The Taming of the Shrew

So...I just read it. And loved it. But it's surprisingly hard to find good critical analysis online.

Also, I liked Petruchio...just a little.

"All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice." — Joseph De Maistre.

loved that play too.

faceoff between katherine and jerkass dude was theatrical gold. clearly made for each other.

also i choose to interpret katherine's speech as sarcasm/satire.

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

The puns! The insults! The insulting puns! Seconding Kate and Petruchio's initial exchange as a wonderful piece of dialogue.

"Doctor Who means never having to say you're kidding." - Bocaj

I really wish my English class read that instead of Romeo and Juliet :< Some of Shakespeare's other good stuff just gets overshadowed by the famous ones. I do love Hamlet, though, and that's insanely popular.

The alternate character interpretations aren't as intriguing as Hamlet's, but Shrew is my favorite Shakespeare comedy.

And I think we all agree that Kate and Petruchio's pun contest is one big piece of win.

edited 29th Jun '11 11:08:59 PM by snowfoxofdeath

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Another work that gets overshadowed is The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which is one of my personal favorites. Even though it's commonly agreed to be Shakespeare's weakest play, I can't help but think that it's got charm to it.

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Whoawhoawhoa... there's a weaker Shakespearean play than Romeo And Juliet?

I gotta see this king of turds.

A True Lady's Quest - A Jojo is You!

Yep, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. According to the Oxford Shakespeare (my copy of Shakespeare's works) it is the first work Shakespeare wrote for the stage.

It's a comedy, though, and a cute one at that.

There's slash written all over it. (what else can you expect from the title alone?)

I also recommend the histories of Henry the 6th, but read II, III and then I because that is actually the order in which the installments were written. They were published in the order of history in the First Folio, so I is actually a prequel.

edited 1st Jul '11 3:59:45 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Taming of the Shrew. <3s everywhere. Right up there with Much Ado about Nothing for my favorite Shakespeare comedy, although Measure for Measure is close.

edited 1st Jul '11 7:09:09 AM by Maridee

ophelia, you're breaking my heart

^^ That's one of the things that bugs me about the Bad Quartos. When Sir S. (was it Burbage? I don't know for certain) went back and edited everything for the official release, it sounds like he changed a bunch of stuff that made his ideas work. Hamlet being thirty makes sense when fifty-year-old Burbage has to play him, but from a Watsonian perspective it just makes Hamlet's dad look like an irresponsible king, letting his heir fart around at uni in Wittenburg when he should have been learning the ins-and-outs of the court and warfare. It's more sympathetic for a 19-year-old to be that indecisive about killing someone.

edited 1st Jul '11 7:15:28 AM by FurikoMaru

A True Lady's Quest - A Jojo is You!

Fox: You're 14/15 right? Don't worry. By the time you reach senior year, I am sure you will have read plays with more substance.

Read my stories!

Actually, I think the only other Shakespeare play in our curriculum is A Midsummer's Night Dream unless you take the Shakespeare class.

The beginning of The Taming of the Shrew where that drunk guy woke up and was told that he was a lord and was watching what we remember as the actual play bothers me. For some reason, I want to know what happened.

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There is actually an ending to the induction play in "bad" quartos (that is, transcripts that somebody scribbled down while watching the actual performance for the purpose of copying the plays), which my copy of Shakespeare preserves.

Basically, Sly is fully convinced that he is a lord until the end of the day, when he wakes up the next morning and finds he's a bum again, and figures that the he dreamed up everything about being a lord. He claims that he now knows how to tame a shrew.

edited 1st Jul '11 10:11:45 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

I'll submit Pericles for your examination. It's really quite terrible. On the other side of the scale, Coriolanus is my favourite of the lesser-known plays.

"Doctor Who means never having to say you're kidding." - Bocaj

He's no Jerkass. He's a Magnificent Bastard.

"All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice." — Joseph De Maistre.

Anyone who goes into a marriage looking to change the other person is an ass, no matter how good their intentions or how likeable they may be.

And his intentions weren't that good initially; he was after the money.

A True Lady's Quest - A Jojo is You!

I saw a production of "Taming of the Shrew" that was reworked for kids (a Shakespeare company that specializes in this; I would love to see their "Titus the Clownicus") — anyway, this "Shrew" was called "Kate the Cursed," and had a punk rock Kate yelling at everyone until her wedding, when Petruchio himself showed up in punk gear, showing that he was ready to let her be herself. Or something like that; it was a really good staging as I remember. It also ended with a rock song, which Shakespeare probably would have approved of!

Reminds me of Ten Things I Hate About You, probably my favourite modern re-telling of any of Shakespeare's works. Including the overblown pomposity that was Luhrmann's Romeo And Juliet adaptation

edited 6th Jul '11 11:15:55 PM by Falco

"You want to see how a human dies? At ramming speed." - Emily Wong.

That's the one with the labeled guns, right?

I want to see that!

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

^ I saw it in class.

It has a black Mercutio in drag. Just Google it. It's a good indication of how trippy the rest of the movie is.

And at the end, Juliet actually wakes up two seconds before Romeo dies and they look into each other's eyes. The whole class went like "FUUUUUUUUU—"

edited 7th Jul '11 5:24:08 PM by snowfoxofdeath

Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey Bitchfest

Its worth watching, but not as good as most people make it out to be.

"You want to see how a human dies? At ramming speed." - Emily Wong.

Back to Taming of the Shrew... anyone else seen productions set in teh modern day? How do they deal with Kate's character and the whole "taming" process?

Well, before 10 Things there was Kiss Me, Kate, the musical version of Shrew. I haven't actually seen it all the way through, but as I recall it was still fairly sexist. (It's from the 1940s... there's a spanking scene.) It's a movie about a production of "The Taming of the Shrew," with plenty of Plot Parallel /behind-the-scenes shenanigans— the lead actors were married but are now divorced, the female lead is off to marry someone new, the male lead is after a younger woman, they are both still in love with each other, plus one of the minor characters owes money to gangsters and signs an IOU with the lead actor's name... all that fun stuff.

Thanks for the all fish!

I also liked Coriolanus.

The Philosopher-King Paradox

I...didn't really get Coriolanus. I read it when I was about 14 without seeing it onstage, and I found the verse too tricky. I could just about follow it but didn't get much sense of the action.

Has anyone here seen The Tamer Tamed? I went to Stratford years ago and saw The Taming of the Shrew the first day and Tamer Tamed the second. It's fun, a kind of tongue-in-cheek sequel to Shrew about Petruchio's second wife.

edited 15th Aug '11 5:54:42 AM by runawayjoincircus

Avatar: take two parts EK Weaver for one part Dan Mangan

I once saw a fascinating production that presented the third act as a tragedy. It was both disturbing and thought-provoking.

Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883!