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Student Book Report
Name of Student
About
Author
About
Author
Author
Works
Character 2
Character 1
Character 3
Character
Shrew
Plot
The modern spelling comes from the 14th century, where animals called shrews were superstitiously feared, falsely believed to have a venomous bite and to behave aggressively and with cruelty. (From Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Company. 2015.)
Middle English shrewe,
'evil or scolding person',
used since as far as the
11th century.
From Old English scrēawa or scrǣwa, 'shrew' (animal).
From other Germanic language: including 'fox', 'dwarf', 'old man',
and 'devil'.
-Associated with witchcraft
Shakespea Re-Told: The Taming of the Shrew
(elevator scene www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr53BBScS98)
-Overt animal connotation
Thesis 1
Cat puns
Wager
If she fight like a raging boar, I have oft stuck a pig before"
("I've come to wive it wealthily" from Kiss me Kate)
Petrarchan tradition (Sonnet 190)
There has always been a conflict with the interpretation of the play. Directors as well as actors face the nature of the play in very contradicting ways, some as the battle of the sexes in which the women are violently degraded and humiliated, some others as the a concession where men as seen as lower creatures and women have to be condescending with them, amongst other interpretations. The fact is that with each generation, this conflict remains, but an important fact to be considered in whether or not see this Shakespeare’s play as misogynistic is that Shakespeare’s time had a certain set of views that were depreciative of women.
“Whether you see the relationships in the play as harmlessly boisterous and knockabout or tragically violent and oppressive, Shakespeare is clearly offering us his take on that perennial trope in both comedy and tragedy: the battle of the sexes. (“Power and gender in The Taming of the Shrew” - by Rachel De Wachter)
Thesis 2
Do you think the play should remain faithful to the script in modern adaptations?
Do you consider it should be altered?
Thesis 3
Thesis 4
Thesis 5
“So the text itself draws the audience’s attention to an ironic gap between what Katherina seems to be saying in her speech and the sincerity of what she says. As Emma Smith points out, modern productions of the play virtually never show an unequivocally tamed Katherina. The gender politics which inform our contemporary readings simply do not allow for success in Petruchio’s stated enterprise.”
The only way in which one could probably get a most certain interpretation of what the “taming of Katherine” means would be to watch Shakespeare’s own performance. But as we are stuck with uncertainty. Women being condescending with their male counterparts might as well be an accurate view on the whole affair.