The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare :: The Taming of the Shrew Essays

In the late twentieth century, it is not unusual for audience members to come onward from productions of The Taming of the Shrew with the impression that they have just witnessed the story of a dynamic woman turned into a Stepford wife.1 There are also Shakespearean critics who confirm such views. G. I. Duthie, for instance, describes Katherina as a spirited woman who is cowed into abject submission by the violence of an egregious bully (147). John Fletchers 1611 play The Womans Prize, or the unexciting Tamed, in which Petruchios second wife treats him as he had treated Kate,2 suggests that even during Shakespeares lifetime the battle of the sexes within the play had become a battle of the critics distant it.3Shakespearean scholars on the other side argue, as Charles Boyce does, that far from being a tale of domination, the plays main plot concerns the development of character and of love in a particular anatomy of personality (626). Boyce goes on to say that The violence in The Shrew--except for the beatings of servants ... is limited to Katherinas own assaults on Bianca and Petruchio (626). Nor is Boyce alone in his belief that Petruchio is physically kind to Kate as Robert Speaight writes, It is only to others that he is rough (59).Much of the confusion comes from a simultaneous idealization of the twentieth century4 and denigration of the sixteenth, a glorification of the sensibilities of newfangled critics, directors, and audiences coupled with a condemnation of the medieval insensitivity of the playwright. For example, Jonathan Miller, director of the 1980 BBC Shrew, says, Shakespeare is extolling the virtues of the obedient wife ... in accordance with the sixteenth-century belief that for the orderly running of society, some sort of sacrifice of personal freedom is necessary. He defends his position with an attack, arguing that If we wish to make all plays from the past conform to our ideals ... were simply rewriting all plays and bout them into m odern ones, a practice he calls historical suburbanism (140).However, he is himself engaging in a procedure which might be called historical blurring, allowing certain historical trends to obscure individuals and their divergent opinions.5 No period can be correctly characterized as homogeneous, certainly not a time as tendentious as the Renaissance. To maintain that womens rights were not hotly debated by Shakespeare and his contemporaries is ignorance coupled with arrogance, and to fit the creator of Portia, Rosalind, and Viola into the company of male supremacists requires an adept mental contortionist.