The Textual Problem of “Shrew” and how a Number of Productions Have
Responded
by John Moore for School of
Continuing Studies: Shakespeare Studies first assessment December 1998.
The Textual Problem of “Shrew”
The problem with “Shrew” is that
two distinct plays have been handed to us. By far the best known is, of course,
“The Taming of the Shrew” by
Shakespeare (authorship claims concerning the Earl of Oxford, Christopher
Marlowe, et al are outside of the scope of this essay) which appears in the
Folio of 1623; it is in the half of the Canon that does not exist in Quarto.
The anonymous “The Taming of a
Shrew” (“a Pleasant Conceited Historie”) dates from 1594 when it was apparently
performed at Newington Butts. To hopefully reduce confusion “The Shrew” will be
referred to below as “Shakespeare’s play” whereas “The Taming of a Shrew” will
be termed “A Shrew”.
Many theories have been put forward
to reconcile the two texts since they are not only similar in name but also in
plot and characters; although not character names, lengths or location. Both
plays feature a rough countryman called Sly (or Slie) who begins the play the
worse for drink (“warm’d with ale” - line 30 of the Scene 1 of the Induction)
and falls prey to a practical joke by Lords/Huntsmen. In both plays there is a
wild young woman named Kate, whose father is intent on marrying her to almost
anyone who will take her on. All other names differ but similar roles appear in
each play. Petruchio the young man who comes to “wife it wealthily in Padua” in
Shakespeare’s play is analogous to Ferando in “a Shrew” where he tells us
Kate’s father “hath promised me six thousand crowns” to marry in Athens where
the earlier play is set. Apart from setting there are a number of other minor
differences such as Shakespeare’s play only has two daughters but introduces
rivalry but the plays also share major plot elements. Namely, a “shrew” is
tamed in a particular way - she is publicly humiliated on her wedding day, she
is starved at home, obliged to call the sun moon, and to call an elderly man a
beautiful girl. None of this can be disputed and it is inconceivable that two
such similar plays are not linked in some way - we would need octillions of
playwrights with octillions of quills for it to be otherwise.
However, there have been many
commentators on the similarity or lack of similarity of the texts. Analysis of
the various theories is too vast and detailed to be discussed here at any
length but to be brief there are three schools of thought:
1)
Shakespeare used “a Shrew” as a source for his play - much
like he used “Arthur Brooke’s” narrative poem "The Tragical History of
Romeus and Juliet" as the basis for “Romeo and Juliet” - but without the
self-effacing comments he made on that occasion, as far as we know.
2)
Others re-constructed “A Shrew” from
audience memory of productions of Shakespeare’s play and/or memories of actors
who had appeared in it. (Amongst other things this leads to a possible
explanation of how analogous roles in the two plays changed in size - actors
are better at remembering their own lines than those of others.) This is the Bad Quarto theory.
3)
The two plays are both based on another play now lost. This is
the Ur-Shrew theory. Where Ur[i]
is a reference to the Mesopotamian city of Ur that was abandoned in the 4th
Century BC.
(In addition it has been suggested that the two plays are a result of an accident in the printer’s room where sheets were dropped on the floor[ii]! The idea’s supporters argue that the end of “A Shrew” should be added to the end of Shakespeare’s in order to complete it. But perhaps that way lies madness as if we accept that we are part way to accepting the proposition that since the entire text of “The Shrew” is an anagram of “King Lear” (with a good measure of letters left over) a particularly spectacular accident must have occurred at the printers during the production of the Folio.)
The generally, but not universally,
accepted view is the “Bad Quarto” theory. I.e. “A Shrew” was constructed by
some enterprising (if only in a politically correct sense) people who saw the
opportunity to make money by breathing new life into a play already known to
the public.
Thus we have the Shakespeare play
generally credited as being both the original and the “superior” of the two
works and that would be the end of the problem if Shakespeare’s play was simply
a more intricately plotted and poetically implemented piece of comic drama.
However, there is another complication. “A Shrew” brilliantly (to its
supporters) contains a complete theatrical framing device. This is the Sly part
of the story which although present in its birth in both plays as the Induction
is only continued to the end in “A Shrew”. From the perspective of plays in
Shakespeare’s time and in particular his own plays there is not a problem with
having an opening device that disappears a short way into the play. While it is
true that “The Shrew” is Shakespeare’s only play to feature an Induction, many
of his plays feature a prologue and these are more common than epilogues. It
apparently didn’t upset the Elizabethan sense of form or style to do this. One
could have a device to help jump-start the play and it was by no means
essential to bring it back once the play had gathered its own momentum.
