Speaking of problematic Shakespeare plays - I just saw a performance of Merchant of Venice over the weekend. Hoo boy.
I saw this same group do Taming of the Shrew last year. The angle was ever so slightly different in that, after the initial knockabouts, Kate’s transformation suggested that she maybe kinda dug having someone equal to her level of passions. And at the end it was clear that the point was that Kate was still a strong person, but that she and Petruchio were now a team. So, that being part of the team, her destructive(?) energies were directed outward instead of toward Petruchio.
It was somewhat more palatable than other versions I’ve seen.
You seem to be claiming that several years of war and its terrible atrocities somehow invalidates the existence of decades and centuries of humans making deliberate choices about how to live in societies. How you figure?
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All I’m trying to say is that we should enjoy our moment of ascendancy in the west because history teaches us its fleeting.
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So you’re arguing that, for example, order, prosperity and civilization in Germany were nothing but a “fleeting moment” that was irretrievably over once they endured the Third Reich and then the war crimes committed by their conquerors? Do the fifteen years from 1933 to 1948 somehow invalidate the nearly seventy years of German society since then?
Are you in fact attempting to make any point more rational and coherent than the aforementioned “bitches these days think they got rights to self-determination like real human beings but just wait till the next round of trouble sees them crushed beneath the conqueror’s manly boot again, oh yeah”?
Or are you simply pissed off about the demonstrated existence and persistence of non-misogynistic views held by some people in societies before the 21st century? Does it bother you that ideals of equality, liberty and the rule of law aren’t in fact just recently developed delusions originating in an artificial “bubble” of modern technological society?
Have people already forgotten Elizabeth Taylor’s brilliant portrayal of Katharina? In 1967 at the height of the feminist movement?
Taylor played strong willed characters her entire career. This role was no different. Her version of Katharina used language (against men) like a sword.
Maybe Netflix has this movie? It’s worth seeing.
Katherine Hepburn played the role in a theatre production in 1955. I guarantee you she didn’t take any crap from any man. She was even more strong willed then Taylor.
That’s a good example. The difference is that Shylock at least gets a chance to mention why he wants revenge. “Good sir, you spit upon me Wednesday last”, etc. Petrucchio is just doing it to be an asshole, or because he thinks being an asshole is the only alternative to being a doormat. When the music teacher comes out because Kate hit him on the head with the lyre, Petrucchio decides he is going to be the hitter rather than the hittee.
And then Shakespeare cannot resist in TMoV of throwing in Shylock’s last lines of “my daughter and my ducats” as if the loss of each was equivalent.
I mentioned something similar in a “**Khadaji’**s Monthly What are You Reading” thread, when I read Ivanhoe. The only way I could make the anti-Semitism palatable is to imagine it as parody, and I don’t think Scott would have imagined that possible. Same with Taming - I think Shakespeare would have laughed at a woman who was offended by it.
It’s like Birth of a Nation - they really did think that way, and it is hard to sugar-coat it.
The first version I saw was commedia dell’arte, and it was indeed dressed up in parody. It was the most I’ve enjoyed an actual performance of Shakespeare. I’ve also seen a version of Romeo and Juliet that plays up the comedy (making his puns and bawdy humor, for instance). It always seems better with that element, instead of stodgy way I’ve seen it so many times on TV.
Emphasis added. But that’s not what I did. Note that I quoted the part of Chronos’ OP where he asks if Shakespeare was a misogyinist and says that he’s not sure. Perhaps I should have stopped right there and omitted all references to the plays, but that’s all I was going for. Of course he was a mysogyinst (by today’s standards)
It was meant to be comedy. It perhaps hasn’t aged well, but I think that also when people read Shakespeare, they go all stodgy and don’t get the joke. He could well have been sending up all of the characters.
If you hate “Taming of the Shrew”, you should try “Kiss Me, Kate”.
