The Upstart Crow and 'The Taming of the Shrew' "No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en..."

The Taming of the Shrew Act One - "No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en..."

"There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country…”

On his deathbed in 1592, the relatively young 32 year old, bitter and impoverished playwright Robert Greene, penned these words in his last pamphlet ‘Greenes, Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance’. Robert Greene was a celebrity, a playwright, a poet and a prose writer. By the time he was on his deathbed, Greene had written over 50 pieces of prose and 5 plays. His swipe at the young Shakespeare is probably the first mention of Shakespeare as a playwright. Greene's complaint about the young Shakespeare as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers" is not unwarranted, but Shakespeare seems to have shown by the early 1590's how to use the feathers he had plucked from others to make wings to fly on the winds of his imagination.

Shakespeare had had a busy year in 1591. The winter at the beginning 1591 was very cold and grain was in short supply. With the profit from his The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare had probably sent money through a middleman back to Henley Street in Stratford for his wife to invest in grain storage back in October 1590 and they were probably starting to reap the rewards. Grain hoarding was highly illegal but widespread in England at this time and Shakespeare’s wife Anne was starting to probably prove a shrewd and wise investor. So as winter set in in London, Shakespeare felt secure in his choice to come to London and he knew that acting and writing plays could support him in London and his family back in Stratford.

'The Taming of the Shrew' is amazing for an early Shakespeare play. The  basic story of a man wooing and marrying a strong willed woman has echoes of Socrates and his strong and independent wife Xanthippe although Shakespeare probably used Gascoigne's 1573 version based on Ariosto's 1551 'Suppositi' but Kate is shrewder than the original. In The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare dispenses with trying to do too much with too many ideas as he does in 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' and I think he starts to learn how to create engaging characters and relationships as the centre piece to a drama. It explores the fine lines between romance and abuse, love and hate, between being cruel and being kind. 

The play was probably written in 1591 or 1592, about a year after Shakespeare arrived in London. It was definately performed before June 1592, when Shakespeare had his first experience of The Plague hitting London and the theatres being closed. When Shakespeare started writing the play early in 1591, he would have experienced one of the coldest winters in England in many years. He would have had trouble getting back to Stratford for Christmas as most of the roads out of London were impassible. As the year drew on, he would have experienced one of the worst droughts in living memory in England. It is said that the Thames almost dried up around London Bridge. If he wrote the play later in the year, he would have been stuck inside because of cold weather and early snow in late November. All in all, the weather would have made writing a welcome pursuit.

The Induction scenes of 'Taming of the Shrew' (often left out in most productions) are crudely written but they do serve to frame the play even though this framing is lost at the end of the play. Although Shakespeare uses the framing of a play within a play in other pieces (most successfully the Mechanicals in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and the Players in 'Hamlet'), this is the one and only time he uses it at the beginning of a play. Perhaps this was fashionable or perhaps Shakespeare is trying to copy and better another version of this story from around the same time where Sly is a commentator on the story and in parable-like fashion, he decides in the end to tame his own wife. Who are we to judge. We seem to have a pre-occupation in films and plays at the moment with post-scripts so maybe this was the passing fad. The Induction scenes do reinforce the central theme of marriage and the concerns of the play proper that marriage is something that people use for their own benefit. It does warm an audience up and help them to think deeper about events and ideas.

When the real play starts in Act 1 Scene 1 with Lucentio arriving with his manservant Tranio in Padua (yes, Shakespeare is obsessed at this time with Italy since 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' is set in Milan and of course Verona), Lucentio is hell bent on continuing his studies but fate interrupts his pursuits. I cringed here because I could see elements of the duologue talking heads which holds back ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ as a play. But Shakespeare has moved on. Here we see Shakespeare realising that action and character create great drama. Enter a crowd and Katherine and Bianca take centre stage. Katherine is raging and cursing. Finally, Baptista (Katherine and Bianca’s father) announces that he will not allow the beautiful Bianca to marry until Katherine is married. The scene is wonderful, filled with character, tension, action, clever dialogue and the focus and pace shift beautifully. As the crowd and individuals disperse at the end of the scene (what a great sense of the stage picture and direction Shakespeare even in these early years), we are left with Lucentia and Tranio again. Lucentia has forgotten his academic quests and has fallen in love with Bianca and is determined to court her. He decides to disguise himself as a school teacher in that hope that he may tutor Bianca's heart as well as her mind. 

