Taming of the Shrew - William Shakespeare

Taming of the Shrew is a story about a woman named Katherine who cannot be tamed. The play begins with two men willing to court a young woman named Bianca. But her father is not able to send Bianca off to wed until her older sister, Katherine, is married. The two men devise a clever plan, involving a couple outside people, for one of them to pretend to be a tutor for Bianca, while they set Katherine up with a man who could suit her, and tame her, it would seem. The recurring theme in Taming of the Shrew would be the gender stereotypes that present itself throughout. This situations set off a somewhat exciting and quite hilarious work by William Shakespeare.

“What, with my tongue in your tail?” Petruchio, the man found to try and tame Katherine, is, in this scene, trying to do just that. I chose this quote because it reveals a lot of things about the play and the characters themselves. This play was written for the peasants. These people were not interested in calm, or dainty plays, that royalty would be more interested in, but rather those that could make them laugh and were inappropriate to boot. In that day, plays were put on, and you had that one chance to make the audience like what you have created for them, and it did no harm in going all out. Throughout this entire scene, Katherine and Petruchio are making shots at each other, both vulgar and rude. This quote shows just how far not only the characters went to make each other uncomfortable, and fight with each other—but also the kind of humor that Shakespeare was trying to convey to the audience. It also gains insight into the characters. Katherine is the exact opposite of what a lady should be. She is rude and disrespectful of them an trying to woo her, or any other man, really. She talks of cocks and being withered, and he shoots back with somewhat witty remarks (though she claims him to be witless).

This image shows the scene that I was talking about before. It shows Petruchio in love with Katherine, and trying to woo her over through the means of hugging her and kissing her and mocking her. Katherine, however, will not be swayedby these means, as one can tell by the look on her face. I chose this because it's clear how the actors are conveying their feelings for one another.
(http://bradweismann.blogspot.com/2010/07/abbondanza-csfs-taming-of-shrew.html)

Questions:
1) What do you feel about how Katherine acts and composes herself?
2) If you were Petruchio, how would you have composed yourself?
3) Do you think it was fair that Katherine has to be married off before Bianca? Why or why not?
4) How do gender stereotypes play a role in Taming of the Shrew?
5) How do you think the power dynamics from men to women and women to men change in this play if they do at all?

This text (the text itself) can relate to my life in a few ways, one of which being the upcoming Shakespeare Festival. Shakespeare’s text can be difficult to handle. The use of the words are not familiar to readers of this century, and most of the time it can be really confusing. Luckily, through the learning I have done in different Shakespeare activities, this came easier to me. What I found I had to do was look over each line and take it a scene at a time. I would go from verse to verse, figuring out what they’re saying in modern English, and then decipher the entire scene together (and, of course, when it got really confusing, No Fear Shakespeare was there to help—although I don’t much fancy No Fear, mainly because it’s their interpretation of the works, and not made from me). It also made it difficult that I’d never seen it before, so imagining what was going on at different times—how the characters should be acting and moving, was also a challenge. This provided to be a good experience for me, and good practice, considering I’d done this with other plays before, and Taming of the Shrew is a scene some of the kids from my Shakespeare group are going to be doing. Having read this and understanding it through and through will help me assist them in preparing for the Festival. A final way I could find this text to relate to me would be the bit of admiration that I have for Katherine. She shows that no man is going to woo her over without her loving him, and therefore makes herself into somewhat of a ride woman, which was the only effective way to do so then. I find that if more women act like this (though perhaps not so rude though with the same intentions) in our age, then there would be less discrimination, etc. on women).

Overall, I very much enjoyed Taming of the Shrew. Although it was difficult to understand, it was witty and clever, and also provided something other than the proper scenes from Shakespeare that I have seen before. I found the taming scene particularly interesting (quote above), and found that, overall, it was a wonderful piece of work, mastered by Shakespeare like no other.

[Please note that this was done last night at about 8:00 or so, but that my limited internet capabilities did not allow me to actually post it until just this morning. :)]