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- subject = Shakespeare
- title = To Tame A Shrew
- papers = To Tame A Shrew
- or
- Why
- Does She Have To Be So Difficult!
-
- In Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew,
- one topic that has been debated, interpreted, discussed, reinterpreted and
- adapted into different forms has been the character of Katharina, the shrew,
- and whether she was tamed, liberated, or just a good enough actress to make
- everyone think she was in fact, tamed. In this essay, I will present arguments
- for and against each of these points, as well as discuss one television adaptation
- of Taming of the Shrew that presents Katharina not as the expected shrew, but
- as Petruchio's tamer.
-
- Katharina: The Whipped Shrew
-
- There is evidence
- that supports Katharina was tamed by Petruchio. For instance, in the opening
- of the play, Katharina is very vocal and aggressive. Men, women and children
- trembled whenever she came around, including her father and sister. By the
- end of the play, however, she is presented as being mild and submissive to
- Petruchio, leading up to her greatest speech in the dialogue of the play:
- 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. (5.2.146-154)
- In looking at this outtake of Katharina's
- speech, it can be seen that she has been tamed by Petruchio's actions throughout
- the first four acts. It is difficult to take Katharina's message here and
- say, "She is still the same person." Her monologue reveals that she now sees
- it is her duty to respect her husband and to be submissive to him. Her speech
- leads the audience to see that this duty of the wife is one that is a repayment
- to the husband for all the hard work he does to support her, a debt that the
- wife could never possibly repay.
- Reasons why Katharina might not have been
- tamed can be found in the fact that the play takes place in what seems to be
- just a few days. One must ask the question: Is it possible to cause such a
- great change in a person's behavior in such a short amount of time as this?
- It is very unlikely that it is possible, since Katharina, by the opening of
- the play, is at least 20 years of age and is very much set into her ways.
- It would take much longer to cure Katharina of this attitude problem she possesses.
- With this in mind, it is very likely that Katharina was either liberated by
- Petruchio in how to control her temper, or she acted as if she had been tamed
- to get everyone off of her back.
-
- Katharina: The Liberated Shrew
-
- Since
- it is not possible for Katharina to have been tamed by Petruchio in the short
- time period of the play, it is possible that she was liberated by Petruchio's
- actions. In the movie version of Taming of the Shrew, starring Elizabeth Taylor
- as Katharina and Richard Burton as Petruchio, the ending sequence is presented
- with the widow and Bianca refusing to come out at their suitor's request.
- Petruchio then sends for Katharina, and with the expressions on everyone's
- face, it can be assumed they weren't expecting her to come out either. Instead,
- Katharina does come out, with Bianca under one arm and the widow under the
- other. It was at this point she delivered her speech quoted above.
- Now,
- if she was tamed, it is doubtful she would have come out with the other women
- in her grips. It is more likely she would have come out alone, saying something
- along the lines of "Yes, my darling Petruchio, what can I do for thee?" Instead,
- she forces the other women to be obedient to their spouses, still showing some
- of the fearful aggressiveness at the beginning of the play.
- I see this as
- evidence that Petruchio has liberated Katharina in a sense that she no longer
- needs to be brash and aggressive at all times, but more she can use her assertiveness
- for her husband's advantage, and more importantly for her own advantage, as
- when dragging in the two women. In other words, together, they made a great
- team with Petruchio's great wit and ability to play word games at the drop
- of a hat and Katharina's strong will and stubbornness. I find that they no
- longer use these on each other, except for amusement, but to influence and
- gain stature and control to those around them.
-
- Katharina: The Acting Shrew
-
- In
- the performance done by the Sanderson High School for last year's State UIL
- One-Act Play, they chose to do scenes from Taming of the Shrew. This interpretation
- of the play was an interesting one compared to the other interpretations I
- had seen before. Instead of presenting Katharina as being tamed at worst (I
- say tamed at worst because if Katharina was tamed, she would have truly lost
- most of her spirit) or liberated at best, Karina Mendoza portrayed Katharina
- as being an actress pretending to be tamed.
- In the scene where Katharina
- and Petruchio are returning to Padua for Bianca's wedding, they are shown arguing
- along the road, as to whether the globe in the sky was the sun or the moon.
- Instead of realizing Petruchio was trying to free her from her anger and join
- him in his witty word-play, and instead of giving up everything to allow Petruchio
- to have full dominion over her, Katharina pretends to go along with him and
- starts agreeing with everything he says. What Petruchio doesn't see is that
- when Katharina turns away and faces the audience, she rolls her eyes at him,
- revealing that even though it appears she has conceded to him, she still retains
- her personality.
- What also aids in this view is that when Katharina and Petruchio
- arrive in Padua, after Katharina gives the above speech, Petruchio scoops her
- into his arms and carries her into the church, all the men applauding him.