I think the dramatic action of this scene is wonderful. I also think that Shakespeare is playing with our conceptions of women. We are shocked by Katherine's anti-social rants and perhaps Shakespeare is preparing the ground for us to accept the independent women he will write about later. I think we understand Katherine's rage and her desire to be listened to and recognised as an individual and perhaps some of Shakespeare's original audience did think this also, more than we give them credit. After all, they had an unmarried woman on the thrown and even in my country, Australia, the general public seem to have (had) a huge problem with that. We are also drawn into the way that Lucentio objectifies Bianca as something to be won or a conquest to be achieved. Even Tranio points out that if Lucentio has only fallen in love with Bianca that he lacks understanding of love. We then move onto meeting the new kid on the block in Padua - Petruchio.

Taming of the Shrew Act Two - "I'll attend her here, and woo her with some spirit when she comes."

I love the pace of Act 2. The chaotic opening of people arriving at the house, Katherine cursing and the Petruchio’s forthright bluntness. It has to be remembered that Petruchio, upon his father’s death came looking for a rich man’s daughter to marry not because he is poor but because he wants to see his fortune grow through joining it to another’s. He sees marriage as a transaction which brings financial stability and he approaches the negotiations with Katherine’s father in a manipulative but pragmatic way. Petruchio starts by asking Baptista for the opportunity to see Katherine and fortuitously offers a music instructor for Bianca, the disguised Hortensio. Gremio, who is trying to marry Bianca, not to be outdone, presents his own schoolmaster, the disguised Lucentio, to Baptista. Tranio, who is also after Bianca, presents his own gift of a lute and books. Petruchio gets assurances that Katherine will come with a sizeable dowry and then Petruchio is left alone with the audience while Baptista gets Katherine. Here Shakespeare shows how much he has grown as a writer. Petruchio has a wonderfully engaging monologue where he talks directly to the audience and tells us of his plan:

I will attend her here,

And woo her with some spirit when she comes.

Say that she rail; why then I'll tell her plain

She sings as sweetly as a nightingale:

Say that she frown, I'll say she looks as clear

As morning roses newly wash'd with dew:

Say she be mute and will not speak a word;

Then I'll commend her volubility,

And say she uttereth piercing eloquence:

If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks,

As though she bid me stay by her a week:

If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day

When I shall ask the banns and when be married.

But here she comes; and now, Petruchio, speak.

Katherine initially verbally attacks Petruchio. He proves her match and a witty dialogue laden with clever (and often bawdy) puns enshrews. Kate’s puns are clever and aim to threaten or insult while Petruchio’s are normally rude and crude. Katherine major complaint over men before was that they are slow witted and simple and she finds Petruchio her equal. Shakespeare also makes him seem to relish her hot temper and nature.

The strange aspect of this meeting scene is that Katherine seems willing to accept Petruchio’s demeaning her only because he is witty. This seems a little demeaning, so I guess that Katherine must have other motives for being a little compliant with Petruchio. Perhaps it is just that she enjoys the dueling and seems him as up to the fight or perhaps the prospect of the possibility of marriage represents a new turn and challenge. What is most prominent in Petruchio and Katherine’s first meeting is the pace, the banter, the wit and the sense of character and of course the sense that the conflict between these two means they are destined for one another.

Taming of the Shrew Act Three - "Who woo'd in haste, and means to wed at leisure."

