Page 29 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

18 I Shakespeare in the Movies

method to Petruchio's madness from the start. He wishes to make
Kate see herself as others see her, and for her benefit he transforms
himself into an image of unreasonable conduct." This explains why
The Taming of the Shrew remains popular even in our postfeminist
age. In other shrew plays, the male conqueror tames a haughty
woman for his own benefit through what we consider physical
abuse. Shakespeare's hero hungers to make a remarkable, if tem-
peramental, woman understand she must meet the world halfway
for the greater good of herself—and everyone.
Today the key challenge in mounting The Taming of the Shrew is
to create a tone which conveys to a modern audience that it is about
achieving equality, not male dominance. Also tricky is the balance
of the Lucentio-Bianca plot, penned in the sophisticated style of Ital-
ian Renaissance comedy of intrigue, with the broad, burlesque-like
Kate-Petruchio main plot.

Early Efforts
The first-known film version neatly sidestepped such issues. During
the era of nickelodeons, director William Curran knocked out a
twelve-minute featurette called Taming of the Shrew for the immi-
grant audience that attended early flickers. Sandwiched between
vaudeville acts at New York's Stanley Theater, this turn-of-the-cen-
tury minimovie concerned a pathetic would-be boxer, One Punch
McTague (Eddie Gribbon), who develops a mad crush on a literary
lady, Ethel (Mildred June). She attempts to civilize her Hairy Ape by
introducing him to the Bard, hoping that Will's music will soothe
the savage breast of McTague, a variation of the coarse hero in Frank
Norris's then-popular naturalistic novel McTeague. As Ethel reads
Shrew, McTague dreams that he, like Petruchio, might conquer his
own Kate; the relationship of life to literature is fascinatingly present
in this crude one-reeler.
America's first great director, D. W. Griffith, attempted a more
authentic version in 1908, with Florence Lawrence (nicknamed the
"Biograph Girl," the first true star of motion pictures) cast as Kate
and Arthur Johnson as Petruchio. Griffith has been called the Shake-
speare of the cinema; Kate, the self-reliant yet virginal hero, was as
appropriate a heroine for Griffith as she had been to Will. Mack
Sennett, Griffith's then assistant, served as second-unit director, turn-
ing Petruchio's servants into predecessors of the comic clowns and
Keystone Kops he would shortly create in Southern California. That