Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew

 I’ve always found Shakespeare’s comedies rather difficult. I know they’re not necessarily meant to be ha-ha funny – a comedy is a play with a happy ending rather than a humorous play, as we understand the word comedy nowadays – but I’ve usually found the subject-matter either challenging to get to grips with, or just boring. So, for example, I’ve never liked A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest are rather too problematic to be labelled comedies. For me, the craziness of Twelfth Night is the best it gets. And now, I’m wrestling with The Taming of the Shrew, which is one of the two plays I’ll be seeing at my Shakespeare study week this year, when we go to the RSC at Stratford (the other is As You Like It).

I’ve only once seen a performance of the play before, and that was a school one, at the school where I used to work, so I’m looking forward to seeing how the RSC interprets it, although the reviews lead me to believe it will be one of their challenging performances, with gender role-swapping and so forth, which I’ve found bearable and sometimes mildly illuminating in previous years, although overall I tend to feel such changes are gratuitous.

The play itself is an oddity. It’s framed – or part-framed by an ‘induction’, with a drunken peasant tricked into believing he is in fact an aristocrat, to be entertained with the play itself – but either Shakespeare forgot about this element, as it disappears after the second act, or, more likely, via garbled transmission of the text, the rest of that framework has been lost. And then we have the marriages game: several suitors chasing the pleasant younger daughter who cannot be married until someone has taken the ‘shrewish’ elder daughter off her father’s back. How to marry off the right characters with each other is a staple of comedy of that time; the patriarchal structures of Shakespeare’s time, and the designation of a woman as a ‘shrew’ are rather more difficult for a twenty-first century audience to countenance. And everything comes down to the final, apparent ‘submission’ speech which Kate makes in the last scene: how are we to take this? At the moment I have the impression she has finally met a man who is as cracked or as awkward as she is: there is an equality to the pairing of Petrucchio and Kate which redeems the play somewhat. And setting their courtship against the scheming that those involved in the chasing of Bianca are involved in also makes them seem well-matched to each other.

Obviously the ending of the play can be seen as open, and this is what Shakespeare is wont to do very often: to leave his audience feeling somewhat uncomfortable, with the idea that there is no easy answer, no simple conclusion or interpretation of what he has presented onstage. Male and female roles and positions in society were very different then, at least from those available in much of the West nowadays. And so many of us today ease our consciences with the notion that Kate knows exactly what she is doing, that she is publicly appearing to submit to ease the minds of everyone watching, but that her love for and relations with Petrucchio will be rather more equal, more balanced, within the paradigms of the times.

What I like most about productions of plays is that I can dislike the interpretations offered by a director, and nevertheless come away with plenty of food for thought, and I’m hoping this is what I get next month…

Heroes and icons

Something got me thinking about heroes recently, and I found myself wondering if I had any. A hero: someone whose life and work I greatly admire; is that a good enough definition? Or am I thinking of an icon?

One will have to be Shakespeare. I realise I had a very good first encounter with the man and his work, through an inspirational English teacher (who was ultimately responsible for my pursuing such a career myself) who chose a demanding and challenging play for study at O Level: The Merchant of Venice. Difficult to classify, though many critics call it a tragicomedy, which will do, I suppose. The point is, it raised so many issues for teenage minds to wrestle with: what is justice? What is racism? Who are we meant to sympathise with? In other words, I had an early introduction to the idea that there are no easy answers, and that one should beware of anyone who claimed to have one… And this same teacher went on to teach us Othello and King Lear at A Level, two astonishingly powerful tragedies which move me to tears whenever I watch them.

At university we had a course on ‘The Drama’ in our first year, and were fortunate enough to have the lectures on Shakespeare delivered by Kenneth Muir, the head of the Department of English at the University of Liverpool and eminent Shakespearean scholar, then on the verge of retirement. He was amazing: clear and perceptive in his analysis, what stunned us all most was that whatever play he was discussing, he could immediately recall whatever lines he wanted, from memory, as he paced the lecture theatre.

