Editing The Taming of the Shrew (section)

=== Female submissiveness ===
[[File:TamingShrew01.JPG|thumb|upright=0.70|[[Arthur Rackham]] illustration of Act 5, Scene 2 (Katherina is the only wife to respond to her husband); from ''[[Tales from Shakespeare]]'', edited by [[Charles Lamb]] and [[Mary Lamb]] (1890)]]

In productions of the play, it is often the interpretation of Katherina's final speech (the longest speech in the play) that defines the tone of the entire production, such is the importance of this speech and what it says, or seems to say, about female submission:

{{blockquote|<poem>{{div col}}
Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.
It blots thy beauty, as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame, as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty,
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign: one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance; commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe,
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience –
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband's foot;
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease.
:::::::(5.2.136–179)
{{div col end}}
</poem>
}}

Traditionally, many critics have taken the speech literally. Writing in 1943, for example, G.I. Duthie argued "what Shakespeare emphasises here is the foolishness of trying to destroy order."{{sfnp|Duthie|2005|p=59}} However, in a modern [[Western world|western society]], holding relatively [[Egalitarianism|egalitarian]] views on gender,{{sfnp|Aspinall|2001|p=30}} such an interpretation presents a dilemma, as according to said interpretation the play seemingly celebrates female subjugation.{{sfnp|Aspinall|2001|p=3}}{{sfnp|Rackin|2005|p=54}}{{sfnp|Davies|1995|p=26}}{{sfnp|Kelly|2013|p=182}}

Critically, four main theories have emerged in response to Katherina's speech;

# It is sincere; Petruchio has successfully tamed her.{{sfnp|Duthie|2005|p=59}}{{sfnp|Thompson|2003|p=21}}
# It is sincere, but not because Petruchio has tamed her. Instead, she has fallen in love with him and accepted her role as his wife.{{sfnp|Bean|1984|p=66}}{{sfnp|Henderson|2003|p=132}}
# It is ironic; she is being sarcastic, pretending to have been tamed when in reality she has completely duped Petruchio into thinking he has tamed her.{{sfnp|Rackin|2005|pp=54–57}}{{sfnp|Kelly|2013|p=183}}
# It should not be read seriously or ironically; it is part of the farcical nature of the play-within-the-play.{{sfnp|Heilman|1966|pp=156–157}}{{sfnp|Oliver|1982|p=57}}

George Bernard Shaw wrote in 1897 that "no man with any decency of feeling can sit it out in the company of a woman without being extremely ashamed of the lord-of-creation moral implied in the wager and the speech put into the woman's own mouth."<ref>Quoted in {{harvp|Thompson|2003|p=21}}</ref> Katherina is seen as having been successfully tamed, and having come to accept her newly submissive role to such an extent that she advocates that role for others, the final speech rationalises, according to Duthie, in both a political and [[Sociology|sociological]] sense, the submission of wives to husbands.{{sfnp|Duthie|2005|p=59}}

Actress [[Meryl Streep]], who played Katherina in 1978 at the [[Shakespeare in the Park festivals|Shakespeare in the Park festival]], says of the play, "really what matters is that they have an incredible passion and love; it's not something that Katherina admits to right away, but it does provide the source of her change."<ref>Quoted in {{harvp|Henderson|2003|p=132}}</ref> Similarly, John C. Bean sees the speech as the final stage in the process of Katherina's change of heart towards Petruchio; "if we can appreciate the liberal element in Kate's last speech – the speech that strikes modern sensibilities as advocating male tyranny – we can perhaps see that Kate is tamed not in the automatic manner of [[Behaviorism|behavioural psychology]] but in the spontaneous manner of the later romantic comedies where characters lose themselves and emerge, as if from a dream, liberated into the bonds of love."{{sfnp|Bean|1984|p=66}}

[[File:Taming of the shrew.jpg|thumb|left|''Taming of the Shrew'' by [[Augustus Egg]] (1860)]]

