William Shakespeare's 'The Taming of the Shrew'

By Pauline Montagna

'The Taming of the Shrew' is Shakespeare’s popular comedy about two sisters of Padua, the bad-tempered Katherina Minola and her beautiful younger sister Bianca. When their father declares that he will not let Bianca marry until Katherina does, Bianca’s elderly suiters recruit the uncouth Petruchio to woo and marry Katherina, after which he attempts to tame her. Meanwhile, Lucentio, a young scholar who has fallen in love with Bianca at first sight, disguises himself as her Latin tutor in order to woo and win her.

While aiming to keep as true as possible to Shakespeare’s text and intentions – closely following the story of the play, setting it in the same time and place as Shakespeare set it, with the same cast of characters – this novelization of Shakespeare’s play renders the story in lively modern prose and is an ideal entrée into Shakespeare’s play for any student or story-lover.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pauline Montagna
• Release date: Jan 7, 2022

Pauline Montagna

Pauline Montagna was born into an Italian family in Melbourne, Australia. After obtaining a BA in French, Italian and History, she indulged her artistic interests through amateur theatre, while developing her accounting skills through a wide variety of workplaces culminating in the Australian film industry. In her mid-thirties, Pauline returned to university and qualified as a teacher of English as Second Language, a profession she pursued while completing a Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing. She has now retired from full-teaching to concentrate on her writing.

Book preview

The Taming of the Shrew

by William Shakespeare

Adapted by Pauline Montagna

Copyright © Pauline Montagna 2020

Cover image:

Katherine and Petruchio

by

Robert Braithwaite Martineau (1826–1869)

Other titles by Pauline Montagna on Smashwords:

Not Wisely but Too Well

The Slave

Suburban Terrors

Desideratum

Ever the Bridesmaid

Out of the Ashes

Secrets and Suspicions

Echoes and Other Stories

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction to ‘The Taming of The Shrew’

The Taming of The Shrew

Afterword

‘The Taming of The Shrew’ on Screen

Also on Smashwords

Not Wisely but Too Well

The Slave

Suburban Terrors

Dedication

To Miriam

Without whose inspiration and support

This book would never have been written

Preface

Shakespeare never wrote his plays to be objects of study by students and academics. They were written to be seen and heard by ordinary people standing in an open-air theatre. The audience did not come primarily for the poetry. They were there to see and hear a great story. They were not likely to go home and repeat line after line of iambic pentameter apart from a few pithy phrases. They would go home and re-tell the story or re-enact their favourite scenes. And, of course, they had the advantage of daily hearing and speaking the same variety of English they heard on the stage.

Four hundred years later, in a world that has changed in every way imaginable since they were first performed, Shakespeare’s plays are not only set in times and places that are completely foreign to their audiences, but written in a language that is just as foreign. However, if audiences can approach the play already familiar with its contents – its setting and plot, the characters and their motivations – they can hear the language in a familiar context which will allow them to understand the play and actually enjoy it, just as Shakespeare’s original audiences did.

You will find that this novel closely follows the story as set out in the play. It is set in the same time and place as Shakespeare set it, with the same cast of characters, with the same names (even when those names seem out of place). Nevertheless, while the aim is to keep as true as possible to Shakespeare’s text and intentions, a prose adaptation of a play is, by its very nature, a re-interpretation and re-imagining of the play for the modern reader. A novel can be more flexible than a play and has the space for more material. It can fill out the back story, show what is happening ‘offstage’, follow up allusions in the dialogue, expand on shortcuts and navigate plot holes. A novel also has the space to describe the play’s geographical, social and historical context.

In the following pages, you will find a brief Introduction giving an overview of the play, its place in the Shakespearean canon, something of its contemporary context and how the novel relates to the play. In the novel itself, footnotes will be used to explain any anomalies such as when and why the novel diverges from the original text, or where Shakespeare has had to make allowances for the restrictions of a stage performance. An Afterword will discuss larger issues of interpretation and adaptation.

As Shakespeare put it, ‘the play’s the thing’, and my aim is not to replace the play but to elucidate it for you, so you might want to follow up reading the novel by watching and enjoying Shakespeare’s play. A live production of the play is not always at hand when you want it, so at the end of the book is a list of the currently available filmed versions of the play which can be streamed or purchased on DVD.

Introduction to ‘The Taming of the Shrew’

Written between 1589 and 1592, The Taming of the Shrew is one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays if not his first. It is a comedy about two sisters of Padua, the bad-tempered Katherina Minola and her beautiful younger sister Bianca. When their father declares that he will not let Bianca marry until Katherina does, Bianca’s elderly suiters recruit the uncouth Petruchio to woo and marry Katherina, after which he attempts to tame her. Meanwhile, Lucentio, a young scholar who has fallen in love with Bianca at first sight, disguises himself as her Latin tutor in order to woo and win her.