Obviously as an English teacher myself, I had to teach many of the plays. I tried only to teach plays I really liked, especially after having made the early mistake of trying to interest year 8 students in A Midsummer Night’s Dream because that was one of the plays designated for year 8… I had to teach Macbeth – a play I liked but never really completely warmed to – more times than I care to think; I loved teaching Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet, and when it came to sixth form, went for the tragedies whenever I could, though only ever once managed to get to teach King Lear. Othello and Antony and Cleopatra were my great favourites.

Everyone will have their own take on Shakespeare’s greatness. For me there were two things in particular: the astonishing power and beauty of his language in so many different situations and through so many different characters, and his ability to raise so many questions through his plots, to make his audiences think, to make them uncomfortable, in short to make them see that there was no one easy response to anything.

I said ‘one’ before I mentioned Shakespeare, so logically there will be another, and there is.

​_Whereas I can claim a certain measure of expertise in the field of literature, in the field of music I am a zero. Tone deaf, unable to play any instrument, bribed at school not to sing in music lessons because I put others off. But my other hero, or icon, is J S Bach. And I will find it much harder to explain why. A long while ago I mentioned how a teacher at school had initially fired my curiosity by refusing to play Bach to us ‘peasants’; another teacher played us the fifth Brandenburg Concerto, and I could not believe my ears, transported by the speed and virtuosity of the harpsichordist.

My encyclopaedic knowledge of 1970s rock music gradually began to fade as I explored the world of jazz and classical music, and one fateful day I spent a whole pound on a whim, on a secondhand LP of two Bach cantatas from a stall on Lancaster market. Many years later, having worn it out, I managed to find a replacement.

Bach’s music transports me onto a more spiritual plane: that’s the only way I can put it, really. The cello suites, for example, some of the shorter and less fiery organ pieces, but above all the church cantatas take me away from myself, my ordinary little world and its worries and preoccupations and lead me somewhere completely other with my mind – my being, thoughts, consciousness — to another place entirely. It’s beyond me and much more powerful than me; I don’t understand it and I feel unutterably grateful for the experience.

Bach was a Lutheran, a very religious and God-fearing man: I am not. As a Quaker, I explore a spiritual path, true, but worship in silence; I don’t know whether God exists or is a creation of the human mind. But Bach’s music speaks to me so profoundly, from nearly three centuries ago, in a way which complements everything I believe in, and manages to restore my faith in humanity.

So yes, perhaps there are heroes, and I have a couple of them.

Confession time

Do you have a – perhaps guilty – secret? Is there a classic novel that all your friends adore and rave about which you can’t stand? Are there books you feel you ought to have read that you haven’t, and are ashamed to admit? Can you bear to confess now?

There is a certain reverence, respect attached to the classics, whatever they are. It may be just about OK not actually to read some of them, though we probably wouldn’t openly admit it. And we are likely to feel awkward, if not actually wrong, if we don’t like a particular novel, or writer. Why is this?

I always wanted my students to express responses and opinions about what they read, and felt comfortable encouraging them to openly dislike something, as long as they could explain what it was that they disliked, what turned them off. If you were one of those students, you will possibly remember my cry of ‘Evidence?’

I will make a few admissions now, no doubt horrifying some of my readers. I’d like to hear from you if what I say shocks and appals you, and you are welcome to try and persuade me that I’m wrong in my judgement.

I have just got rid of my copy of Wuthering Heights. I read it once, twenty years ago, and hated it. What was the point of that, I thought, and I do not have any spare eyeball time to go back to it. Although I had to study Tess of the D’Urbervilles at university, I’ve never re-read it since, and can’t see that I ever will: it’s too maudlin and fate-ridden to be truly convincing to me, and that’s the overall impression I’ve gleaned of Thomas Hardy, too. I bought Jude the Obscure a long time ago and thought I might read it; I got rid of it a while ago, unread. And Charles Dickens you can keep, too. I did actually enjoy Hard Times – again, compulsory study at university – and have gone back and re-read it. I enjoyed an adaptation of David Copperfield on the wireless as a child, and a no doubt bowdlerised version of Oliver Twist too. I haven’t read Great Expectations, although I did enjoy Peter Carey’s reworking of the story, Jack Maggs. It didn’t make me want to go back to Dickens, though.

