The Taming of the Shrew: the Mirror of Film

In the late twentieth century, it is not unusual for audience members to come away from productions of The Taming of the Shrew with the impression that they have just witnessed the story of a dynamic woman turned into a Stepford wife.1 There are also Shakespearean critics who hold such views. G. I. Duthie, for instance, describes Katherina as a "spirited woman who is cowed into abject submission by the violence of an egregious bully" (147). John Fletcher's 1611 play The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed, in which Petruchio's second wife treats him as he had treated Kate,2 suggests that even during Shakespeare's lifetime the battle of the sexes within the play had become a battle of the critics outside it.3

Shakespearean scholars on the other side argue, as Charles Boyce does, that far from being a tale of domination, "the play's main plot concerns the development of character and of love in a particular sort of personality" (626). Boyce goes on to say that "The violence in The Shrew--except for the beatings of servants ... is limited to Katherina's own assaults on Bianca and Petruchio" (626). Nor is Boyce alone in his belief that Petruchio is physically kind to Kate; as Robert Speaight writes, "It is only to others that he is rough" (59).

Much of the confusion comes from a simultaneous idealization of the twentieth century4 and denigration of the sixteenth, a glorification of the sensibilities of modern critics, directors, and audiences coupled with a condemnation of the "medieval" insensitivity of the playwright. For example, Jonathan Miller, director of the 1980 BBC Shrew, says, "Shakespeare is extolling the virtues of the obedient wife ... in accordance with the sixteenth-century belief that for the orderly running of society, some sort of sacrifice of personal freedom is necessary." He defends his position with an attack, arguing that "If we wish to make all plays from the past conform to our ideals ... we're simply rewriting all plays and turning them into modern ones," a practice he calls "historical suburbanism" (140).

However, he is himself engaging in a procedure which might be called historical blurring, allowing certain historical trends to obscure individuals and their divergent opinions.5 No period can be correctly characterized as homogeneous, certainly not a time as tendentious as the Renaissance. To maintain that women's rights were not hotly debated by Shakespeare and his contemporaries is ignorance coupled with arrogance, and to fit the creator of Portia, Rosalind, and Viola into the company of male supremacists requires an adept mental contortionist.6 One need look no further than John Fletcher's epilogue to The Tamer Tamed for a flat contradiction of Jonathan Miller's implied Renaissance world picture. In the epilogue, Fletcher claims his play is "meant/ To teach both Sexes due equality; And as they stand bound, to love mutually" (148).

Those critics who acquit Shakespeare of male chauvinism often accuse him of bad craftsmanship. Thus H. J. Oliver writes in his introduction to the Oxford edition of the play, "In The Taming of the Shrew he [Shakespeare] was dramatizing material from unrealistic literature that was perfectly acceptable on the level of the Punch and Judy show but ran the risk of embarrassing as soon as it rose above that level" (51). He has previously said, "We sympathize with Katherine--and as soon as we do, farce becomes impossible" (51). But rather than assuming that Shrew should therefore be played as comedy and not farce, Oliver decides that Shakespeare has been led astray by his low comedy source.

Directors of stage and film versions of the play must also participate in this long-running and complex controversy, choosing sides and making critical judgements as they make their artistic choices. If the five film versions of the play which are currently available are not likely to give a definitive answer, they certainly provide a representative sample, a set of performance texts with which to explore Shakespeare's blueprint. They include a "live" television production with Charlton Heston, a full-scale movie version directed by Franco Zeffirelli, a filmed stage production from the 1982 Stratford, Ontario Shakespeare Festival, the BBC's television studio version made for the thirty-seven play Canon in the Can, and, finally, Bard's made-for-videocassette version filmed on a replica Shakespearean stage without the audience.

Those directors who see the play as a man's violent domination of a woman have manipulated the text in two main ways. One is to foreground the violence a la Charles Marowitz, who declares that "The modern technique of brainwashing is, almost to the letter,