Play 2: The Taming of the Shrew
This is one of those top 10 Shakespeare plays that everyone has heard of, isn't it? But somehow I'd never gotten around to reading it. I guess that's why I embarked on this resolution in the first place, though.
Of course the big issue with "The Taming of the Shrew" is misogyny. The main plot is that there is a wealthy man with one beautiful, polite daughter and one shrewish daughter. He decides he won't let the younger, polite daughter get married until her older, shrewish sister gets married first. So, the suitors of the younger daughter find a man who is willing to marry the shrew. He does, and furthermore "tames" her into a nice, polite wife. There's also a B-plot about the suitors for the polite daughter fighting with each other.
It's clear right away how that plot could be misogynistic, and I've been hearing for years that "Taming of the Shrew" is a comedy about domestic abuse. In reading the Wikipedia article before the play, this was all confirmed. The play has been controversial, in fact, since well before the modern era of women's rights. Even the Victorians found it a bit offensive.
So, going in with this in my head, I was surprised to find that, mostly, I found the play not especially misogynist at all (No more than anything written before 1960). Right up until the last scene, that is, where Katherine the shrew, now tamed, gives a speech to two less obedient wives, about how wives ought to obey their husbands because women are inferior in mind and body to men, and that husbands are to their wives as monarchs are to their subjects. But still, remove that monologue, and the play doesn't seem especially misogynist. Instead it struck me as a dark comedy about bad people doing bad things to each other, along the lines of a Cohen Brothers film or "Bad Santa".
One big factor in this is that Katherine, the shrew, wasn't very sympathetic in the beginning. If she were only sharp-tongued towards the authority figures who have power over her (her father, her suitors, her husband), then you could see her as a strong woman struggling against an oppressive society. But she's also mean to those she has power over. Specifically, she torments her sister Bianca (who meekly submits because Katherine is older than her), and when she is sent a new music teacher she smashes his lute over his head and insults him in so many ways that he says it's like she sat down and wrote out a list of insults beforehand in preparation.
So, Katherine was not sympathetic to me, though she was entertainingly contrarian. Her suitor and eventual husband Petruchio isn't a sympathetic character either, being awkwardly blunt and strange right from his introduction as well, though again, he comes off as entertaining in his single-minded eccentricity.
I'd heard a lot about the "taming" part of the play, how abusive Petruchio was to Katherine, sometimes even hearing of this as a wife-beating play. But it turned out there was no wife-beating at all (unless it was implied off-stage and I missed it, which is entirely possible). Katherine slaps Bianca and Petruchio, and Petruchio beats his servants and the priest at his and Katherine's wedding, but Petruchio never hits Katherine. Instead, he "kills her with kindness", acting as if he finds everything she says and does to be very sweet and endearing. He then tells her father they're engaged, and the otherwise outspoken Katherine is so angry that she becomes sitcomishly flustered and apparently does nothing to stop the wedding from being arranged and taking place, and just marries him. Then he takes her to his home, and doesn't let her eat or sleep for two days, by bringing her food and mattresses but then taking them away insisting they're not good enough for her. Is this a classic technique of brainwashing? Yes. Is this abusive? Yes. In the real world, at least. But in the context of the comedic play, I found it to seem no more cruel than the slapstick physical abuse in a Three Stooges film, or the psychological cruelty in a Cohen Brothers film. I think it's a bit like how people in romantic comedies regularly engage in behavior that would be stalking or harrassment in the real world; suspension of disbelief gives it a different quality.
The taming culminates when Petruchio begins saying non-factual statements, and insisting that Katherine agree with him. In criticism, I had heard this likened to the "2+2=5" scene from "1984". In reading, though, it was clear to me that Katherine did not actually believe, nor even that her will was broken, but that she had simply broken the code and figured out what Petruchio wanted, and decided she's willing to put up a false front in order to just get some food. In fact, she's prompted by Hortensio, who just wants her to agree so that Petruchio will let them all get to dinner on time:
PETRUCHIO
Come on, i' God's name; once more toward our father's.
Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!
KATHARINAThe moon! the sun: it is not moonlight now.
PETRUCHIOI say it is the moon that shines so bright.
KATHARINAI know it is the sun that shines so bright.
PETRUCHIONow, by my mother's son, and that's myself,
It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,
Or ere I journey to your father's house.
Go on, and fetch our horses back again.
Evermore cross'd and cross'd; nothing but cross'd!
HORTENSIOSay as he says, or we shall never go.
KATHARINAForward, I pray, since we have come so far,
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please:
An if you please to call it a rush-candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.
PETRUCHIOI say it is the moon.
KATHARINAI know it is the moon.
PETRUCHIONay, then you lie: it is the blessed sun.
KATHARINAThen, God be bless'd, it is the blessed sun:
But sun it is not, when you say it is not;
And the moon changes even as your mind.
What you will have it named, even that it is;
And so it shall be so for Katharina.
HORTENSIO Petruchio, go thy ways; the field is won.
