1
The Taming of the Shrew
Week 7
4.1
N.B. As a good portion of the scene is in prose the line numbers will inevitably be approximate, thoughcorrect in the New Cambridge edition (ed. Ann Thompson).
The scene is Petr.’s country house – Grumio has been sent ahead, supposedly to get the house ready to receive its new mistress;
Grumio enters complaining bitterly of the cold. Curtis is clearly desperate to hear what news Gru. brings from the world beyond the isolated house and repeatedly presses Gru. for “news” but Gru. retains his news for as long as possible, enjoying keeping Gru. waiting.
During Gru.’s description of the journey (53-62) he reveals – almost in passing – that Kate’s demeanour is already being modified from her former outrageous behaviour: we learn that Kate had 1. “waded through the dirt to pluck him off me” when Petr. beat the servant; 2. “prayed that never prayed before” (58-59);
From Gru.’s account Curtis concludes that “he is more shrew than she” (63) – an observation that draws our attention to Petr.’s ‘method’ of taming his shrewish wife;
The servants are called out both to inspect their dress/uniforms and to direct them in their duties – it is clear that they are a motley collection, as inadequately clothed and equipped as was their master for the wedding ceremony. Clearly there is much scope for comic business during Gru.’s ‘inspection’;
Petr. and Kate enter with Petr. in high dudgeon, complaining of the servants’ failure to carry out the very basic duties expected of them. It is noticeable that his complaints address deficiencies that have affected himself: e.g. he demands “Go, rascals, go, and fetch my supper in” (110) – the pronouns/adjectives “I … my” are particularly prominent. By contrast Kate’s presence goes almost unacknowledged – yet in spite of virtually ignoring her while he is berating the servants Petr. bids her “welcome”;
Petr. proceeds to create as much noise and mayhem as he can, striking servants and deliberately overturning a ewer of water and then beating the unfortunate servant who was bringing it – all the time telling Kate, “welcome heartily”;
It is notable that just as Kate had intervened on the journey to minimise the violence of Petr. against Grumio she – of all people – now attempts to be the peacemaker, pleading “Patience, I pray you. ’Twasa fault unwilling” (127);
Again, Petr. calls for food, urges Kate to “sit down” and even ask her if she would like to say grace (“give thanks”) only to hurl about the room meat, “trenchers, cups, and all” while all the while threatening yet more violence on the servants;
Yet again, Kate is called upon to request calm, pleading that Petr. “be not disquiet” and assuring him “the meat was well”(140).
Thus, whereas in her father’s house Kate had been the destroyer of harmony and order (we recall the offstage incident when she had crowned Litio (Hortensio) with his own lute), in the marital home she is forced to adopt the opposite position by virtue of Petr.’s extremes of anger, violence against servants and domestic mis-rule.
Ironically – having demonstrated the heights of irrationality – Petr. now pretends a stance that is wholly rational: they should in any case both avoid eating meat since it “engenders choler, planteth anger” (143).
Now (again ironically) urging Kate to ‘patience’ and holding out the prospect that “Tomorrow’t shall be mended” he leads her to “thy bridal chamber”.
If Kate – and we, the audience – had imagined that their wedding night would be a time of loving consummation of the marriage the servants soon return to report yet more upheaval as Petr. – while recommending “continency” (i.e. self-control) to his exhausted wife – proceeds to create similar chaos in the bedroom as he “rails and swears and rates (scolds)”.
At the same time the servant Peter reminds us of Petr.’s modus operandi – “He kills her in her own humour” (151) – i.e. using anger to subdue the anger in her.
Within seconds Petr. returns to the stage to share with us another confiding insight into his behaviour (as he had done in 2.1.165-76). Here he reveals that Kate shall be ‘tamed’ by the same method that falconers used to train a wild hawk – the language is deliberately that of hawking: “stoop … lure … haggard … keeper’s call … watch … bate and beat”. To this end he will ensure that she neither eats nor has any meaningful sleep. In the meantime he will reduce the bridal chamber to chaos, using “some undeserved fault” to hurl about the chamber every item of bedding.
At the same time he will claim that everything he does “is done in reverend care of her” (176) and by this means he will “kill a wife with kindness” and so “curb her mad and headstrong humour”.
To conclude the scene he even offers a challenge to the audience: if anyone present knows of a better way to “tame a shrew,// Now let him speak – ’Tis charity to show”.
Surely no one in the audience will respond with a better way and so Petr., in a sense, has ‘our’ permission to proceed as he has descried.
