This is possibly the most unusual play I have read to date and I’m not quite sure how well this play works into our seminar on marriage. Though marriage plays a part in the play, it is not its main focus, rather its focus is on the many people who want Arden dead for their own benefit.
ie:
-Alice wants Arden dead so she can pursue her relations with Mosby
-Mosby wants him dead for Arden’s wealth
-Greene wants him dead so he can gain back his lost land
-Michael and Clarke want him dead to have Susan
-Black Will and Shakebag want him dead for money
This play does discuss the themes of women being used as commodities (in the case of Susan), and woman in positions of power (like Alice). Alice is an interesting character, even though she is very adamant about having her husband dead, she still assumes the personality of a “good wife”. This is predominant almost everywhere, but an example is in the scene when she appears to her husband while arm-in-arm with Mosby. When the murder plot fails, she states that is was only done in jest, when it was actually meant to enrage him.
There were a few elements that I found odd about the play though. First was the separation of the play into scenes without acts. Also at the beginning of each scene we there were no descriptions of the setting, they just begin and as a reader you have to decipher where you are (ie. either with Alice and Mosby, with Arden, or somewhere between both), eventually it became easy to decipher.
Another item that I found unusual was the 2 times in the text when Black Will’s and Shakebag’s lines where put into block text as apposed to poetic format. When it first appeared (II:19) I thought it was because both men were criminals and it was used as a method of showing their outcast position compared to others, but then it disappeared, so did my theory. As I chalked it up to a typo in my edition it appeared once again (XVI:12) I don’t know why this is like this and after talking to Stevie I still don’t know.
The final item that I found unusual was the many attempts and failures of the murder of Arden. In my experience in reading Elizabethan plays, normally when someone is to be murdered it only takes one try (two if you wanted to show troubles in his murder). But this play did it too many times! At first it was dramatic, then it became comical, and then it was just sad (I was almost happy for Arden to be killed so these poor people can move one with their lives).
An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England
January 23, 2008
I have chosen to solely respond on this article because I found it to be the most interesting and most dense with tidbits. From my understanding of the text it seems that most (if not all) conduct books written during this period gain their authority from two sources: the King and the Church. For the most part it seems that the household is to be treated as a kingdom, within it the Father is the King and all other members of the family unit (wife, children, and servants) are sequentially lower in status and authority. Curiously the servants are included within the family –I would have thought otherwise– they were treated much like the children; they were to be taught good manners, attend church, and had their faults “corrected”.
Within the article there seemed to be many different views on how the husbands should maintain order within his home. When it comes to discipline there seems to be three basic methods mentioned. (1) Actual physical abuse; this could be done either by the husband or by other hands: ‘it is fitter for an husband to refer the matter to a public matter to a public magistrate… and not do it with his own hands’. (2) No physical abuse; no violent hand should be raise towards a wife because she is you’re your equal (I would be very interested to see how popular this choice would have been for the 16th and 17th century). (3) Somewhere in the middle; there is mention of one method that seems to offer a method of no actual violence being committed and yet still malicious in its nature.
“…a husband should be kind and gentle to his wife, to gradually ‘steal away her private will, and appetite, so that of two bodies there may be made only one heart.’” I’m not quite sure if this was the intention of the writer to have an undertone of harshness, but it is the word “steal” that gives me problems. Although you do see this as the preferred method of taming of Kate by Petruchio (Taming of the Shrew), and according to the play this method seemed to be quite successful.
**As a side note, I thought it very interesting how there was a mention of neighbours being responsible for the safety of the husband or wife during a quarrel within their home. If he is caught not maintaining the peace he could be subject to public humiliation. (I have this funny picture in my head of a neighbour peeping into a window during a fight and making sure it doesn’t get out of hand… HAHAHAHA!)
William Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”
January 16, 2008
There are many themes worthy of discussion when it comes to this play. One of which is the repeated motif of a play within a play. This theme is often used in some of Shakespeare’s contemporaries: i.e. the structure in Francis Beaumont’s “The Knight of the Burning Pestle”, and to a lesser extent the puppet-show in Ben Jonson’s “Bartholomew Fair”. From the very beginning of Shakespeare’s play we are brought into the format of Beaumont’s play, when Sly, the Page, and the Lord all watch the actual play take place. Unlike the Citizen and his wife who often add their input into the play in “The Knight of the Burning Pestle”, the characters of Sly and the Page are almost silent only speaking once during the play. They only speak at the end of Act I Scene I, when the Page (as the wife) reminds Sly to stay awake during the play. There are other moments within the play where we are given almost a third level, where actors on stage act like the audience watching events unfold. In Act I, Scene I, around line 48, Lucentio and Tranio watch the introduction of Bianca’s love triangle and the presentation of the shrew. During this scene there are no interruptions to the development of the conversation, other than a few asides by the two men. The third level of play is not only present here but also in Act V, Scene I, Line 50; when the real Vincentio arrives into the story. At this moment Petruchio states: “Prithee, Kate, let’s stand aside and see the end of this controversy”. This allows Katherine and Petruchio to act like the audience and observe the unfoldings.
Of Course this is only one the many theme strings within the tightly woven play. There is also plenty of material for discussion on:
-Women as Property
-Treatment of Women
-Honour in Lineage or the Issue of Class
-Disguising & Lying
-Monetary & Property Negotiations
-Examination of who is Mad & who is a Shrew