A romantic romp that has always been a favourite with audiences, the play anticipates many of the tropes of the modern romantic comedy. Despite its popularity, however, The Taming of the Shrew has always been seen as one of Shakespeare’s problem plays for its apparent misogyny. To a modern audience, Petruchio’s method of taming Katherina, by depriving her of food and sleep, might not involve physical beating, but it is clearly psychological abuse. Kate’s final speech, in which she exhorts women to respect and obey their husbands because they are totally dependent on them, seems to portray women as mere slaves to men’s needs and desires. In fact, the play’s gender politics caused unease even in its own time, so much so that Shakespeare’s successor, John Fletcher, wrote a sequel, The Tamer Tamed in which Petruchio is tamed by his second wife.

However, a play that may have once been seen as a polemic on the duty of wives to submit to their husbands can be re-examined and re-imagined for a post-feminist age. With little more than a shift in tone and emphasis, the play can be staged as a portrayal of a wife who proves herself to be as strong, if not stronger, than her husband. Writing for a post-feminist reader, this is the approach I have taken. I am sure Shakespeare would approve.

The Matter of Names

The Afterword will go into much more detail about the play’s sources, but I would like to have a word with you before you read the novel on the matter of names and their pronunciation.

The Taming of the Shrew has its roots in two different traditions. The main story comes from the English oral tradition, while the Bianca and Lucentio subplot is based on an Italian play which inspired Shakespeare to set his own play in Italy. Those English beginnings can be seen in the names of Petruchio’s servants, Curtis and his sons, where no attempt has been made to translate them into Italian. However, despite Shakespeare’s best efforts, the names of Katherina and Petruchio did not make the transition altogether successfully.

The first certainly exists in Italian but as Italian does not have a ‘k’ or use ‘th’ it is spelled and pronounced ‘Caterina’, which would not be shortened to Kate, but to ‘Rina’. I point this out in the hope that, when reading the novel, you will think of her full name as ‘Caterina’.

The matter of her husband’s name is a little more complicated. Shakespeare would have found it in his Italian source play. A diminutive of Pietro (or Peter), Petruccio is pronounced with a soft ‘ch’ sound. Most likely to ensure his English readers pronounced it correctly, Shakespeare added the ‘h’ and spelled it ‘Petruchio’. However, spelling rules are different in Italian. The combination of the letters ‘ci’ is always pronounced with a soft ‘c’ which in English would be written as ‘chi’. In order to make the sound ‘ki’ an ‘h’ is inserted between the ‘c’ and the ‘i’. Nowadays, most actors and directors know enough Italian to know this rule, so pronounce the English spelling of the name in the Italian manner, thus ironically mispronouncing it as ‘Petrukio’. I have kept the original spelling, but again I hope that, when you read the novel, you think of his name as ‘Petruccio’.

The Taming of the Shrew

Prologue

[Footnote: This sequence, called the Induction in Shakespeare’s play, is actually rather long. However, not being part of the main action, it is often cut from performances. It is included here briefly in order to make this a complete rendition of the play.]

Christopher Sly, the odd-job-man, was being drunk and disorderly again and such a nuisance to his fellow drinkers that the publican had no choice but to throw him out of the tavern and into the street, threatening to call the village constable if he dared return. Sly had no fear of the constable and seeing all the houses in the village swim past him, thought it would be best to stay put and wait for his house to come by. He sat on the pavement and, his head being heavy, he laid it on the ground and immediately fell asleep.

It so happened that the Lord of the Manor had been out hunting that day and was in a fine mood as the hunt had been a great success. He and his attendants were making their way home through the village when they saw Sly sleeping in the gutter. The Lord knew Sly of old. He had often seen the odd-job-man drunk and insolent when he was prone to claiming that his family was nobler and older than the Lord’s. ‘Well,’ thought the Lord, ‘perhaps it’s time to take old Sly at his word.’ So he ordered his servants to pick him up without waking him and bring him home with them.

The Lord put Sly in his best chamber. He had his filthy clothes stripped from him, had him bathed, dressed in his best linens and laid between the finest sheets. He ordered his servants to serve him hand and foot with silver platters of the most delicate food and glass jugs of the best wine. And to complete the picture, the Lord had his handsomest pageboy dress up as the Lady of the Manor. Then, very gently, they woke him up.