Clearly the scene calls for much visual, slap-stick humour – there are clear pantomimic elements to the on-stage action while the detailed accounts of off-stage mis-rule provide excesses that it would be impractical to represent on stage.
4.2
Tranio (disguised as Lucentio) and Hortensio (as Litio) enter in mid-conversation. Tran. pretends astonishment at Hor.’s (off-stage) announcement that Bianca is in love with her tutor, Cambrio (i.e. Lucentio) – if so, he says, she has been deceiving himself completely.
This ironic position enables Tran. to manipulate Hort. towards rejecting Bianca and so leaving the way clear for his master, Lucentio.
Tran. & Hort. stand to one side to observe the ‘lesson’ – hence creating yet another play-within-a-play episode.
The teacher and pupil clearly exchange flirtatious love talk dwelling on the double meanings in words like “mistress/ master … profess(or).
Tran. pretends astonishment at Bianca’s ‘betrayal’ of him and rails against “unconstant womankind” (14);
Convinced that his supposed rival is also rejecting Bianca Hort. reveals his true identity and renounces his pursuit of a woman who will make love with “such a cullion” (i.e. low fellow/testicle);
Having apparently seen with his own eyes proof of Bian.’s inconstancy Tran. also agrees to “Foreswear Bianca and her love for ever”; seeing Bian. “kiss and court” her tutor Hort. makes a formal, solemn undertaking (“forswear”) “Never to woo her more”, deeming her to be “unworthy” of his affections; Tran. cannow safely take his own “unfeigned oath” never to marry her, having witnessed how “beastly” she has behaved with the lowly tutor. Tran. had never expected to marry Bianca, of course, and so his ‘renunciation’ is a shallow mockery.
Hort. reveals that he proposes to marry “a wealthy widow” within three days. Interestingly, he also uses the word “haggard” of Bianca that Petr. had used of Kate in his soliloquy in the previous scene. It seems that Hort. has learned his lesson now undertaking to love only “Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks” (41) – and so he leaves the stage.
It is ironic that Hort. should now claim to love “Kindness” in women rather than beauty – and yet his ‘wealthy widow’ proves to be anything but ‘kind’ once they are married.
Tran. now reveals himself to Bian. andLucen., and teases them, adopting the role of the outraged, deceived lover – he has caught them in the act of courting and “have forsworn you with Hort.”;
When Tran. responds toBian.’s question “have you both forsworn me?” the need for any further pretence is removed. [N.B. The OED has for ‘forswear’: 1.a.trans.To abandon or renounce on oath or in a manner deemed irrevocable. In other words, it is a much stronger, more formal pledge than simply to ‘promise’.]
Tran. announces that Hort. has gone in pursuit of his widow who will be “wooed and wedded in a day”, probably indicating her sexual appetite and therefore a potential ‘shrew’ who will need to be tamed – hence Hort.’s need to go “unto a taming-school”.
It now becomes clear that the real Lucentio has already revealed to Bianca that Tranio has only been pretending to be him and that he (Lucen.) is really a man of rank and wealth. This explains: 1. why Bianca can “kiss and court” (27) so frankly – i.e. she already knows that the ‘Lucentio’ she is engaged to is the real one rather than the fake one that Tranio represents; 2. how it is that Bianca can address Tranio by his real name rather than his pretended one: “He says so, Tranio?” (53)sinceLucen has already revealed the earlier deception to her.
Biondello’sentrance moves the Bianca-Lucentio sub-plot towards its concluding stages: Lucen. needs someone to represent his father (Vincentio) to confirm the extravagant promises of Bianca’s ‘widow’s portion’ previously made by Tranio in 2.1.
Bion. has spotted “An ancient angel” approaching Padua. He is an ‘angel’: 1. since he will hopefully rescue them from an apparently intractable situation – i.e. like a ‘good angel’; 2. he can be compared to the gold coin called an ‘angel’ because he appears to be someone of a good class and therefore wealthy.
Tran. seems uncertain whether the man is “a mercantant (i.e. merchant) or a pedant” because of his “formal” dress and demeanour but it becomes clear later in the scene that he must be a merchant (even though F1 has ‘Pedant’ as the s.d. when he enters and in all of his speech headings.
Tranio clearly has a plan to persuade this man to take the role of Lucen.’s father, Vincentio, as so give the required assurances to Bianca’s father of Bianca’s financial expectations that Tranio has promised while impersonating Lucen..
We stopped at this point and will resume
discussion of the scene in Week 8.