a balance between cruelty and humor:
If you really start putting on the pressure, being really cruel—for which you have the language and the structure of the speeches to support you—it becomes simply too dark and bleak. So much cruelty is implicit in what you say and do anyway, that to play it too strongly is to overstate the obvious.… If, on the other hand, you try to keep it light, if you look as if you are thinking “this is wonderful and I’m more and more drawn to her by the way she deals with this experience or that” (and I think that is what is happening to him), if you look as if you are enjoying yourself and not simply putting pressure on Kate in a nasty, vindictive way, the result is much more interesting … no matter how good your comedy techniques are, the shadows are still there; you have to acknowledge them, but play against them too.
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In Gregory Doran’s 2003 production, Jasper Britton played Petruchio as a man as emotionally lost after the death of his father as Katherina is by the absence of love from hers:
Initially, Britton comes over as a swaggering soldier of fortune, arriving in a seedy Padua that’s all peeling doors, scraggy gowns and shameless lovemaking. Yet underneath this Petruchio is also emotionally shaky, still wearing a black armband for his father’s death. His first wooing scene with [Alexandra] Gilbreath is astonishingly romantic. He floors her in a childish rough-and-tumble, tickling her foot till she roars with laughter. Then he holds her face in his hand with overwhelming tenderness. She is smitten by that, not by manhandling. Her show of obedience is a game whose rules they both understand, while his later bullying is partly explained by a drink problem and falling-back on the tough falcon-training creed of his father.
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There was a real sense of two people finding each other with a gradual realization that they could create a world outside of the normal rules of their society. Katherina and Petruchio were more equally dependent on each other for salvation than usual. It prompted one reviewer to comment: “I have never seen the ‘wooing’ scene more breathtakingly played: instead of barbaric knockabout, we see a damaged couple finding mutual support.”
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Katherina’s angry scorn quickly yields to surprised interest as she realises that this new wooer will engage with her, tease her and praise her. It is their shared sense of humour that connects them, becoming most clear on Katherina’s roar of ribald laughter at Petruchio’s joke about his tongue being in her tail—a joke which more commonly draws shocked outrage from the lady.… Her earlier anger and tension, which had been painfully visible in her aggressive posture and unkempt appearance, are replaced by playfulness, laughter and a fearful joy as she falls in love.
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… in place of an offensive comedy about “curative” wife-taming, we see Kate trying to rescue a madman she genuinely loves.… Packed with insight, this Shrew is a life-enhancing
comedy about the triumph of marriage over paternal oppression.
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The final submission speech was viewed with envy by all present, for it was obvious that these two outsiders had found a way of loving which far excelled anything that they could hope for within society’s normal restrictions. For her final speech Gilbreath was dressed in
a strange combination of corset, petticoats, breeches and unlaced boots, unburdened by any care for how the world might judge her. Her lack of decorum echoes her husband’s outrageous appearance at their wedding, which he defended with the words “To me she’s married not unto my clothes.” … Katherina enters gladly through the central door in obedience to her husband’s command and delivers her speech of wifely duty with heartfelt sincerity and love. In response to her husband, she discards the cap and, with a playful care, treads it into the ground. Petruchio carefully picks it up and dusts it off, placing it beside him on the table. She proffers her hand to “do him ease” with a big gesture. He remains seated and raises his booted foot, saying “Come on” as if demanding that she publicly take her obedience to the extreme and humiliate herself by literally placing herself beneath his foot. Katherina’s face betrays the cost of such a demand as, after a short pause, she moves towards him to obey, only to be intercepted as he sweeps her into an embrace and finally completes his line “ … and kiss me, Kate.”
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On one level
Shrew
is about the power of theatre to change people, to actually make people see themselves, and you, through seeing life reproduced on the stage.
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The playwright John Arden writing about
Henry V
suggested: “one is forced to wonder if the author had not written a secret play inside
the official one,” and it may be that one has to question
The Taming of the Shrew
in the same way. Are the problems of sexism and chauvinistic behavior a problem at all when most right-minded people watching it are genuinely appalled by them anyway?
When directing another play about the Elizabethan attitudes to marriage, Michael Bogdanov commented that whether Shakespeare is examining personal and/or sociopolitical concerns, he is,
all the time, analysing the nature of power and the way that it corrupts man. It is as if he were trying to find another society that could exist outside of this Elizabethan one of greed and avarice.… As long as there is a society where fathers are allowed to barter their daughters to the highest bidder, then tragedies like
Romeo and Juliet
are going to occur.
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Economics and class should not enter into the realms of emotion but they still do. Money traps the humanity of both rich and poor: the rich because the world for them, including personal relationships, becomes a matter of economics, the poor, because without money they are powerless and at the mercy of those who will use them without consequence. The question which we are left with in modern productions of
The Taming of the Shrew
is whether or not two people who love each other can break free of their restrictive milieu and challenge society’s perceptions, or whether they are trapped by the established order into destructive patterns of behavior. Shakespeare’s text has enabled directors to explore these possibilities in a way that is entirely relevant despite our assumption that we live in more enlightened times.
Gregory Doran
, born in 1958, studied at Bristol University and the Bristol Old Vic theater school. He began his career as an actor, before becoming Associate Director at the Nottingham Playhouse. He played some minor roles in the RSC ensemble before directing for the company, first as a freelance, then as Associate and subsequently Chief
Associate Director. His productions, several of which have starred his partner Antony Sher, are characterized by extreme intelligence and lucidity. He has made a particular mark with several of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays and the revival of works by his Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries. He talks here about his 2003 RSC production of
The Taming of the Shrew,
with Alexandra Gilbreath as Kate and Jasper Britton as Petruchio.
Phyllida Lloyd
, born in 1957, is a prolific freelance director of theater and opera. A graduate of Birmingham University with a degree in English and Drama, she began directing on the London fringe. She was awarded an Arts Council Trainee Director bursary and began an apprenticeship in regional theater at The Swan Theatre Worcester, The Wolsey Theatre Ipswich, Cheltenham Everyman, Bristol Old Vic and Manchester Royal Exchange. Subsequent work has included
The Way of the World, Pericles, What the Butler Saw, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,
and
The Duchess of Malfi
at the National Theatre in London, as well as work for the Royal Court Theatre and the Donmar, and
The Taming of the Shrew
for Shakespeare’s Globe, 2003, about which she talks here. Her career spans a variety of genres, including extensive experience in opera and the worldwide hit musical production of
Mamma Mia!
Why take on this play in an age when it is no longer acceptable to call a woman a “shrew” or to demand that she submits to her husband’s will?
Doran:
To begin with I decided to direct
Shrew
because I had read Fletcher’s
The Tamer Tamed
and felt that somehow we had the antidote to the play; that presented in repertoire we could allow
Shrew
to end with the subjugation of Kate (if so it does) and let it be as gruesome and unpalatable as its reputation tended to suggest it was, because the women get their revenge in the sequel (in
The Tamer Tamed
the tables are turned and Petruchio’s second wife, Maria, tames her husband in return). This is at any rate how we started out. However, in rehearsal, as so often happens, our opinion changed. We needed no antidote after all.
The Taming of the Shrew
emerged as a very different play from the one we expected. Possibly because we
stopped approaching it as a problem play, and allowed it to speak for itself.