However, a contemporary audience tends to expect things to be wrapped up with a
certain sense of symmetry. This is probably a result of so much television and
film being hopelessly low brow with everything tending to be very pointed and
obvious to ensure that nobody who can count to ten without using their fingers
is left behind. Epilogues are now bound more in the public’s mind as pairing
with prologues and to fulfil this some have duly appeared. Thus in any modern
production it is difficult to imagine staging “the Shrew” without at least
thinking what to do with the appealing sense of symmetry afforded by taking on
board the envelope of “A Shrew”. But apart from a purely aesthetic nicety of
applying a concentric circle around Shakespeare’s play there is also the
undeniable veil that this can provide to what can be a sensitive play. In the
same way as “A Merchant of Venice” can be seen as “anti-Semitic”, “The Shrew”
can be seen as anti-feminine. Although in the text Petruchio never hits Kate people
often think that he does and certainly in some productions he does. The closest
to Petruchio doing any violence to Kate in the text is in Act 2 Scene 1
where Petruchio says “I swear I'll cuff you if you strike again”. There is also
the tradition of the whip started by John Philip Kemble. These ideas inevitably
form part of the public’s mindset and encourage a director to do something
about the source so that it appears neither dated nor to be making fun of
violence towards women. The next section discusses several productions that
have “done something” with the source and several that haven’t.
How Various
Productions Have Responded to the Two Texts
There have been many productions this century, this essay
concentrates on those seen or heard by the author either on stage, film,
television or audio (a much underrated medium!).
There are three main ways of
resolving the problem of the two sources.
1)
Simplistic. The Induction and “A Shrew’s”
conclusion can be deleted. This won’t confuse the audience’s sense of symmetry
but can restrict the director’s choices made in the core of the play itself.
Since without the Induction we are left without a veil around the Kate and
Petruchio story. So the director doesn’t have the option to go one way with the
core and have it balanced by the envelope which as it operates closer to
reality is open to more serious interpretation than the inner story - which
after all is just a play and/or dream.
2)
Purist. Put on Shakespeare’s play as
handed down to us and leave the Induction potentially hanging in the audience’s
mind.
3)
Rounded. The Induction can be retained and
rounded with the use of lines from “A Shrew’s” conclusion.
The productions outlined here cover
all three possibilities.
1) The 1967 film by director
Franco Zeffirelli with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor[iii]. This is
the Simplistic or degenerate
solution to the problem of what to do with the two source texts and is only
mentioned here as since it is the only recent filming of the play it is the
production that more people will have seen than any other. Shakespeare being
placed before the public in this form may perhaps be better understood by
considering two events of the previous year. 1966 saw Burton-Taylor during
their first marriage star so successfully in the harrowing, for the day, “Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” 1966 also saw the re-release of a newly scored and
shortened film of the 1929 Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford version of
“Taming of the Shrew”. This was the only film in which the Fairbank-Pickfords,
who had been married for ten years at the time, both starred. So perhaps owing
to these two events and the actor’s eternal quest to show their range the
Zeffirelli-Burton-Taylor 1967 collaboration is not very surprising[iv].
The production although good fun, easy going, accessible and well suited for a
mass audience makes unimaginative use of its two potential sources. In this
film Sly is abandoned altogether and both sub-plots and “boffin”[v]
and “peasant” parts are diminished to give more time to banter and slapstick
frolicking between the box-office drawing couple playing the “mark one” roles.
This makes it to an extent part of the tradition started by Garrick in 1754
with his Catherine and Petruchio. An
enjoyable romp of a film but a simplified version of Shakespeare’s text losing
the ensemble feel of the source and drawing nothing whatsoever from “A Shrew”.
2) The 1963 audio production
directed by George Rylands with Derek Godfrey and Peggy Ashcroft[vi]. This is
an example of a Purist production.
It has the entire Induction virtually word for word as in the Arden
Shakespeare. It also retains the following from the end of Act 1 Scene 1:
FIRST
SERVANT: My lord, you nod; you do not mind the play.
SLY: Yes, by Saint Anne do
I. A good matter, surely; comes
there any more of it?
PAGE. My lord, 'tis but begun.