I suppose those are my big admissions about the classics: Hardy the miserable and Dickens the verbose. I’ll admit to a pretty strong loathing for Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, too, even though I did see a very good theatre production in the sixth form, but all that magic and fairies gallivanting around I really can’t be doing with. One of my biggest mistakes as a teacher was to try and read it with a year eight class. I’m not sure which of us hated it more…

Along with active dislikes such as those I’ve mentioned above, there is then the whole raft of stuff I’ve read once, either because I had to as a student or because I mistakenly took a recommendation from someone. And the – rather fewer – books I started but gave up on. Time was when someone might have been able to be familiar with all of the canon of Eng Lit: not any more. Choices have to be made, time is short – especially when you realise you are getting on in years – and there is no law that says you have to like everything.

What’s your guilty secret?

On teaching Shakespeare

A follower’s question about the teaching of Shakespeare has had me reflecting on my experiences in the classroom.

I was wary of teaching Shakespeare too early on in secondary school. I know there are people who think ‘the younger the better’, but the other side of that idea is dealing with the kind of questions students are likely to ask; I have never been one to censor anything in the classroom, and so waiting until students were – hopefully – of a suitable mature age to be given honest and truthful answers to their questions, felt more sensible to me. Inevitably questions about sex would arise: Shakespeare is full of allusions, references, and, more than anything, word-play. Explaining Romeo and Juliet even to Y9 students demanded a certain level of care… so my personal preference was to wait until Y9.

There is the idea of beginning earlier with something more innocuous, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, but I tried that once, at the start of my teaching career, and never went back to it. Trying to interest eleven and twelve year-olds, particularly boys, in fairies and magic is just not going to work.

The choice of play is crucial when students are younger. Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Julius Caesar all offer something to students in terms of plot, action and issues for reflecting on. And I think that to be able to offer some recognisable connection with their own lives helps to make the plays work. With Romeo and Juliet there is lively action, the idea of young love, and the idea of parents trying to control one’s life, and my students were more than willing to engage with these issues! Macbeth raises the ideas of hopes, dreams and ambitions and how far one is prepared to go in achieving those, as well as the idea of someone being influenced by their partner to do things they might otherwise not have done. And Julius Caesar obviously raises the idea of what one should do about bad rulers, tyrants, and how we make such judgements on rulers, as well as the ways in which the common people are manipulated.

Clearly, as students grow older, they are able to engage with more complex plays and issues: they can understand the idea of sexual jealousy as raised in Othello and The Winter’s Tale, for example, although they might not kill as a response to it… and one can explore racism in many ways by studying Othello, or The Merchant of Venice.

Studying Shakespeare in the classroom is a bit of a contradiction, as he was a dramatist and wrote for performance, not reading. Some schools are fortunate in having theatres reasonably accessible and can often take students to live performances which present the plays as they were meant to be experienced. Other schools – ours included – are not so fortunate. I tried, over the years, to develop a way of teaching which addressed this problem.

I’d always do a very quick read through of the whole text, with the emphasis on getting a grasp of the plot and the main characters, and noticing what the main ideas were. I must stress here, that I was never one for just studying extracts. I think that’s a meaningless activity; if there isn’t time, or you can’t make the whole play work, then best not bother. After an initial read, we would watch a TV or film performance of the play. We’d watch it straight through – obviously it might take several lessons, but I wouldn’t constantly be pausing it to comment or explain; again, allowing students to try and grasp the overall effect seemed much more important. If they were studying it for examination, I’d suggest they try to follow the text as they watched, the idea being that if they matched dialogue, gestures and action to the printed words it would improved comprehension. Feedback suggested that this did indeed work.

After that, we had a choice, depending on whether they were studying for an examination, or to write coursework on the play. If a detailed study of the play and serious questioning and note-making were required, now was the time to do it. This was often the lengthiest, and perhaps the most tedious part of the work, but at least the class now understood what they were dealing with.

After this, we would look in more detail at character, themes and issues raised by the play, and I used to do this through group work and presentations to the class; each group would be enabled to show both their understanding of the play and their allocated topic, and their ability to explain it to their peers, as well as manipulating their knowledge and understanding in ways which were a good preparation for what they might be asked to do in an examination. If there was time at this stage, it was also good to be able to watch another (different) complete performance; if we were really lucky, it might be possible to see the play in the theatre…

Looking back over my nearly thirty years in the classroom, I can honestly say that I always loved teaching Shakespeare – correction, trying to pass on my love of Shakespeare. I miss it, but the week after next is my annual Shakespeare week.

