The Taming of The Shrew Quote: Play Monthly Meme April

This month's prompt for Listra's Play Monthly Meme, as a part of Let's Read Plays event pick the easier topic so far: 

Memorable Quote

When Lucentio decided to disguise as a school teacher to approach Bianca, his servant Tranio—knowing that Lucentio would soon bury himself into books—advised his master to put pleasure too into consideration:

“No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en. In brief, sir, study what you most affect”

And I am 100% agree with Tranio. Every job, every task, would never bear any decent fruit if we don’t love it. Maybe with a severe determination, we could achieve something from tasks we loath, but in the end, is it worth? It would only desperate us.

Bless us all, book bloggers who love to read books, and put huge efforts to write reviews, to host events, and to patiently maintain our blogs, only to gain satisfaction in the end! :)

As this meme is about quote, I’ll include this post in my 20^th Weekend Quote, a weekly meme also hosted by the fair Shakespeare’s lover: Listra….

Weekend Quote is a meme hosted by by Half-Filled Attic. Feel free to join. You can:

• Give the context of the quote
• Give your opinion whether you agree or disagree with it
• Share your experience related to the quote
• Share similar quotes you remember
• Or anything else. Just have fun with the quote.

The Taming of The Shrew

After being touched by a Greek tragedy on last March, this month we ought to read a Shakespearean comedy for Let’s Read Plays. The Taming of The Shrew has been my choice since the beginning of this event, and now I’m glad I have chosen it. It is perhaps the most satisfying and entertaining comedy I’ve ever read so far (the other was The Merchant of Venice, yet it didn’t feel like comedy in the end). This play uses play within a play structure, and the play within has a much bigger portion than the opening one, that you might even forget that you were inside another play when the whole plays ended.

A drunkard tinker named Sly was asleep outside an alehouse when a Lord and his group passed by in their hunting. Seeing Sly, the Lord had an idea to bring the drunkard secretly home and treated Sly as if he was a rich Lord. The Lord made a serious effort of mocking Sly, he even invited a group of players to play a fine comedy to entertain ‘Lord’ Sly. And here was the original play….

Gremio and Hortensio were both suitors of Bianca—a fair lady, daughter of Baptista, a gentleman of Padua—however they could never won Bianca, as Baptista won’t let Bianca marry before her elder sister—a shrewd lady named Katharina—got a husband. Gremio and Hortensio then raced to find a husband for Katharina to achieve their goal.

Lucentio also fell in love with Bianca, and to compete with Gremio and Hortensio, he would disguise as a school-master, so that he could court Bianca while teaching her. On the other hand, Hortensio’s friend Petruchio was looking for a rich lady as a wife, and liked the idea of taking a shrewd lady. Then Hortensio, Gremio and Tranio—Lucentio’s servant who disguised as his master—decided to support Petruchio’s expenses to woo Katharina.

So, when Lucentio, Hortensio (disguised as a music teacher for Bianca) and Gremio were competing to win Bianca’s heart, Petruchio was in a harder mission to tame the shrewd Katharina. The most entertaining part came from the way Petruchio tamed the shrew. Shakespeare, as usual, was a genius in making us laugh by words-playing—and that’s why it is hard to translate most of his comedies in other languages, because English have so many words with double meanings, that when you just translate them as it is, there might not be any comical situation left. And here is one of the words-playing from Katharina and Petruchio:

Katharina: You were a moveable.

Petruchio: Why, what’s a moveable?

Katharina: A joint stool.

Petruchio: Thou hast hit it. Come, sit on me.

Katharina: Asses are made to bear, and so are you.

Petruchio: Women are made to bear, and so are you.

And this is another one (rather more slapstick than smart, actually) from Petruchio and his servant Grumio when they were in front of the door of Hortensio’s house, and Grumio mistakenly thought he was instructed to knock down his master instead of knocking the door for him:

Petruchio: Here, sirrah Grumio, knock I say.

Grumio    : Knock, sir! Whom should I knock? Is there man has rebused your worthy?

Petruchio: Villain, I say, knock me here soundly.

Grumio    : Knock you here, sir!

As most of Shakespearean comedies, the wittiness of his plays came also from the complexity of disguising situation; the misunderstanding caused by it and how they were revealed. And as you might have guessed from the title, Petruchio finally succeeded in taming Katharina. But it’s not the end result which was important, but more on the process itself which was smart, comical, and acted as a satyr to reflect what women suffered during that era.

From Katharina we can see how an Italian young woman at that time, no matter how smart and ambitious she was, did not have any choices for her future besides waiting for her parents to get her a husband, and all around the complicated of dowry businesses which I have never understood… :) In short, women could not pursue her own ambition and to be distinguished in the society by herself; and without a marriage, there would not be any future for a young woman. I think this injustice which has made Katharina the shrewd she was. From her smart conversations with Petruchio, I believe she was actually a very smart woman, but she was forced to get marry very soon by her parents.

Four stars for The Taming of the Shrew.

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I read the ebook version from Feedbooks dot com

This book is counted for: 

April theme: Shakespeare’s comedy

39^th book for The Classics Club

Katharina in The Taming of The Shrew: Character Thursday (57)

Katharina is the eldest daughter of Baptista, a gentleman of Padua, who represented women’s despair at the time Shakespeare wrote this play: The Taming of the Shrew. Katharina was a shrewd and scornful young lady; she was famous for that, and that made her difficult to get a husband. I don’t know which one must have come first, whether young men were terrified of her because of her bad reputation, or her shrewdness came from worrying because no young men had made any approach to her. But I think, it’s her own nature that made her different from other girls of her age.

There’s no doubt that Katharina was an intelligent, smart and independent woman; and she had just lived in the wrong era. Katharina would be happier if she has lived in modern era, where women have an equal opportunity to pursue her dream and to decide what she’s going to do in life by her own. In her era, Katharina suffered from the injustice the society had put on women. Then, a woman must put her future in her parent’ hands to get her a husband; as if getting a husband was a matter of life and death for a woman. And what her life would be in the future would depend on what kind of husband they would get. A marriage (with all the dowry aspects) had become a kind of business, don’t you think?

I imagine Katharina as an independent and self-esteemed woman who was confined by the values set by the society, that a woman should be sweet, shy, fool and submissive in order to attract men. I could feel how Katharina longed for having an equal relationship with men; how she would love to share her opinions on things which men usually discussed: politics, social, literature, etc. In the despair of not being able to do that, Katharina must have felt lonely and desperate. Then the shrewdness began to appear. It got worse because Katharina hasn’t found any men who would propose her because of her temper; while she knew that the only hope to get more freedom was when she has got married. Those tortured Katharina even more, and her tongue got sharper and sharper.

What’s more interesting is the ending. After Petruchio married her, Katharina has completely changed. Do you think she was afraid because Petruchio could become sharper than her? I guess not, it’s because Katharina came finally to realize that there’s nothing she could change in her life. She lived in the wrong world, and what she could do was either take it or leave it. She had chosen to be happy by accepting her role as a wife, and thus seemed that she had been tamed by Petruchio. Well, it might be true in one point, because Petruchio knew better than anybody else, that the shrewdness in Katharina came from unhappiness. And when he made her see the reality, Katharina was too clever not to change herself.

That is my Character Thursday of this week, an analysis of book character of my choice, who is yours?... Just put your post URL in the linky below. Do you like to join us in discussing characters from books you read? See the details of Character Thursday first.