 
                         20060809.00

                About the Taming of the Shrew

     I've been reading the play sporadically.  Still haven't
disentangled the disguises of Bianca's suitors, the
significance of which, if any, aside from entertainment, has
so far at least escaped me.  For the rest, the play seems to
me lucid and effective.  Shakespeare, persuaded by box-office
considerations, found himself constrained to write what is
from one perspective only an Elizabethan soap opera, a
sentimental and sensational dramatic invention about family
life, with which he sought to appeal to an unsophisticated
audience.  I infer that both the audience and the theme on
which he improvised, are somewhat of an embarrassment to the
author.

     This embarrassment is reflected in the Induction, with
its implicit satire and disparagement.  The enebriated
Christopher Sly is Shakespeare's caricature of his audience,
reminiscent of Goethe's introductory characterizations in
Faust.

     Was traeumet Ihr auf Eurer Dichterhoehe?
     Was macht ein volles Haus Euch froh?
     Beseht die Goenner in der Naehe!
     Halb sind sie kalt, halb sind sie roh.
     Der, nach dem Schauspiel, hofft ein Kartenspiel,
     Der eine wilde Nacht an einer Dirne Busen.
     Was plagt ihr armen Toren viel,
     Zu solchem Zweck, die holden Musen?"

     What dreams you dream on your poetic summits!
     What does it matter if the show's sold out?
     See, if you scrutinize your patrons closely:
     One half of them is cold; the other half is crude.
     One, when the curtain falls, can't wait to deal a pack of cards,
     Another lusts to spend a wild night on his girlfriends bosom.
     What fools you are for such as these to badger noble muses.

The lord who transforms Sly into a nobleman may reasonably be
equated with Shakespeare himself, the poet who ennobles his
audience through his art.  The art through which Sly is
elevated to the aristocracy is the same as that through which
Shakespeares audience is ennobled to knowledge and
understanding.  The play is more than entertainment, the play
itself becomes a pedagogic device.

     On one level, the play may be understood as the
transformation of an unruly girl into a dutiful wife The play
is all about education, paideia, Erziehung, chastisement.
Petruchio is, above all, a teacher of social virtue.  Compare
him with G.B. Shaw's Professor Higgins.  It seems not
inappropriate to consider marriage as a school where the
spouses educate, train, and tame each other.

     Petruchio is a teacher: he is not a saint. He avowedly
educates (marries) Katharine for her father's money.  For a
lover such a motive is demeaning.  For a teacher it is not.
At least from the days of the Sophists, teachers have
accepted as generous remuneration as they were able to
command.

     Petruchio presumably tames Katrina to domesticity for
his own benefit.  It is debatable whether that domesticity,
that tameness is virtue or vice, whether to be tame is
desirable or undesirable.  Whether wild Katherine is happier,
healthier or more productive than tame Katherine, who can
say, who would know.  Certain is, however, that from the
social framework which Shakespeare envisioned, wild Katharine
is an outcast.  He stigmatizes her as curs'd.  Petruchio
rescues her from barbarism to society, by literally
civilizing her.  To the extent that this schema is valid,
Petruchio, whatever his faults, proves himself as the true
"husband" and cultivator of his wife.

     On another level, Shakespeare it seems to me, leaves all
his critics in the dust. With the Taming of the Shrew, he has
written a mystery story that demonstrates their lack of
insight into the ways of mankind, into the nature of art, and
into themselves.

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Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