SLY. 'Tis a very excellent
piece of work, madam lady
Would
'twere done! [They
sit and mark]
Sly and Petruchio are played by
different actors as are Kate and the Hostess. This Purist approach is also the
decision of director Howard Sackler in
his 1960 audio production starring Trevor Howard and Margaret Leighton[vii]
which, although arguably better performed than the former, is, within the
parameters of this essay, the same production.
3) The 1995 RST production
directed by Gale Edwards with Michael Siberry and Josie Lawrence. This is an
example of the Rounded approach to
the play. In this politically correct production “A Shrew” is used to frame the
piece. Its clear from the production, but repeated in the programme notes, that
the intention is that the Kate and Petruchio part of the play is Christopher
Sly’s dream. I.e. a poor man changing his Katie for a wealthy Katherina (the
male characters are played by Siberry with the female by Lawrence). A cut
version of the Induction is used with the Huntsmen dressing Sly on stage as a
Lord. We don’t have Sly’s words at the end of Act 1 Scene 1, of course, and the
page boy dressing up as Sly’s wife in the Induction is also cut as this is
Sly’s own dream and if it were left in the audience would wonder the strangest
things!
After a fairly routine middle the
Shakespeare text is cut precisely at the end of Kate’s long speech (which is
not delivered devotedly[viii]
in contrast to the other productions considered here) at the end of Act 5 Scene
2. (i.e. Petruchio: “Why, there’s a wench” in line 181 through to line 190:
Lucentio: “’Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tam’d so.”) By which time
Petruchio is bowed with shame and then we are back at the start of the play
with Siberry again as Christopher Sly. Darkness comes, there is a noise of
thunder and we pick up the text from “A Shrew” with one of the Lord’s saying
the words assigned to Tapster:
Tapster: Now that the darksome night is
overpassed,
And
dawning day appears in crystal sky,
Now must I
haste abroad.
The next few lines are
improvisation to the effect that they will put Sly (or Slie) where they found
him and then we rejoin “A Shrew” with
Tapster: What how Slie, Awake for
shame!
The rest of “A Shrew” is cut and we
see a changed Sly, still on the floor, embracing Katie Hacket. A reconciliatory
ending from a previous director of “A Winter’s Tale” and “The Tempest”. All
very safe and politically correct but making a happy union of the two source
texts.
4) 1994 Animated Tales of Shakespeare production with
screenplay be Leon Garfield[ix]. In this inspired, charming and Rounded production we see a dint of the
Edwards version. “A pair of stocks you rogue!” is one of the few lines to
survive from the Induction but nonetheless the essence is there with the animation
and we see Sly being whisked off by the huntsmen and presented a play. In
Kate’s Speech at the end the camera pans back to see Sly watching the play but
rapidly dozing off. When he does so he is whisked off again by the huntsmen and
the play within a play ends with Petruchio:
God bid you good night. Then we cut to see Sly waking outside the inn, and
he says a reduced form of the end of “A Shrew”:
Slie: Sim some more wine: whats all the
Plaiers gon:
am I not a Lord?
I have had
the bravest dream.
I know now
how to tame a shrew.
Whereupon he walks confidently into
the Inn only to be met again with words plucked from line 2 of the Induction:
Hostess: A
pair of stocks you rogue!
And she beats him out of doors. So
its not entirely unlike Edwards’ version: male domination has not triumphed so
political correctness is achieved. It makes good use of “A Shrew” for rounding
the story and distancing what we see in the main body of the play. That is, it
balances any thoughts some may have that Kate was browbeaten by Petruchio in
the immediately preceding scene. So presumably even Fiona Shaw’s hecklers would
see little here to take offence over. In fiction we may see a warm and obedient
Kate transformed from almost autistic behaviour at the start of the play - but
in reality outside the dream Sly does not get his way - we have come full
circle and all is well.
Conclusion
Few directors would be brave enough to stage “The Shrew”
today along the lines of the Burton-Taylor film - which showed it, in the
absence of the Induction of Shakespeare’s play and the conclusion of “A
Shrew”, as a direct ‘real’ story (for a
farce, that is). But even then the film was helped by the audience’s knowledge
of and familiarity with the two leading players. This encouraged the film to be
seen as presumably how it was originally intended four centuries earlier as a
knockabout comedy with plenty of both verbal and slapstick humour (or to quote
“A pleasant comedy” as the Induction describes it). With the two stars so
firmly appearing above the title of the film in the public’s mind as well as on
the celluloid, its critics will surely have been disarmed from trying to read
too much into the subject matter. However, in the current (waning?) age which
expects films to have Schwarzenegger accompanied by a similarly armed and
attired woman to have a whipped Kate or an emotionally broken Kate with an
unchanged Petruchio at the end would be dangerous at the box office. Especially
considering that most people wanting
to go to the theatre are women[x].
