Again: I guess you could call that one interpretation. It’s easy to read the play as misogynist, but that’s not the only possible way to read or perform it. And scrapping a play because it could be read one way is crazy.
It’s a shame real women aren’t written by paternalistic white men.
Which one of old Shakesy’s plays won’t offend someone?
It wasn’t. It’s one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, written about a decade before Elizabeth’s death. (And there are precious few sympathetic male characters in it. Maybe Lucentio or some of the servants if you squint, and you can give Katharina some real depth in performance, but mostly it’s an over-the-top face with characters who are basically cardboard. Which isn’t to say it’s a bad play – there’s some great, snappy dialogue that foreshadows the later comedies, and some nice thematic play with illusion and disguise and metatheater and gender-as-performance, but it’s definitely a journeyman piece, and people have a tendency to take it far more seriously than it’s meant to be taken.)
By the way, Shakespeare’s own contemporaries seem to have been under the impression that Katharina was anything but tamed. There’s a sequel, The Tamer Tamed, written by John Fletcher while Shakespeare was still alive (and performed by Shakespeare’s company, so most likely written with Shakespeare’s approval). It takes place many years later, when Petruchio is a widower looking to marry again, and the other characters say things along the lines of “I can’t believe he’s doing this when his LAST wife never let him have a minute of peace the whole time they were married” 
Oh, and I am totally down with performing this and all other Shakespeare as often as possible, in case that isn’t clear, especially if the Christopher Sly framing scenes also make it in.
I can see how a literal interpretation is quite abusive, and I do see how it encapsulates much about common gender roles of the time. You could certainly make it a story about how an independent woman is tortured into submission.
But I just don’t think that’s the “right” interpretation (to the extent that any interpretation can be deemed right or wrong).
To me, many of the things done in TOTS are exaggerated for comedic effect. Complaining about them is a little like writing a protest letter that using booby traps to drop an anvil on the head of a coyote is not a legal technique for self-defense.
It’s a very tricky play and it shouldn’t be put up by people who don’t understand it.
Some people play the end with a wink. Kate promises to “behave” and then winks at the audience and gets a laugh. This is terrible. And those people and the people who laugh should not be allowed in the theater for 10 years.
Kate must be sincere in her pledge to put her hand under his boot but because she knows he will not step on her. She casts away her hat at his request because she realizes that the external, (clothing, there is so much talk about clothing in this play) is not as important at the internal. She has grown as a person. You have have her be a right cu*t in Act I or the play will never work. Of course the real bitch in the play is Bianca. She is a horrible person and their father is no winner either.
I once saw an interview with British director Johnathan Miller explain the play as a Puritan play. He directed a BBC version with John Cleese as Petruchio. The idea that external clothing does not make a person ‘something’ but who they are on the inside is the important thing was a Puritan idea of the time. (especially those dressed as Priests) A true relationship with God or another person did not depend on clothing but was an internal thing. So when Petruchio says “it is to me she is being married not my clothes” he is espousing a Puritan idea.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: That play is more a comedy than a play which seriously condones domestic abuse. 10 Things I Hate About You (which I saw at a friend’s house) is pretty close to the original play. Saying you can’t put this on is like saying you can’t adapt Oliver Twist because that’s anti-Semitic.
I haven’t seen or read the play – only know of its content in broad outline; but I’m with Marley23 on this issue.
It’s far from my favourite Shakespeare play (contrast it with Much Ado…, and you quickly get a sense Bill was writing Shrew about one particular woman not the entire sex) but I’ve seen it done really well ( a little tongue-in-cheek, even). I’ve even seen a gender-swapped version.
Scrapping it doesn’t make sense to me.
Are we going to shit-can the Honeymooners because Ralpf Kramden is portrayed as a buffoon whose wife constantly berates him?
It’s a comedy, the characters are supposed to be extreme examples of ridiculous behavior.
Well, there’s his little-known The Fuzzy Duckling of Lancashire, but only young and relatively stupid children find it engaging.
The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis performed this last year and we caught it. It was an all-male production with the female parts played in drag.(You can see a pic of it here.)
I remember leaving the theater perfectly unhappy. The complete breakdown of Kate was disconfitting. The first act was light and airy and filled with comedic moments with the occasional shadow popping up here and there. The whole second act slid down into the dark recesses of domestic abuse and was able to stay true to the play, but show how evil the whole plot was.
It’s rare treat to leave a play hating and loving it at the same time. Therein lies the problem with this play, if it’s treating the acts as if they were a comedy, then it’s Sambo black face doing cartwheels and eating watermelon. It just becomes reprehensible to modern eyes and ears. But when it shows that the play really is a tragedy, the mirror on society can shine brightly if not depressingly.
What do we ban next? West Side Story because of how it portrays “Hispanics”?
Do not apply standards of the present to works of the past. It’s called “presentizing” and it is always wrong.
We generally give comedians a wash for saying or doing offensive things within the context of comedy. Sometimes they say something offensive that’s too close to a tragedy: remember Gilbert Gottfried’s joke in the aftermath of the Japanese tsunami disaster that tanked his career for a while? Comedy is often risky, edgy, it can be hard for even seasoned professionals to know what will offend people more than it makes them laugh.
Going after a playwright hundreds of years after his death because his comedy goes over the line for you strikes me as really, really WANTING to be offended.
Saw it last year at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum. Their production was a big hit and their interpretation held up really well. For me, the play allows for a myriad of subtle interpretations.
In this case, it was highly comic and over the top in presentation. What I took away was that Kate was a deeply self centered narcissist and Petrucio pivoted her into being his partner in fun. She could still be a shrew - but only to other people - as for him, they were on the same team now, and she was an equal partner. The final speech was play acting for the benefit of all of the other people. The feeling was that all the while she was winking at Petrucio and he was laughing - it was their in-joke.
There is no work of art that is so perfectly universal that we all must accept it, generation after generation after generation. There are millions of plays, stories, books, songs, paintings, etc that were once popular, but have faded into obscurity because societies have changed and the ideas and values that were once popular are no longer popular. That’s the natural order of things.
If audiences still appreciate it, then continue to present it. If people stop putting on TotS because it’s unpopular with today’s audiences, so be it.
No, we’re going to shit-can it because he was using space travel as a metaphor for beating his wife.
It’s striking how personally you’ve taken this criticism. She said the play shouldn’t be presented any more. Instead of just saying “I disagree, this is why…,” you’ve translated that to her calling you “a sexist egotistical lying hypocritical bigot.” Why?
A play is a story. A portrayal of fictional characters acting according to their fictional natures. The idea that we should ban stories because they contain characters who act in a way we don’t approve of is ridiculous. Art can mean different things to different cultures in different times, and its purpose is to make you think and feel, not to think or feel in a particular way.
In other words, if someone is planning a production of TotS, they may want to consider how they want to portray the actions of the characters (which they have enormous latitude to do, even without changing the text of the play), but it’s idiotic to suggest that they shouldn’t put it on.
A comment:
This assumes everyone has already seen the play. For those who are unfamiliar with it, how will they know if they want to see it, unless they go see it?
I’m not advocating preemptive censorship, but the question isn’t as easy as it seems. Reading a review isn’t enough to get a final opinion. Looks at the differing opinions in this thread alone, as to whether it is misogynist. Even different productions emphasize the “misogyny” to different degrees.
Always? OK, then I’m looking forward to the new 2014 production of Birth of A Nation. That ought to be a hit.