July 2015: The Taming of The Shrew

Due to a number of time-intensive end-of-school-year activities, as well as a broken keyboard, and a general agreement that none of us really liked The Two Gentlemen of Verona very much, this read-along kind of got off to a slow start. Did any of you read along with us? What did you think of our first play? And are you looking forward to The Taming of the Shrew?


A quick synopsis: A nobleman happens upon a drunkard passed out in the middle of the road, and decides to play a trick on him. He has him bathed and dressed in finery, and arranges it so he wakes up in the Lord's finest chambers. He gets his page to dress in drag and pretend to be the 'Lord's' wife, and he gets a troupe of players to perform a play for him. That play is The Taming of the Shrew: Katharina and Bianca are two daughters of a weathy nobleman in Padua. Bianca is beautiful and saintly and quiet, and so everyone wants to marry her. Kate is the shrew of the title, argumentative and violent, and so nobody wants to marry her, but their father refuses to match Bianca up until somebody weds Kate. Bianca's several suitors try to get an in with her by posing as tutors, and Lucentio ends up winning her heart (while his servant Tranio woos her father in his master's guise). Meanwhile, Petruchio, a brash young man in town looking for a rich wife, sets his heart on Kate's dowery (and, when he meets her, on Kate, too). Petruchio uses CIA-style interrogation techniques to 'tame' Kate, Lucentio wins Bianca, and, at the end, Kate proves to be entirely tamed while Lucentio discovers that Bianca has shrewish capabilities of her own.

Truth be told, it's not my favorite work, but it did inspire a couple of fun movies, and it's always interesting to see what a great actor does with the part of Katharina.

Meanwhile, on Tumblr: Month 2

Benedict gives some thoughts over on the Tumblr

This play is such a buddy comedy -- as such it has all the problems of a male buddy comedy, summed up by the whole one-guy giving over the women to the other guy resolution. Ouch, pretty sure that was a major part of the movies of my youth.

Benedick (over on the tumbler - and it is awesome using pseudonyms for your kids that they choose themselves) likes the dialogue. And here he recognizes what the 18th-century Shakespeare scholar Edmond Malone identified when he said that both the poetry and the comedy "are as perfectly Shakespearean (I do not say as finished or as beautiful) as any of his other pieces"

For me, this is young exuberant Shakespeare who knows he is awesome at the word play and everyone better watch out. So yeah, a teen buddy comedy written by this young auteur still in film school or maybe just out of it. You can see the genius but boy is he a jerk. Luckily, unlike many film auteurs, Shakespeare grows out of it.

Links -- Tumblr and Facebook

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June 2015: The Two Gentlemen of Verona

"The Two Gentlemen of Verona has the unenviable distinction of being the least loved and least regarded of Shakespeare's comedies." - The Riverside Shakespeare

The good news is it's a quick read. It's almost frothy, it's so light and insubstantial. The only reasons to like this play are 1. Launce and his dog and b. it's got all of the elements that will become trademark Shakespeare comedy gimmicks: crossdressing, a trip to the woods, outlaws, hiding out with priests, feisty nurses, rings as love tokens that change hands several times in unexpected ways, all that kind of thing.

Let me back up. Proteus and Valentine are best friends. Proteus is in love with Julia. Valentine leaves Verona for Milan to seek his fortune. There he falls in love with Silvia, who is already betrothed to the rich, but dim, Sir Thurio. Proteus gets sent to Milan, also to seek his fortune. There he also falls in love with Silvia (mostly, one gathers, because Valentine's in love with her) and he exposes their plan to elope to her father. Valentine is banished to the woods. Julia, to keep tabs on Proteus, dresses as a boy and goes off to Milan, where she is employed, by Proteus, as a messenger, to bring love notes to Silvia. Silvia consistently rejects Proteus, 'cuz he's creepy, and runs away to the woods to seek out Valentine. Proteus finds her there and tries to rape her (with Julia in tow as his servant, no less). Julia swoons and the truth is out, whereupon Proteus decides one dame is as good as another and Valentine bests Sir Thurio and gets to marry Silvia, and they all live happily ever after (for very low expectations of 'happily'). Proteus' servant Launce and Valentine's servant Speed crack wise throughout.

So, the good news is, there's nowhere to go from here but up!

Welcome

Hello and welcome to our read-along of Shakespeare's plays. Our intent is to read a play a month until we've read them all (yes, we're aware that this will take more than three years), and we hope you'll join us! Along the way, we'll post our thoughts, as well as any resources we come across, and we encourage read-along-ers of all ages and backgrounds -- from novice to bardolater -- to do the same.

We plan on reading the plays in loose chronological order, according to the current, commonly accepted list found on Wikipedia, with the small change of reading Henry VI Part 1 before the second and third parts instead of after, and leaving off a few lost or questionable works. So, our schedule for our first year of reading looks like:

June 2015: The Two Gentlemen of Verona
July 2015: The Taming of the Shrew
August 2015: Henry VI Part 1
September 2015: Henry VI Part 2
October 2015: Henry VI Part 3
November 2015: Titus Andronicus
December 2015: Richard III
January 2016: The Comedy of Errors
February 2016: Love's Labour's Lost
March 2016: Richard II
April 2016: Romeo and Juliet
May 2016: A Midsummer Night's Dream

We'll be reading from our beat-up, old Riverside Shakespeare, but there are plenty of online versions you can go to: MIT, for example, has a no-frills, Complete Works available, and the Folger Shakespeare Library has a more edited collection.

Watch this space in the next few days for more general information and introductions, and get started with The Two Gentlemen of Verona next week!