So having a version that could easily be seen as offensive to women would
likely be a box office failure. Hopefully without descending too much into what
George Bernard Shaw so dismissively termed Bardolatry its seems entirely
plausible that Shakespeare put the Induction there for the very particular
purpose of ensuring that his good-natured comedy would not be taken too
seriously and annoy half the public, rather than out of vain or experimental
conceit. The intellectual stimulation of playing about with levels of reality
echoed by impersonations of one sort or another in the body of the play were a
bonus to the wordsmith and dramatist nonpareil. The veil had to be there and
Shakespeare knew it.
If the induction were not present
in either source and if the conclusion in “A Shrew” did not exist it would be a
very good idea to invent them.
Bibliography
General note
In writing in the computer age it is very
convenient and efficient to consult ‘virtual’ or ‘soft’ information rather than
paper information. Particularly in an essay like this where two texts are
compared. So in the main any quotes from the text are direct cut and pastes
from ‘soft’ sources although the introduction by Brian Morris in the Arden
Shakespeare was read some weeks before starting this essay and together with
lectures both recent and in previous years provided the background for the
three theories on the two surviving “taming” texts. There is not any lengthy
paraphrasing of, or unacknowledged quoting from any source.
Taming of The Shrew - from the MIT
server. Presents the entire text broken down into HTML pages each containing a
scene.
Taming of The Shrew - from the
Gutenberg Project. Presents the entire play as a single text file so good for
rapid searching.
Taming of A Shrew - from Oxford
Text Archive (after having to fill in and sign an agreement and send it by
paper fax - electronic submissions not allowed! Something of a palaver to
obtain a text that in theory at least has been out of copyright for several
centuries!)
[i] Britannica 98 CD and
Microsoft Encarta 98 for information on the ancient city of Ur.
[ii] Pamela Mason in a lecture on
“Taming of the Shrew” for the Shakespeare in Performance course in January 1996
mentioned this theory briefly which she said had been put forward “in all
seriousness by renowned academics”. She was not a subscriber to it.
[iii] Taming of a Shrew. Film made
by Columbia Pictures in 1967. On video from VCI. 1 hour 56 minutes. VHS CC
7453T.
[iv] Cinemania 97 by Microsoft for
years of films. But the observation on the releases of “Virginia Woolf” and the
Fairbanks-Pickford “Shrew” is original as are comments on the Burton-Taylor
film.
[v] Boffins, Peasants and Mark Ones. These terms were used in a lecture by Julian
Glover to the Shakespeare Summer School at Stratford in 1995. They were coined
by a famous dresser at Stratford for thirty years named John McLoud (more
usually known as Black Mac). Mark ones are leading roles, boffins are good
sized parts like Mercutio, and peasant roles are minor roles like “second murderer”.
[vi] Marlowe Dramatic Society 1963
audio production directed by George Rylands with Derek Godfrey and Peggy
Ashcroft in the leading parts. 2 hours. Recently available as audio cassettes
as Argo 1160.
[vii] HarperCollins AudioBooks “The
Taming of the Shrew” 1960 audio recording directed by Howard Sackler” with
Trevor Howard and Margaret Leighton (and, interestingly, Tranio played by a
young Robert Stephens). 2 hours. HCA 68.
[viii] The angry or bitter delivery
of Lawrence (explained by sight of the money wagered) is perhaps not surprising
given that as recently as 1987 in Jonathan Miller’s production Fiona Shaw was
heckled in that speech. Shaw continued the speech to the hecklers but this
response was unlikely to encourage a theatre ever more desperate to pack bums
on seats.
[ix] Shakespeare - The Animated
Tales: “Taming of the Shrew” video.
[x] As Jane Lapotaire so accurately observed in a talk to the Shakespeare in Performance course in January 97 - men often see a theatre trip as “her treat” and would rather not go - as in the school-boy in Act 2 Scene 7 of AYLI: “creeping like snail Unwillingly to school”.