I don’t want to bore everyone with a lot of detail about a production they’ll never see, but I can summarize it as two equally strong personalities colliding—think Tracy and Hepburn (or maybe Spacey and Wright in House of Cards). The actress who played Kate is tall (as tall as the actor playing Petruchio) and has an assertive, take-no-crap personality. When she begins cooperating with Petruchio, it was played as throwing his shit right back at him. Kate’s big closing speech was delivered in a sly, subversive style, implying that you could superficially comply with social norms while subtly using them to your benefit. It was one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever been involved with as an actor.
You seem to have missed my point? I wasn’t quarreling with your conclusion that Shakespeare himself was a misogynist, but rather with your supposition that there wasn’t any man of Shakespeare’s time who wasn’t a misogynist (by today’s standards):
I think the examples I cited are pretty solid evidence for anti-misogynist attitudes in some men of the 15th and 16th centuries.
I recal my drama teacher once describing a production of The Shrew which ends with Kate’s suicide.
I think I would hate to see such a production. The Shrew is intended to be a comedy, in story, character design and language.
As Fretful Porpentine pointed out upthread, the play is a farce put on to entertain a drunk as a prank. Katherina and Petruchio are outlandish Punch-and-Judy type caricatures designed to entertain. The only way to enjoy it and do it justice is to play it over the top.
I saw a brilliant performance years ago staring Hugo Weaving and Pamela Rabe, and it was hilarious. Rabe played Kate as neither subservient nor broken, but rather as a powerhouse of a woman who has found her kink. Hugo played Petruchio not as a chuevenist or bully, but as an egotistical and mischievous yet lovable rogue.
Their dynamic was an absolute joy to watch.
Sounds like a similar treatment. It can work quite well even today if it’s played as a romantic comedy about a couple of misfits made for each other.
(Now the Merchant of Venice is, I will grant, a whole other kettle of stinking fish. And that’s also meant to be a ramantic comedy!)
I actually don’t think that The Merchant of Venice is as bad as it’s made out to be. Yes, Shylock is unquestionably a villain, and yes, it’s antisemtic by modern standards. But Shakespeare, I think, goes to some effort to make it clear that Shylock’s villainy ultimately stems from the society he comes from and how that society treats Jews. Shylock takes it too far, of course, but his behavior still has, if not excuses, at least reasons. And the other Jews in the play aren’t depicted as nearly as bad. The message seems to be that we should be treating the Jews better. Maybe Shakespeare didn’t think that they deserved better treatment, but he thought they should get it anyway.
I used to think Shylock’s court room speech —“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?”— was powerful, humanizing and sympathetic.
Then I read a critique that pointed out how, while Portia’s speech is about noble qualities such as mercy, Shylock’s is all about physical and emotional aspects of humanity. He demands a pound of flesh because he only thinks about material and corporal things. To a Christian audience, he is presented as the embodiment of the old law of retribution –and eye for an eye. Portia is presented as the embodiment of the superior Christian law of forgiveness and mercy.
Remembering that this is a romantic comedy, Shylock’s speech may even have been played for laughs (or boos and hisses). His own speech only sets him up to be knocked down horribly, so that he is ultimately stripped of everything and forced even to renounce his religion. The Christian audience gets to laugh at the Jew’s failure and go home feeling smugly reassured of the superiority of their own religion.
As to the portrayal of other Jewish characters in the play, Tubal seems to goad Shylock into seeking vengeance, and Shylock’s own daughter, described as a rare example of grace amongst her people, quickly converts to Christianity and robs her father to run off with her boyfriend.
These factors make it impossible to present The Merchant as a comedy today, but there is another problem beside the unflattering portrayal of Jews.
When the Prince of Morocco enters, he makes a big deal about the darkness of his skin (possibly played for laughs), and how Portia shouldn’t hate him for it. Although, to his face, she assures him that it doesn’t bother her, once Morocco has left, having failed the test to win Portia’s hand, she spits out this remark: “A gentle riddance.—Draw the curtains, go.—Let all of his complexion choose me so.” In other words, “Bugger off! I don’t want to marry a black man!” (Cue laughter from the English audience?)
