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 fix away from productions of The Taming of the Shrew with the impression that they have just witnessed the story of a dynamic charr turned into a Stepford wife.1 There are in any case Shakespearean critics who hold 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). thaumaturgy Fletchers 1611 prank The Womans Prize, or the Tamer 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 outside it.3Shakespearean scholars on the otherwise side argue, as Charles Boyce does, that far from being a tale of domination, the plays main(prenominal) plot concerns the development of character and of love in a busy sort of personality (626). Boyce goes on to say that The v iolence in The Shrew--except for the beatings of servants ... is contain to Katherinas own assaults on Bianca and Petruchio (626). Nor is Boyce alone in his belief that Petruchio is physically material body 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 advanced 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 pliable wife ... in accordance with the sixteenth-century belief that for the orderly running of society, roughly sort of sacrifice of personal freedom is necessary. He defends his position with an attack, rock that If we wish to make all plays from the past conform to our ideals ... were simply rewrite all pla ys and turning them into modern ones, a practice he calls diachronic 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 tip can be correctly characterized as homogeneous, certainly not a time as tendentious as the Renaissance. To maintain that womens rights were not heatedly debated by Shakespeare and his contemporaries is ignorance coupled with arrogance, and to fit the creator of Portia, Rosalind, and Viola into the companionship of male supremacists requires an adept mental contortionist.