The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare Theatre

The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Lansburgh Theatre

What can be said about our search for happiness? Every person wants to be happy and every person strives to be happy. Sometimes Fate intervenes and leads us to happiness in unexpected ways, and that is the story of Katharina, the "Shrew" in Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew". Fate married her to Petruchio, a man who taught her how to love and accept love, and be happy.

Early in her life, "Kate" had learned that by being difficult, she could get her way with her parents. As she grew into adulthood, she continued to try to get her way by being a difficult person, constantly raising the level of her "shrewishness" until she got her way. However, as a young woman, she was at a point of learning that no man wanted to marry a difficult woman, and she felt that she would never marry. She was torn. She didn't want to give up her learned behavior that she could get her way by being difficult, but she also wanted to be married and being a shrew was not leading to marriage.

Then Fate intervened and sent Petruchio to her to show her how to be happy by being loving and by accepting love from him in return. Of course, she would not have voluntarily married Petruchio, but in Shakespeare's time, fathers had the authority to give their daughters to a man in marriage, so she had no choice. And once married, Petruchio had the authority and the power to force her to obey him or to suffer unpleasant consequences. She was forced to learn from Petruchio that if she was pleasant and loving to him, he would make her happy. If she was unpleasant to him, he would make her miserable. She had to unlearn a lifetime of thought and learn a new thought pattern. She had to unlearn that by being difficult, she could get her way, and learn that by being pleasant, she would be rewarded with happiness.

So the moral of "The Taming of the Shrew" is that a woman can be happy if she is good to her husband. If she is good to him, he will be good to her.

That moral is not universal, of course. Many women are very loving to their husbands, but their husbands are not loving to them in return. Indeed, many husbands abuse their wives no matter how much the wives try to please them. However, few wives can find happiness by being a shrew, so their only hope lies in being pleasant and loving. (The same moral applies to men, of course.)

I am reminded of the first time I learned of Craigslist. I read a lengthy article in the Los Angeles Times about this new phenomenon, Craigslist, that had gained popularity in the San Francisco area. I went to the San Francisco Craigslist website and wandered around on it for some time, clicking on many of the site's links. At one point, I wandered into a chat room where a group of women were chatting about relationships with men. The topic of the conversation was "high maintenance women", and many of the women in the chat room were commenting how men didn't like "high maintenance women". After some time, a woman whose screen name was "jewishprincess" said something very profound. She said that her husband didn't seem to mind that she was "high maintenance" as long as she gave him a blow job every night. The room was silent for some time, and then several of the women mentioned that they had not thought of that.

It seems to me that Kate had not learned that simple lesson. If a woman is good to a man, he will usually be good to her. Many men are happy to spoil their wives or lovers, if only their wives or lovers take good care of them. Many men are very happy to work and support a woman if she will take care of them sexually. "The Taming of the Shrew" is a wonderful play that teaches a moral about relationships in a very happy way.

My thoughts on the production at the Shakespeare Theater. I thought the man who played Petruchio was very well cast. He was very believable and he helped the audience lose themselves in the play. However, I think the woman who was cast as Katharina was not well cast. She did not help the audience lose themselves in her character. She played the initial part of the shrew pretty well, but she was not at all believable in her transformation to a loving wife.

Once again, I am struck by the history of a Shakespeare play. Shakespeare was a master producer of plays. Time and again, he took plays that already existed and rewrote them for his own productions, as he did in this play. A play by the name, "The Taming of a Shrew" already existed, and Shakespeare rewrote it into his version, which is a wonderful, lasting play that audiences still enjoy four hundred years after he wrote it.