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Taming Me (Taming of the Shrew)

Taming Me (Taming of the Shrew)

Last updated on: June 11, 2016 at 11:29 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Taming Me (Taming of the Shrew) 2016-06-11T23:29:36-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Poster_-_Taming_of_the_Shrew,The(1929)_01_opt Shakespeare was not infallible and The Taming of the Shrew is full of his limitations. Just as his biology was flawed, so his view of women was often wrong.

He was not limited by his Christianity as much as by defects in a culture that was imperfectly Christian: a society based on muscle power will tend to give men too much credit and power. Shakespeare was too gentle with masculine arrogance. That needs to be said, but having said it, what can we learn from his totally different views, especially on gender, that we might be missing today?

After all, if Shakespeare were alive, he might think we were wrong and we ought to listen. Surely, we are not arrogant enough to think “Shakespeare is wrong for sure and we are right for sure.”

First, there is a caution to the reading the play. Most of my students focus on the “taming” of Katherine by Petruccio. Forgotten is the fact that in the play as we have it, the “taming” is a play within a play. The “taming” is set up when a drunk is tricked into believing he is a lord . . . and that a play is to be performed for him. This prelude makes the “taming” for the drunk with the audience as viewers of this viewer. Second, there is a second romance involving Bianca, Katherine’s sister, that has a very different pattern for love and marriage.

We miss the point if we think Shakespeare is merely saying all women should be compliant and certainly are wrong if we think he advocated men as brutes in marriage. In any case, we must listen to genius in order to reject it. Nothing is gained by anyone when they silence genius. The great writer may be wrong, but is always worth a listen, consideration, and then the dignity of disagreement.

When we think the solution to political correctness is crudity and rudeness, we have merely replaced one error (hyper-sensitivity) with another (hurtful speech). If people nattering on about “micro-aggression” and “checking privilege” were not foul mouthed, ugly, and hurtful, then the rest of us would start taking them seriously.

Sitting in a theater seat sobbing and screaming the f-word to silence a speaker whose views you find offensive is shrewish whatever your sex. Such a shrew is using pain to control . . . it is the passive aggressive tyranny of the “weak.” If you have never been in a social setting dominated by those who are easily hurt, then you are blessed indeed. On the right, there is the fainting lily who cannot stand the least “sinfulness” without getting sick, fainting, or being hurt and on the left, there is the social justice warrior who has to tell the story of a lifetime of pain until he or she wins.

Every gathering is dominated by the shrew’s cause as the mere existence of any social structure oppresses the shrew. Sin reaches into the home of the conservative shrew as she knows that society is declining even as she declines on the couch and injustices weighs down the social justice shrew even in the most sensitive of meetings because it is out there.

The shrew is never safe.

Mom demonstrated that a firm “no” and “stop” in a calm tone was effective and civilized. She was not burned up with resentment, did not expect to live in paradise, and stopped ugliness (of any kind) where she could. She does all this without ever becoming ugly herself because she is civilized. The same is true of Dad: he holds up standards including those of a gentleman.

Of course Shakespeare shows that the shrew (both the husband and wife actually!) cannot be tamed without consent. The rough and tumble of the play is (mostly) consensual as the two lovers clash until they find their way . . . their way . . .forward. Their way may not be our way (though do not dismiss it out of hand), because we live in different times, but they are happy at the end in a manner not possible at the beginning.

They have ceased to fight the natural order in their relationship (different gifts) and have found a balance that allows strength. Perhaps the main problem in Shakespeare is that he assumes that all men and women find exactly the same solution. There are exceptions to every rule, but our society is not so joyously and happily carefree when it comes to the sexes that we can afford to ignore the pattern Shakespeare sees as normal.

Katherine is more interesting and more spirited than Bianca, but she is also rude and violent. Both traits are keeping her from happiness. When she is “tamed,” she finds herself in a better place. So I have found as I have allowed my lady wife (Hope!) to civilize me.