No-one thinks Petruchio is going to arrive. Katherine thinks him a serial Runaway Groom. When Petruchio does arrive he is dressed as if he has been through a kid’s dress up box. He goes off to get married to Kate. We hear that Petruchio swears at the altar, gets into a fight with the priest, throws food, and want to leave before the wedding feast. Kate stands up for herself but Petruchio claims:

“She is my goods, my chattels. She is my house,

My household-stuff, my field, my barn,

My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything”

This is course part of Petruchio’s plan to “tame” Kate. These antics and this speech is, of course, ironic, since we know Petruchio is not possessive or materialistic and his outlandish statements of the inferiority of women might be Shakespeare’s social comment on the whole concept of women being the goods and property of a man. In my own state of Queensland in Australia, women did not get the vote until 1905, it wasn’t until 1922 that they had the same divorce rights, it wasn’t until the late 1960’s that the law on women being the possession of their husband was revoked and that the principle of equal pay was enacted in law (and still women get nowhere near the same pay as men in most professions) and it wasn’t until the 1970’s that women were allowed to drink in public bars. Also, it wasn’t until the 1980’s that sex discrimination laws were enacted. Getting back to Shakespeare, Petruchio is not a misogynist, but certainly is not willing to treat Kate as an equal. 

Taming of the Shrew Acts Four and Five - "... But that our soft conditions and our hearts should well agree with our external parts?"

I don’t think anyone would like to fall in the mud, have your partner fly into a rage, lose your means of transportation and then arrive at a house in the middle of nowhere – all on your honeymoon. Of course, in good drama tradition, we only hear about this as it happens off stage. You would be hungry and tired by this time and in the story Petruchio even refuses to allow Katherine to eat as he claims the meal (which arrives quicker than a McDonald’s Happy Meal) at his country house is substandard. He does state that he is killing Katherine with kindness. Well that is truly cruel love. All Petruchio’s actions are meant to grind down Katherine. He even will deprive Katherine of sleep since all these antics he claims are the only way to “curb her mad and headstrong humour”.

And yet, given Kate’s obvious intelligence, it is remarkable that she does not see through Petruchio’s facade or at least call his bluff. It is the attraction between them despite Petruchio’s being a bastard that is comic in these scenes. The question does remain why a strong independent woman like Katherine doesn’t protest more. Perhaps Shakespeare is commenting on the way that a husband and the ‘role’ of a wife can stifle an independent spirit. Katherine’s actions and motivations do change so perhaps, the notion that marriage changes people is also important here.

Meanwhile, Bianca is still being wooed back in Mantua. This may seem a weak part of the plot but it provides the perfect contrast to Petruchio and Katherine’s relationship since Bianca and Lucentio are delusional lovers with no idea what married life is really like. They represent Romantic love and Lucentio will get a rude shock at the end of the play when she disobeys him.

The two plots come back together, Petruchio and Katherine come back to Mantua, meeting Vincentio (the real life father of Lucentio) on his way to visit his son. Petruchio tells Vincentio of Lucentio’s marriage to Bianca and further Katherine’s control but having her agree with him at every turn. Katherine seems to be ‘tamed’ and Lucentio and Tranio’s schemes are revealed. Katherine and Petruchio seem to genuinely be in love. She agrees to kiss him in the street, calls him “love” and he calls her “sweet Kate”.

Now comes the crucial end of the play Act V Scene 2. Katherine’s speech at the end of the play has always seemed contentious, perhaps this was even so in Shakespeare’s time and maybe that is the point. Katherine is the difficult woman who seemed too challenging for most, yet she and Petruchio find love and do know what is in store for them. The other lovers have been deluded and while the men are surprised that Katherine comes when Petruchio asks and voices (or ‘parrots’) the words he wants to hear about the role of a wife, they seem more shocked and perturbed by the way their own women do not come to them when asked. Reality has hit them, whereas Petruchio and Katherine have no illusion and can play the social games expected of them but enter into a genuine relationship with no illusions. Lucentio and Hortensio probably will have unhappy marriages because they are deluded by what love in marriage is. Hell, if they are put off by a little disobedience from their wives at the wedding reception, they don’t seem flexible enough to last the distance.

We have to remember also that Shakespeare is a man and ultimately he can only speculate from a man’s perspective. Katherine seems to see that happiness and independence can be found within the roles and relationships we are given and perhaps this is the message Shakespeare has for his primarily male audience and for himself as a man and breadwinner in London with a wife and family in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Next Up: Henry VI Part 2