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Show How to kill a woman... The play opens with an Induction in which a drunken tinker, Christopher Sly, is thrown out of a tavern by the irate hostess and falls asleep in the street. Discovering him, a merry lord dresses him in fine clothing, brings him to a sumptuous apartment, furnished him a wife (a disguised page), and convinces con-vinces him he is a nobleman who has suffered amnesia for 15 years. The main action of the play is now performed in order to prevent Sly (who is scarcely mentioned again) from falling back into his supposed madness. The madcap Petruchio woos Katherina, the perfect wife in every respect but one-she is an intolerable shrew. From their first explosive meeting, Petruchio subjects Kate to a series of verbal and physical indignities under the pretext of kindness. kind-ness. Despite her superb resistance, she is finally ready to swear that the sun is the moon or that an old man is a fair virgin if Petruchio says so. Contrasted Con-trasted to this direct clash in the elaborate wooing of the demure sister Bianca by the disguised Lucentio and Hortensio. At the end, Kate defends marriage as hotly as she denounced it in the beginning. The bold, madcap effects of this play have entertained audiences since approximately ap-proximately 1594. In our time, the theme might be challenged as sexist, as the theme of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE might be challenged as racist. On both counts, however, Shakespeare will endure. Dr. Brian Hansen, director of this year's production of the taming of the shrew, has stated, "It does not matter that the 'problems' encountered en-countered are the same old problems year after year. The exciting part for the directors, designers, actors, and audiences is the challenge of bringing one's own resources to a problem which has been faced, and perhaps solved, many times in the past." : F " . h ' ' , , , - v " ' with kindness |
