“I will be master of what is mine own
She is my goods, my chattels;she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.” Taming of the Shrew Act 3sc2
This outrageous ranting of a husband can make any self respecting wife’s blood not only boil but spill over but thankfully this speech is ensconsed safely in the pages of a play by an Elizabethan playwright. William Shakespeare who died a little over four hundred years ago and penned this is beyond reprimand. He has certainly escaped contemporary lawmakers for making such misogynistic statements!
To be fair, the above quote is not Shakepeare’s but of a character from his unabashedly delightful romcom ‘Taming of the Shrew’ where Petruchio the husband speaks thus to his wife Kate who is widely regarded and feared as a shrew of the highest order. Whether Shakespeare’s wife was herself a shrew we do not have much of an evidence though.
What we know ofcourse is that the young and upcoming dramatist was fast becoming a success in the theatre world in London when he wrote the play and was adept at knowing the pulse of his audience whether it was the hoi polloi of the teeming city orthe Earls and Dukes of the court of the Virgin Queen who herself enjoyed and patronized the young ‘Will’ and his plays.
So it is quite unlikely that Shakespeare made an unusual and provocative statement and got away with it. What inspired him to write a play which arguably is considered sexist and chauvinistic by some critics is not the point here, what is, is that Shakespeare knew exactly what he was doing.
A Shakespearean romantic comedy is centered around the idea of love where the hero and heroine fight with each other, play games with each other, harangue and wag tongues at each other till they are thoroughly done with each other and finally the lady having found her real feelings for her man is eventually swept up in his arms for the mandatory kiss and the closure of the case in blissful matrimony. Shakespeare’s comedies are all inspired love stories. In the tragedies ofcourse such happy, fulfilling love becomes unattainable, unrequited and tragic .
‘The Taming of the Shrew’ is in the same genre with a twist where the heroine is neither petite nor elegant, neither soft in speech nor gentle in manners, neither an obedient daughter nor a desirable wife to be, in other words a shrew. And who should tame a shrew but an even bigger one, a mad one at that and Kate meets her match in the roguish Petruchio who will woo her and marry her come what may as he has paid her father dowry, ‘Kiss me Kate we shall be married o’ Sunday……’
Kate’s eventual metamorphosis is in discovering her real self and how to love and to be loved unconditionally something which probably had evaded her all her life. Kate is no fool rather she is pragmatic and grounded in the idea of true love in her last speech where she extols the need of loyalty, obedience and service as the foundations of a good marriage …” Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper
“Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee….” .
Some may construe her ‘act of submission’ as a ploy to control her husband by totally charming him and deftly and quietly tilting the balance of power of domesticity. Which wife doesn’t know how a little bit of praise can massage the husband’s ego and the advantages thereof.
Not surprisingly, Kate’s speech is an anachronism today yet it is probably too superficial to be read out of context. Shakespeare was a great advocate for equality among men and women and believed in common sense and compassion as the bedrock of any successful relationship. As evident in his plays and sonnets the gentle bard has been more than fair to the fairer sex.
Even though his heroines are loved and remembered for their beauty, wit and compassion in his world there seems to be a special place for such an unconventional heroine as Kate who being a shrew is unloved by society. When she finds acceptability in Petruchio and realizes his love for her inspite of his outrageous acts she yields to him completely and with grace and dignity. As the famous actress Meryl Streep [who set the stage on fire with her enactment of catty Kate] once rightly said that this submission was an act of love by a woman who was never loved all her life but yearned for it. But Shakespeare always had the knack of probing the human heart with all it’s subtleties and complexities and his genius never failed to illumine us with his all encompassing compassion and inclusive vision. Truly, he was the greatest lover of them all.