So she does lose the battle of wills versus Petruchio, but she still has her own mind. She knows it's really the moon, she's just finally decided to placate him, instead of insulting him as she's done with everyone else around her. In the final act, at dinner at her father's house, she has just as sharp a tongue as ever, but now employs it on other people, on her husband's behalf.
But then she gives that big speech about the inferiority of women:
Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
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.
So, that was a head scratcher. But there are a few ways you can reconcile it. To believe Wikipedia, there is in fact a cottage industry of "Taming of the Shrew" apologetics.
The first theory, hinges on the oddity that "The Taming of the Shrew" is, in fact, a play-within-a-play. It begins with a two-scene section known as "The Induction", in which a foul-mouthed impoverished drunkard tinker passes out in a gutter, and a wealthy nobleman decides to pull a joke by taking the tinker into his house, dressing him up in fine clothes, and having his servants inform the tinker that he's always been a wealthy man, but prone to strange hallucinations. As part of the act, the nobleman has a traveling company of players perform a play for him, and that play is "The Taming of the Shrew". The Induction then pretty much fades from sight, except for the tinker having one more brief exchange with a servant at the end of Act 1, Scene 1, about how he's enjoying the play so far. The Induction is never returned to again, not even at the end of the play. The tinker's story is left unresolved, which I found kind of disappointing. (Though Wikipedia says that the Induction may be based on another story, which ends with the tinker going to sleep and being put back into the gutter while he sleeps, then waking and exclaiming that he had a dream he was rich.)
Anyway, the Induction-based apologia says that the purpose of the Induction is to make extra certain that the audience understands the play is meant as a farce, not to be taken literally. It helps distance the audience from the action in the play, framing it as a story that the nobleman thinks it would be amusing to show the tinker, either because it will appeal to him, or because it will educate him. Under this theory, you could then say that Katherine's big speech at the end is an insertion into the play, for the purpose of making the play more likeable to the rude tinker, and that it's not really in character for her nor does it reflect her real feelings.
Another theory says that Katherine's final monologue is meant to be delivered ironically, that Katherine believes none of what she's saying. Her spirit isn't bowed, this theory says, but she's just learned to say the lines that Petruchio wants to hear.
I tend to find some truth in both theories. The framing of the play did help me to take it less seriously, as a farce rather than a life lesson. And the more I think about it, Katherine does seem unbowed. A theory forms in my mind, where Katherine, despite the abuse she hurls, is lonely underneath and wants to marry, but is distanced from everyone around her by her rudeness. She torments Bianca about her suitors because she's jealous. After Petruchio tricks her father into thinking she has consented to marry him, she doesn't raise a stink to make sure her father understands this is false, because she really does want to marry Petruchio (though she barely knows him, perhaps she just wants to marry someone). When she says she's ready to put her hand under her husband's boot, she's lying the same as she lied when she said the sun is the moon. And Petruchio doesn't really want his wife "tamed". He doesn't mind at all if she's headstrong and yells at people, in fact he rather likes it, he just doesn't want her to yell at him. With both of them being so misanthropic, Petruchio and Katherine actually make a great couple, once Petruchio starves her into allying with him.
Ah yes, and before I close I should mention editions. Since this play is one of Shakespeare's big 10, as I mentioned at the top of this post, it was available from "No Fear Shakespeare" and "Shakespeare Made Easy", the two modern day translations of Shakespeare I was interested in (with the original text and the modern English translation side by side). So, I purchased the Kindle version of "Shakespeare Made Easy" first. Disappointingly, it was not formatted in a readable manner. Rather than having the text side by side, it alternated between showing one page worth's of original text and one page worth of modern English, with the breaks at arbitrary points in the dialogue. I suspect the Kindle format probably doesn't support putting the text in a side-by-side format, but they could at least have done something like just alternate, one Shakespearean line then one modern line, etc. So, I sent that book back for a refund.
No Fear Shakespeare has a free online version of this play, and does not sell a Kindle version, so I wound up reading the online version off their website: http://nfs.sparknotes.com/shrew . I read it entirely in Opera Mini on my Android phone, which was not a completely pleasant experience, but not unreadable either. While the normal site shows the texts side by side, Opera Mini interleaved them into one column, showing each character's line in the original Shakespearean and then in modern English. So, that was fairly usable, but a bit awkward because it didn't clearly mark the switchover. I could usually pick it up, noting the point halfway through each block of text where the language shifted tone and began repeating itself, but sometimes I would wind up reading both sets, especially for the short lines, which got a bit disorienting. Disappointly as well, the relatively few footnotes in the No Fear Shakespeare version were implemented as Javascript-based hotlinks which didn't work at all in Opera Mini. So, there were a few allusions and expressions in the play which I was unable to get an explanation of.
In conclusion, though I was expecting harsh misogyny, I instead found "The Taming of the Shrew" very funny.
Next up: "Titus Andronicus"! (Also known as "the play where that guy kills those two guys and bakes them into a pie")