On a certain 400th anniversary

As I shall be away on the actual day – 23 April – of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, I’ll write something a little early. This piece will be more about my encounters with him, rather than anything academic.

I’ve lived longer than Shakespeare did: I still have the set of commemorative stamps issued to mark his 400th birthday in 1964, at a time when I collected stamps but knew nothing about our greatest writer. Before I first read any of his plays – as preparation for O level English Literature – I remember I had the feeling that he would be dull, difficult and boring.

I have an inspirational teacher to thank for my experience being so different. We had to study The Merchant of Venice, and I was astonished at the level of detail, the hidden meanings, and the messages beneath the surface, as well as the vulgarity. But most of all, even at that relatively early age, I think I was seduced by his masterly use of language, the magic of his verse, and his wit. Over time, I came to like the tragedies best; it took me a long while to engage with the histories, and I’m still wrestling with the comedies…

I was introduced to live performance while at school, too. The wonderful new – at that time – Nottingham Playhouse, with its ground-breaking revolving stage, had only just opened. I remember seeing a wonderful performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – a play I’ve little time for – there, and also Ian McKellen‘s first Hamlet.

Obviously I went on to study more Shakespeare at A level – King Lear and Othello – and then at university, where I had the thrill of attending lectures by the great Kenneth Muir, who could stroll around the lecture theatre and reel off any quotation from any play that his train of thought required – just like that… And then I went on to teach Shakespeare to my students for many years.

Now, in retirement, I’m a student again, not a teacher, as each year I head off for a week deep in the Oxfordshire countryside to spend a week looking at three plays – usually two by Shakespeare and one by a contemporary – and then heading off to Stratford to see them at the RSC. There’s good company, and one of the course leaders is the Shakespearean actor Jane Lapotaire, who explores the plays from performance perspectives and is always very illuminating; one thing I did relatively little of as a teacher was drama.

So I have set myself a target in my retirement: finally to get to see all of Shakespeare’s plays in performance. My acquaintance is somewhat limited so far: teaching syllabuses meant that I’ve only taught about a dozen of the plays, and only seen a few more than that, although some I have seen many times, in some very memorable performances. This year I hope to see Cymbeline for the first time…

Though it can be hard sometimes to separate the brilliance from the bardolatry, my love of the richness of our wonderful language and its myriad possibilities does firmly convince me that in Shakespeare’s works is something very special indeed in our literary history and culture.

Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew

I have realised it’s taken me a very long time to begin enjoying Shakespeare’s comedies as much as his tragedies, and I have been thinking about why this may be. Perhaps the tragedies are easier to access: a (pretty) clear plot, and message, and an expected audience response. Certainly, I understood Othello and King Lear when I studied them for A Level. At university, I preferred the tragedies, saw some sense in the histories, and managed, largely, to overlook the comedies.

The Taming of the Shrew is wonderful, for its plot, its framing, its message and its language – full of wit, pun and obscenity. I think the quick-fire, rapier wit exchanges are also probably somewhat more difficult for twenty-first century audiences to grasp quickly, meaning the moment has often passed before we know what to laugh at. Although I’m getting better at this. The interaction/ interplay between Kate and Petruchio is masterly, often hilarious. And again, what audiences find humorous or witty does change over time, whereas the subject-matter of tragedy remains pretty constant.

So, the range of Shakespeare I enjoy has broadened: I’ve grown to like Love’s Labours Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and The Merry Wives of Windsor; I may even go back to some of the more obscure ones like The Comedy of Errors, or All’s Well, but I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, although I did once, many years ago, see a wonderful production of it.

The challenge in Shrew comes with the ending: what has Kate said, and done? Is it a feminist declaration, as some would like to think, or is it shades of St Paul, putting all women in their place, silent and subordinate? I always read the last couple of scenes particularly carefully for this reason, and I look forward to seeing a production again one day, to see how it comes across. The best account I’ve come across is in the Arden two edition introduction, by Brian Morris, who sets the ending very carefully in its context, which cannot be feminist, yet also elucidates the freedom and happiness open to a Kate who understands her position in her world and what it offers her…