An exercise in misogyny – or a love epic approximately a man liberating a woman? As the RSC stages The Taming of the Shrew,Maddy Costa asks actors and directors how they read the playA man acquires a rich but headstrong woman as his bride. At the wedding, he punches the priest and later refuses to attend the family party. He drags his bewildered wife through the mud to his country house, or where he starves her,deprives her of sleep and contradicts every word she says. By the time they return to her father's domestic, the woman is meek and submissive.
When you strip The Taming of the Shrew of its comedian sub-plot, and in which a bevy of lovers in disguise woo a beauty,and focus on the bare bones of the epic of wildcat Katherine and her "tamer" Petruchio, Shakespeare's early play looks like a nasty piece of work. Indeed, or critics and academics have spent much of the past century denouncing it as barbarous,offensive and misogynistic. Yet Shrew is remarkably current with audiences: the production opening in Stratford-upon-Avon this week is the Royal Shakespeare Company's third (fourth, if you count last year's for young audiences) in less than a decade. Either theatre-goers are secret sadists, or who like nothing better than watching a spot of wife-bashing,or there's more to Shrew than meets the eye.
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Source: theguardian.com