Shrewd and Kindly Farce

Summary

If Shakespeare’s plays exemplify what humankind can achieve at its most vital, most thoughtful, and most sympathetic, not only a source of received wisdom but also a resource for those at odds with the received culture, The Taming of the Shrew remains an embarrassment to many who profess and call themselves Shakespearians. In our century a brisk revisionism has flourished. Two major series of scholiasts, the first generally modern and psychological, the second specifically feminist, have argued variously that the shrew never really was a shrew but a woman responding understandably to the abuse of a dreadful family, that she is not really tamed, and that her final speech on wifely obedience is a piece of extended irony that dupes perhaps Petruchio and certainly the other characters. Standing nearly alone in recent academic commentary, but supported by many theatrical productions, Robert Heilman has attempted to combat this taming of The Taming of the Shrew. Although he allows that Katherine and Petruchio are persons of wit and imagination rather than mere harridan and whip-wielder, Heilman insists that the play is a farce straightforwardly handling the matter named in its title, and dismisses revisionism as ‘a critical falconry that endeavors to domesticate [the play] within the confines of recent sensibility’. This dispute, which will surely continue, at present stands bracketed by two documents, comparison of which illuminates what it has and has not achieved.