- It is at this point Katharina looks out to the audience and gives the crowd
- a knowing wink and signs the word for "Okay," as if she is the one who got
- him instead of the other way around.
- I find this evidence plausible as well,
- since it is difficult to see Katharina willing to give in to Petruchio and
- find a middle ground with him, even if their aggressive nature is so much alike.
- After all, if Katharina is just acting as if she were tamed, then it is likely
- she would still have her shrewish attitude. If this is the case, then Petruchio
- is in for a big downfall when she decides to remove her disguise and unleash
- herself upon her unsuspecting husband.
-
- Katharina: The Tamer of the Shrew
-
- So
- far, all the examples I have given have presented Katharina as the tamed, liberated
- or acting shrew. I would like to present a different view of Katharina as
- something other than the one being tamed, and look at a modern interpretation
- that displays her as the tamer.
- I recently had an opportunity to see a recording
- of the 80's television comedy Moonlighting, starring Bruce Willis and Cybill
- Shepherd. In this show, a special was done on a revision of Taming of the
- Shrew with Willis' character as Petruchio and Shepherd's as Katharina. For
- the first part, this version follows the original Shakespeare text, with some
- liberties taken by the writers of the show, showing some tongue-in-cheek humor
- - Petruchio rides in on a horse with both of them wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses,
- the saddle has the logo for BMW on the side, and Katharina has a closet full
- of "cheap" vases to throw at her suitors. But, as the comedy progresses, an
- interesting twist is given - beginning when Petruchio and Katharina return
- to Padua for the wedding of Bianca and Lucentio. Petruchio is confronting
- Baptista about receiving the promised dowry for wedding Katharina, and Baptista
- demands proof that Katharina has been tamed, a part of the bargain for receiving
- the dowry, because he had heard rumors that K
- atharina was not tamed or liberated,
- but that Petruchio was the one that had given in to Katharina's aggressive
- nature.
- To prove he had tamed Katharina, Petruchio states to her the globe
- in the sky is the moon at noon-time. Katharina turns to the blazing sun, and
- after a few moments of silence from the whole town waiting for her response,
- says "My husband, you are mistaken. For it is the sun. I beg you, look again."
- The shocked crowd turns to Petruchio who, instead of getting mad and threatening
- they return to his home as in the other performances when they are on the road
- to Padua, stares back at the sun, and says, "Why, you are right. How foolish
- of me." The rest of the tale ends with a variation of Katharina's speech in
- an 1980's fashion - that man and woman are to be equals and should not try
- to be dominant over the other, and that it was Petruchio's kindness towards
- her that won her heart, for she was still the same opinionated woman. She
- states that what women truly want is for men to treat them with respect and
- they will receive the same respect in return. In other words, Katharina was
- not the one needing to b
- e tamed, but the brash attitude of Petruchio.
-
- Final
- Arguments
-
- Throughout this essay, I have presented four different arguments
- about the subject of Katharina's taming. In analyzing the text of the play
- and seeing how different interpretations have presented the taming, I find
- that I have to agree with two of the interpretations, the first that Katharina
- is acting tamed, and second that she was liberated.
- First, I feel that she
- was just acting on the road to Padua, that she was still just pretending to
- be tamed so she could see her family one more time. I feel this with how quickly
- she changed her attitude when Petruchio threatened to return home and forego
- the wedding. But, I also feel that her acting job here backfired against her
- emotionally. When she saw that by being obedient to Petruchio he treated her
- as an equal, she realized she needed to compromise her nature to keep this
- man she was falling in love with, which leads to her being liberated.
- I say
- Katharina is liberated because she still displays some of her shrewish attitudes
- during the feast for Lucentio and Bianca's wedding, when she drags out the
- two stubborn women, who refused to come out when the husbands called for them.
- If she was tamed at this point, she would not have been aggressive towards
- the two ladies. If she was acting, she would have risked being discovered
- if she showed herself being aggressive with the ladies. If she was liberated
- and able to be as an equal with Petruchio, she would have acted the way she
- did - aggressive towards those who were being stubborn about their husband's
- authority. I see it as Katharina was trying to show them that if they are
- obedient to their husband, the husband would treat them as an equal.
- I also
- find I have to agree with the Moonlighting version of the play, in a sense.
- It has to be seen that if Katharina gave in some of her attitude towards Petruchio,
- Petruchio also had to give in some of his own attitude. The attitude of show
- respect and obedience and receive respect and equality, although carried to
- an extreme in the Moonlighting episode, can be seen in all the versions of
- the play discussed.
- In conclusion, I believe that Katharina is not the only
- one who became liberated through the course of the play, but Petruchio as well,
- from his own super-masculinity.
-
-
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