Sly was naturally bewildered when he opened his eyes. The last thing he remembered was being thrown out of the pub. What was going on here? Bit by bit, the servants and his lady-wife (otherwise known as the page Bartholomew) were able to persuade him that he was indeed the Lord of the Manor who had been asleep for fifteen years and that he had only dreamt of being Christopher Sly the odd-job-man. Given the luxury of his surroundings and the beauty of his lady-wife, Sly was happy to believe the evidence of his own eyes and that his memories of his old hand-to-mouth existence were truly nothing more than bad dreams.

It also so happened that that very morning a troupe of wandering players had arrived in the village and offered their services to the Lord of the Manor. So, to keep Sly amused, and his hands off poor Bartholomew, the Lord now called on them. The play they performed was called The Taming of the Shrew and the story went as follows…

Chapter One

[Footnote: Films and stage productions of the play usually show Tranio and Lucentio arriving in Padua overland. However, Lucentio’s remark: ‘If, Biondello, thou wert come ashore…’ indicates they have arrived by boat using the extensive network of inland waterways that served Northern Italy in Shakespeare’s time.]

Lucentio Bentivolio arrived in the fair city of Padua on a glorious, sunny afternoon. He looked about him eagerly, his lifelong servant Tranio by his side, as his boy Biondello stood in the back of the boat, punting them down the canal that would bring them right into the centre of town. He was exhausted but excited. It had taken them three weeks on horseback to cross the rocky Apennines from their home in Pisa and descend into Lombardy, the garden of Italy, where they hired a boat to sail down the mighty River Po.

Lucentio had long dreamed of attending the University of Padua, the second oldest in Italy, and now it was finally happening. He had promised his father, Vincentio, that he would not waste his money and would study hard, and he was determined to stick to his promise. As soon as he stepped ashore, he would take up his studies with great diligence and let nothing distract him.

Vincentio had been reluctant to send Lucentio so far away. He loved his only son dearly and would rather not be parted from him, but he was also proud of the boy’s intelligence. When Lucentio was only eight, Vincentio had seen his potential and sent him to Florence for his education, but he had already exhausted all the learning he could get there. Vincentio would have preferred to take his son into his business, a business that had taken him all over Italy and around the Mediterranean, but Lucentio was a gifted scholar and not meant for the life of a merchant. He had begged his father to let him go to Padua and Vincentio had had no choice but to agree.

Nonetheless, for all his son’s eagerness to study, Vincentio still worried about what might become of him. Lucentio was a romantic young man, given to sudden enthusiasms. Vincentio hoped that the university would settle him down, give him some discipline and an outlet for his lively mind. However, to make doubly sure of his son’s safety, he had sent Tranio with him. Vincentio had taken Tranio’s widowed mother in as a servant when he was only three years old. He had been Lucentio’s companion since his birth and, while not as educated as his master, he was as shrewd as Lucentio was clever. He could be trusted to make sure his young master did not get into trouble.

‘Oh Tranio’, Lucentio sighed. ‘I am finally here. There was much to learn in Pisa and Florence, I know, but I feel now as though all that time I was drinking at a shallow pool, but here in Padua I can drink deeply from a great river of learning. I do not think I will ever get enough of it. The moment we land I must go directly to the University to seek out my professors and set up a course of studies, for, as the ancients say, it is only through philosophy that one can achieve true happiness. Do you not agree, Tranio?’

Tranio chuckled. ‘Forgive me, gentle Master. I’m as moved to be here as you are, and I’m glad that you’re determined to be disciplined and study virtuously, but I beg you not to become a boring swot with no time for the sweeter things in life. Don’t neglect the beauty of poetry and music, make friends with whom you can practise your rhetoric through good conversation, though avoid too much logic for it only leads to arguments, and don’t fill your head with more mathematics and metaphysics than you can stand. Remember that you’ll learn nothing if you aren’t enjoying what you’re studying.’

‘Thank you, Tranio,’ Lucentio replied. ‘That is wise advice. Well, let us start with settling down in our rooms, which, my father assures me, will be fit to entertain my new Paduan friends.’

As they were speaking, Biondello had brought the boat alongside a landing that served a row of substantial houses and was only a short distance from the hotel where Vincentio had written to book rooms for them before they left Pisa. They were busy unloading the boat when they heard a commotion approaching them.

Tranio climbed up a few of the landing steps so he could see what was happening on the street. ‘Ho, ho, Master, it looks like they’ve sent out a welcome party for us.’ Curious, Lucentio joined him.

The party was led by two young women in rich clothing, walking quickly, lifting their long skirts off the ground. The younger one was pretty and laughing, with fair hair worn long. The elder was dark-haired and handsome but frowning. Behind them a middle-aged man, obviously their father, was ushering them forward while arguing with two men who were following