Page 27 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

16 I Shakespeare in the Movies

The Taming of the Shrew

I come to wive it wealthily in Padua.

—Petruchio
What's now called the "period of early comedies" concluded, in
1593, with a fourth work, The Taming of the Shrew, Will's most
ambitious play thus far and important as his first successful attempt
to employ an audience-pleasing form of entertainment for the pur-
pose of personal expression. Shakespeare had hastily married a
woman who, in the vernacular, was considered a shrew. The term
did not then imply an ugly crone; rather, a handsome, if high-spir-
ited, woman capable of great sensuality tempered by an iron will.
Anne Hathaway's infamously sharp tongue may have caused Gentle
Will to secretly wonder what sort of strutting male might tame her.
Understandably, Will was sensitive to the existence of such situa-
tions in the pop culture of his time. Farmers sang the bawdy ballad
"A Merry Geste of a Shrewd and Curst Wyfe" while delivering wares
to the marketplace in Stratford's rustic streets.
After arriving in London, Shakespeare had come to admire (from
afar) another "shrew" as intensely as he now admonished Anne.
Queen Elizabeth had spurned a wide array of suitors, from Lord
Essex to Walter Raleigh, and ruled alone. The Bard-to-be basked in
the reflected glory of the great things Elizabeth had achieved for
England during its renaissance. He was to remain an almost uncrit-
ical admirer of, even an apologist for, her less popular decisions.
Secretly, though, Shakespeare probably shuddered over what he con-
sidered the great ruler's tragic flaw, a single failing that could ulti-
mately undo all the good she had accomplished. Elizabeth, the Virgin
Queen, would leave no clear-cut heir.
This, he knew from Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland
and Ireland, was bad—very bad. Although he was only a lowly play-
wright, perhaps Shakespeare employed his art as the queen's con-
science, reminding her, in the guise of divertissements, that
England's supreme ruler, like every good citizen, must avoid civil
strife. In Elizabeth's case, she had not married during her childbear-
ing years, nor had she named a successor. Of course, any such mes-
sage had to be implied rather than stated so as not to offend the
queen. Likewise, it had to amuse the general audience, ever hungry
for a good time at the theater. What better approach than to endow
a subgenre of comedy with a serious subtext?