The lord rules and the lady rules, but the lord rules the lady because she chooses to follow his lead in a voluntary dance. Perhaps nobody need lead in a couple’s dance or some will find that the strong leader is the lady (as Queen Elizabeth I understood), but dismissing the older way too readily is unwise.

Shakespeare has no tolerance for people who think reality can bend by a few external changes. A boy in women’s clothes, as any actor of the day knew, was still a boy and a drunk dressed as a rich man is still poor.

This much is true: anger and violence are wrong. Marriage or sex without consent is wicked. Nobody should ever be forced to dance, but maybe there is truth to Taming of the Shrew . . . if we stop and consider the strengths and not the weaknesses of what Shakespeare is saying. Physical power (if nothing else) is unequal between the sexes and so the man most of the time (though not always) is in the role of restraint. We must demand the powerful restrain themselves. Pregnancy (which is necessary to us) brings a need for care and protection so that baby can grow, be born, and be fed in safety.

In modern times, not everyone need marry or have children. Just as any man or woman in Shakespeare’s time could live as a celibate, so we can choose to do the same. Shakespeare did not separate sex from procreation or marriage because he was moral. This was a choice on his part . . . a choice that produced the civilization that we have inherited. Was he right?

I think so, most Americans do not. They celebrate sex without the commitment of lifelong love. Shakespeare knew marriage could fail and people were fallible . . . and had a baby with his wife well before ten months had passed in their marriage . . . but he held up an ideal that men and women could aspire to lifelong love and put sex in the service of eternal love always. When we fail, as the characters in the Shrew do, we repent with the ideal still before us and try again.

That is different than having no ideal beyond being “sex positive.” Shakespeare is at war with our sex educators . . . and the difference isn’t biological knowledge, but romance and morality.

There are quite a few shrews that need taming . . . I know, because I was (and sometimes am) one.

———————————————————-

William Shakespeare went to God four hundred years ago. To recollect his death, I am writing a personal reflection on a few of his plays. The Winter’s Tale started things off, followed by As You Like It. Romeo and Juliet still matter, Lady Macbeth rebukes the lust for power, and Henry V is a hero. Richard II shows us not to presume on the grace of God or rebel against authority too easily. Coriolanus reminds us that our leaders need integrity and humility. Our life can be joyful if we realize that it is, at best, A Comedy of Errors. Hamlet needs to know himself better and talks to himself less. He is stuck with himself so he had better make his peace with God quickly and should stay far away from Ophelia. Shakespeare gets something wrong in Merchant of Venice . . . though not as badly as some in the English Labour Party or in my Twitter feed. Love if blind, but intellectualism is blind and impotent in Love’s Labours Lost. Brutus kills Caesar, but is overshadowed by him in Julius Caesar. We should learn not to make Much Ado about Nothing. We might all be Antony, but if we would avoid his fate then we must avoid flattery and the superficial love of Troilus and Cressida. We are fools, but our goal should be to accept it and not to degenerate into Biblical fools during our Midsummer Night’s Dream. Richard III is a symptom of a bad leadership community, but be careful that use Measure for Measure to guide your reaction to the mess. The modern university is Iago in Othello playing on our sins to destroy the nation. You can’t accumulate your way to a great leader and personal piety in Henry VI (Part I) is not enough to make a great king. God will save the King, not our stupid partisan squabbles seen in Henry VI (Part 2) and not kingmakers as existed in Henry VI (Part 3). Fortunately, in God’s world All’s Well That Ends Well. Two Gentlemen remind me that being in love is grand. King John keeps winning and so loses. Slander always gives way to truth in Cymbeline. We need patrons, but God help us if we flatter them and lose them as Athens did with Timon of Athens. We need good leaders and not have to hope against reason that one turns out well like young Prince Hal in Henry IV Part One. Being powerful is all fun and games, until it isn’t as Henry learns in Henry IV Part Two. Virtue can be jolly and edgy, as The Merry Wives of Windsor show. We can all be shrews and need The Taming of the Shrew.

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