For these reasons, I think The Merchant is the one truly irredeemable Shakespeare play.
The play is not about the ideal way to get a bride, it is a comedy with broad caricatures for central characters. Petruchio is a drunken lout who is just in it for the money, and Kat is a spoiled, violent, mean person. They are both awful people and the audience laughs at them having to end up together. The twist is that they become a happy married couple at the end.
Hands, organs, and dimensions are all material, corporeal things, but senses, affections, passions? I’d say that Shylock’s list pretty well covers the gamut. He doesn’t specifically call out mercy, true, but that’s hardly surprising given the context, and I doubt that Shakespeare was trying to claim that affections and passions are any less noble than mercy (each in their proper place, of course).
And I’d have to re-read it, but I remember Tubal encouraging financial revenge (which is of course perfectly reasonable), but discouraging the whole “pound of flesh” nonsense.
While Shylock’s speech certainly can be played for laughs, and I don’t doubt that historically, it often has been, it can also very easily be played sympathetically. And I think that Shakespeare intended for there to be at least some ambiguity there: If he wanted Shylock to be wholly unsympathetic, he could very easily have made him so, as evidenced by comparison to Marlowe’s similar The Jew of Malta.
By contrast, it’s much harder to put a feminist spin on Katerina’s speech, and I think that too had to be intentional on Shakespeare’s part. If he had wanted to make it clear that there was still a spark of her old spirit in there working behind the scenes, I think he could have done it.
I agree with what others have said in this thread–that it’s hard to imagine the playwright who let all the other female leads in his comedies come out on top (and usually were smarter and savvier than their male admirers) advocating for subjugation of women. (And then there’s Emilia’s speech in Othello: “But I do think it is their husbands’ fault/If wives do fall.” In an era when it was considered a husband’s privilege to sleep around, but a wife who did it was considered a whore, Shakespeare gave a sympathetic character an eloquent speech saying “look, guys, if you want your wives to be faithful to you, be faithful to them; if you want your wives to treat you well, treat them well.”)
I also like the interpretations that show the “submission” as not to be taken at face value by the audience–that Petruchio and Kate are a team now. Furthermore…you could make a case that Petruchio isn’t trying to subdue Kate’s mind or spirit, but just her bad temper. This isn’t just a strong woman who speaks her mind…this is someone who physically assaults some poor schmendrick of a music teacher because he TRIED TO CORRECT HER TECHNIQUE. (In short…for doing his freaking job!) I can see Petruchio’s actions as showing Kate exactly what it’s like to live with someone like her, someone who goes off in rages over the slightest little thing, and Kate stepping back to think, “My God…is that really ME?”
Finally, there’s the oft-neglected framing story, which adds another layer of unreality to it. One quarto edition, I understand, return to Sly at the end and have him proclaim “I have had a remarkable dream…and now I know how to tame a shrew!” He heads off home to his wife…and we’re left to imagine just how well THAT’S going to turn out. A local production included that scene. Another production at the Lantern Theater in Philly had a set of a square from 1950s-era Italy, where Sly falls asleep on the real-time stage set drunk and “dreams” the play --and at the end, we return to it, with “Officer Minola” (present-day Kate) waking up Sly, hustling him off, and calling up into the rafters to get the show started.
Some people are bringing up the 14th century in this thread for some reason… I think misogyny was probably worse back then than even in the 16th, when Shakespeare wrote. But The Canterbury Tales still feature some strong and seemingly empowered women characters.
I disliked The Taming of the Shrew for similar reasons to the OP. However, when I wrote an essay on it in college, to be fair I compared it to other misogynist works published at the time. It’s not my favorite play, but it’s still better than A Merry Jest of a Shrew Wrapped in Salted Hide and Whipped.
There were some enlightened people and works back then, but plenty of disturbing stuff too.