Perhaps the most common interpretation in the modern era is that the speech is ironic; Katherina has not been tamed at all, she has merely duped Petruchio into thinking she has. Two especially well-known examples of this interpretation are seen in the two major feature film adaptations of the play; [[Sam Taylor (director)|Sam Taylor]]'s [[The Taming of the Shrew (1929 film)|1929 version]] and [[Franco Zeffirelli]]'s [[The Taming of the Shrew (1967 film)|1967 version]]. In Taylor's film, Katherina, played by [[Mary Pickford]], winks at Bianca during the speech, indicating she does not mean a word of what she is saying.{{sfnp|Thompson|2003|p=22}} In Zeffirelli's film, Katherina, played by [[Elizabeth Taylor]], delivers the speech as though it were her own idea, and the submission aspect is reversed by her ending the speech and leaving the room, causing Petruchio to have to run after her.{{sfnp|Schafer|2002|p=71}} Phyllis Rackin is an example of a scholar who reads the speech ironically, especially in how it deals with gender. She points out that several lines in the speech focus on the woman's body, but in the [[English Renaissance theatre|Elizabethan theatre]], the role would have been played by a young boy, thus rendering any evocation of the female form as ironic. Reading the play as a satire of gender roles, she sees the speech as the culmination of this process.{{sfnp|Rackin|2005|pp=54–57}} Along similar lines, Philippa Kelly says "the body of the boy actor in Shakespeare's time would have created a sexual indeterminacy that would have undermined the patriarchal narrative, so that the taming is only ''apparently'' so. And in declaring women's passivity so extensively and performing it centre-stage, Kate might be seen to take on a kind of agency that rebukes the feminine codes of silence and obedience which she so expressly advocates."{{sfnp|Kelly|2013|p=183}} Similarly, Coppélia Kahn argues the speech is really about how little Katherina has been tamed; "she steals the scene from her husband, who has held the stage throughout the play, and reveals that he has failed to tame her in the sense he set out to. He has gained her outward compliance in the form of a public display, while her spirit remains mischievously free."{{sfnp|Kahn|1975|p=98}}

In relation to this interpretation, [[William Empson]] suggests that Katherina was originally performed by an adult male actor rather than a young boy. He argues that the play indicates on several occasions that Katherina is physically strong, and even capable of over-powering Petruchio. For example, this is demonstrated off-stage when the horse falls on her as she is riding to Petruchio's home, and she is able to lift it off herself, and later when she throws Petruchio off a servant he is beating. Empson argues that the point is not that Katherina is, as a woman, weak, but that she is not well cast in the role in life which she finds herself having to play. The end of the play then offers blatant irony when a strong male actor, dressed as a woman, lectures women on how to play their parts.{{sfnp|Empson|1996|p=31}}

The fourth school of thought is that the play is a farce, and hence the speech should not be read seriously or ironically. For example, Robert B. Heilman argues that "the whole wager scene falls essentially within the realm of farce: the responses are largely mechanical, as is their symmetry. Kate's final long speech on the obligations and fitting style of wives we can think of as a more or less automatic statement – that is, the kind appropriate to farce – of a generally held doctrine."{{sfnp|Heilman|1966|p=156}} He further makes his case by positing:

{{blockquote|there are two arguments against [an ironic interpretation]. One is that a careful reading of the lines will show that most of them have to be taken literally; only the last seven or eight lines can be read with ironic overtones [...] The second is that some forty lines of straight irony would be too much to be borne; it would be inconsistent with the straightforwardness of most of the play, and it would really turn Kate back into a hidden shrew whose new technique was sarcastic indirection, side mouthing at the audience, while her not very intelligent husband, bamboozled, cheered her on.{{sfnp|Heilman|1966|p=157}}}}

Another way in which to read the speech (and the play) as farcical is to focus on the Induction. H.J. Oliver, for example, emphasising the importance of the Induction, writes "the play within the play has been presented only after all the preliminaries have encouraged us to take it as a farce. We have been warned."{{sfnp|Oliver|1982|p=40}} Of Katherina's speech, he argues:

{{blockquote|this lecture by Kate on the wife's duty to submit is the only fitting climax ''to the farce'' – and for that very reason, it cannot logically be taken seriously, orthodox though the views expressed may be [...] attempting to take the last scene as a continuation of the realistic portrayal of character leads some modern producers to have it played as a kind of private joke between Petruchio and Kate – or even have Petruchio imply that by now he is thoroughly ashamed of himself. It does not, cannot, work. The play has changed key: it has modulated back from something like realistic social comedy to the other, 'broader' kind of entertainment that was foretold by the Induction.{{sfnp|Oliver|1982|p=57}}}}

[[Emma Smith (scholar)|Emma Smith]] suggests a possible fifth interpretation: Petruchio and Kate have colluded together to plot this set-piece speech, "a speech learned off pat", to demonstrate that Kate is the most obedient of the three wives and so allow Petruchio to win the wager.<ref>{{cite book | last=Smith | first=Emma | author-link=Emma Smith (scholar) | title=This is Shakespeare | location=London | publisher=Pelican | year=2019 | isbn=9780241392157}}</ref>