Feeling like a light-hearted Renaissance romp about domestic abuse?
Would you enjoy a 16th-century study of how to put the wife in her place?
How about an Elizabethan take on Tammy Wynette’s classic, Stand by Your Man?
If these themes are appealing, then perhaps you should take in The Taming of the Shrew being produced by Shakespeare by the Sea this summer in Halifax’s Point Pleasant Park.
I wouldn’t call myself a huge fan of the slapstick domestic violence genre.
I don’t find it terribly funny to see a husband bullying his wife by depriving her of food.
And whether it’s 1590 or 2014, it’s painful to think of a spirited woman being manipulated by fear and forced to submit to things she knows not to be true.
The sun is the moon, right darling?
Yes, of course, husband, the sun is the moon.
This is how it goes in The Taming of The Shrew.
So why is this play still produced, viewed, laughed at and loved by audiences?
Well, for starters, it is the work of a writer who is perhaps the finest and most beloved the English-language world has ever produced. Shakespeare’s play is the story of Petruchio who marries Katherina and sets out to tame her rebellious and obstreperous ways.
The husband humiliates her publicly at their wedding when he shows up late and dressed like a buffoon. In private, he uses tactics such as starvation, sleep deprivation, threats of violence and coercion.
That would be torture. Oh, the lap-slapping hilarity!
In the end, Katherina submits to Petruchio’s will and makes a speech about wives obeying their husbands.
We don’t know for sure if she buys into this or if her compliance is just her way of finding peace. Shakespeare doesn’t say.
Viewed through the lens of modern social norms, the play is disturbing.
On the one hand, we are witnessing a fun-loving celebration of domestic violence.
On the other hand, we are laughing at bullying and abuse rather than sympathizing with the bullied and abused party and demanding justice.
Part of the disconnect is the time in which the play was written: 1590.
You cannot judge a play or any artistic enterprise without placing it in the social, cultural and political context of its time.
Henry VIII had left the Catholic church in his quest to get a divorce. His daughter, Elizabeth I — no shrinking violet of woman — was on the throne. The Renaissance was changing ideas about religion, art and culture. It was the eve of the era of the Enlightenment.
Unsurprisingly, there is debate around the meaning of the play. Some say it is Shakespeare’s critique of the — then — modern marriage, a relationship that was soon to evolve from one based on power, land and money to one based on love and romance.
It is also an observation of psychological manipulation, power and human nature. Gentlemen of the Renaissance era did not physically beat their wives into submission — they used threats, starvation and sleep deprivation, which was regarded as more civilized.
Some say it was controversial even in its day.
Others say that the treatment of Katherina is so absurd — forcing her to say the sun is the moon? — that the play is verging on the farcical.
I like to think of it as the Archie Bunker of its day.
The 1970s American sitcom shone a light on the racist, sexist attitudes of the working-class Archie who was living in — and at times grappling with — a time of huge social change.
The producers of the show used humour to help us relate to the character and his story while still observing and commenting on attitudes that were becoming objectionable.
I will probably see The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare by the Sea this summer.
The domestic abuse aspect will be a little uncomfortable, but I will no doubt laugh as I would have laughed at Archie.