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A sequel to “The Taming of the Shrew”? Why yes, and there’s more than one!
Mar 1 2015, 08:08:56 PM
“The Shrew Untamed” is a rollicking, romantic sequel to Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.” In it, Kate manages to turn the tables on her husband, Petruchio, but the consequences of her scheming actions produce some unexpected surprises.
Did you know that “The Shrew Untamed” is not the first sequel to be written that involves Shakespeare’s famously feuding couple? In the 17th century, John Fletcher wrote a play called “The Woman’s Prize” (also known as “The Tamer Tamed”) that was a direct, feminist response to the Bard’s play.
So how does Fletcher’s feminist tale unfold? “The Woman’s Prize” hurls Katherine into Death’s embrace, leaving Petruchio to marry a new wife named Maria. It just so happens that Maria is even more resistant to domination than Katherine, and she has plenty of resourceful tricks up her sleeve. Maria refuses to consummate their marriage until Petruchio changes his ways, and she bands together with other women in her city in a defiant stand against boorish male behavior. In Act Three Maria settles in to pursue a career of scholarship and horsemanship at Petruchio's country estate, but the peace is broken when Petruchio resolves to play ill in an attempt to awaken his wife's pity. His ruse fails when Maria catches on and walls him up indoors on the pretext that he has caught the plague. Petruchio finally fights his way out, but in Act Four he discovers that his wife has "gone mad"—she has begun to dress like a common whore (in a perfect counterpart to Petruchio's behavior in Shakespeare’s play) and is busy flirting with his friends. When Petruchio announces that he has had enough of marriage and is abandoning Maria for foreign travel, she encourages him to depart on the pretext that his journeys may broaden his vision and turn him into a better human being.
Almost totally defeated as Act Five opens, Petruchio tries one final stratagem in an attempt to awaken some spark of compassion in Maria. He decides to play dead, and in one of the Elizabethan theater's celebrated scenes he is carried onstage in a coffin before his wife and friends. Maria is indeed moved to tears, but they are inspired, as she tells us in a famous speech, by his "unmanly, wretched, foolish life.” This last salvo of abuse brings Petruchio back from the dead: he sits up in his coffin, prompting in Maria a state of final bafflement if not total respect. The two pledge that they will start life anew together amidst the richly comic and ironic mood that ends the play.
“The Shrew Untamed” is available for free download from Amazon.com. Visit http://theshrewuntamed.weebly.com/ to find out what happens after Petruchio and Kate’s honeymoon!
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Was Elizabeth Taylor the shrewdest “shrew” of them all?
Feb 25 2015, 11:31:35 PM
So many great actresses have brought Shakespeare’s Kate to life on the stage, including the most celebrated performer of them all, Meryl Streep.
If we were to hand out an award for the shrewdest Kate of them all, who would take home the prize? This is where theater fails us, for a live performance always disappears into the mists of time if it isn’t recorded. Thank heavens then for the stage’s upstart cousins, film and television.
Run your eyes over the following and ponder who had the most hellish courtship?
• Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks – 1929 – directed by Sam Taylor
• Lisa Kirk and Charlton Heston – 1950 – directed by Paul Nickell
• Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton – 1967 – directed by Franco Zeffirelli
• Sarah Badel and John Cleese – 1980 – directed by Jonathan Miller
• Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger in "10 Things I Hate About You"– 1999 – directed by Gil Junger
Cast your vote on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Shrew-Untamed/788934754516915
“The Shrew Untamed” is available for free download from Amazon.com. Get your electronic copy today and find out what happens after Petruchio and Kate’s honeymoon!
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The humble shrew: is Shakespeare to blame for it’s bad rap?
Feb 23 2015, 10:24:38 PM
Call it one of life’s great injustices: the common shrew, which looks quite adorable, has somehow been associated with scolding, nagging women. This awful state of affairs has persisted for centuries, and no one seems at all inclined to correct the record. If the shrew has a lawyer on retainer it might want to consider a defamation lawsuit, and at the very least the animal should fire its current publicist.
So how did the scandalous besmirching of the shrew’s good name ever come about? Some argue that you can point a finger at Bill Shakespeare, who helped spur on the unfavorable name association by centering one of his most famous plays on a woman he described as having a “shrewish” temperament. But let’s be fair to William: he can’t shoulder all of the blame because “The Taming of the Shrew” was also a product of 16th century thinking. Indeed, it seems that the application of the label “shrew” to a volatile and cantankerous female personality pre-dated the Bard’s time on earth. Historians now believe that the root cause of the association lies in Ancient Greece and Rome. It would seem that men who built great empires looked upon the tiny shrew as an evil, poisonous creature. Consider a piece of evidence: in "Historia Animalium" by Aristoteles, there is a passage about the effect of the shrew bite to horses: "Shrew's bites are dangerous, as also to other beasts of burden: blisters develop. The bite is more dangerous if the shrew is pregnant when it bites; for then the blisters burst, while otherwise they do not.” So imagine, if you will, an angry woman from ancient times biting a man for being a real bastard to her. An infection springs up in the wound area, and before long the aggrieved male is running around town calling his attacker “a shrew.” Well you know how people like to engage in name calling, and some labels have a knack for lingering around.
Speaking of labels, has anyone ever considered how fiery tempered women came to be associated with female dogs? Perhaps we should leave that history lesson for another day… but just so you know, dogs are not amused!
“The Shrew Untamed” is available for free download from Amazon.com. Get your electronic copy today and find out what happens after Petruchio and Kate’s honeymoon!
http://theshrewuntamed.weebly.com/
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