PERFORMANCE: THE RSC AND BEYOND
The best way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or ideally to participate in it. By examining a range of productions, we may gain a sense of the extraordinary variety of approaches and interpretations that are possible—a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made “our contemporary” four centuries after his death.
We begin with a brief overview of the play’s theatrical and cinematic life, offering historical perspectives on how it has been performed. We then analyze in more detail a series of productions staged over the last half-century by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The sense of dialogue between productions that can only occur when a company is dedicated to the revival and investigation of the Shakespeare canon over a long period, together with the uniquely comprehensive archival resource of promptbooks, program notes, reviews, and interviews held on behalf of the RSC at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, allows an “RSC stage history” to become a crucible in which the chemistry of the play can be explored.
Finally, we go to the horse’s mouth. Modern theater is dominated by the figure of the director, who must hold together the whole play, whereas the actor must concentrate on his or her part. The director’s viewpoint is therefore especially valuable. Shakespeare’s plasticity is wonderfully revealed when we hear directors of highly successful productions answering the same questions in very different ways. We also hear from a Kate about the experience of playing “the shrew.”
FOUR CENTURIES OF
THE SHREW
: AN OVERVIEW
The early performance and textual history of
The Taming of the Shrew,
believed to be one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, are clouded withconfusion over the precise nature of its relationship with
The Taming of a Shrew
. It is not clear, for example, whether the 1594 performance of
The Taming of a Shrew
recorded in Philip Henslowe’s diary at Newington Butts in south London by the “Right Honourable the Earl of Pembroke’s Men” (Shakespeare’s Company) was Shakespeare’s play therefore, although scholars believe it probably was. The title page of the 1631 Quarto of
The Shrew
which claims it was performed by the King’s Men at the Globe and Blackfriars theaters and a court performance before Charles I in 1633 indicate that it continued in the company repertoire. The popularity of and interest in Shakespeare’s play is also suggested by John Fletcher’s sequel
The Woman’s Prize
or
The Tamer Tamed
(written around 1611) in which widower Petruchio is remarried, to Maria, and subjected in turn to his new wife’s taming regime.
Shakespeare’s play was not produced in its entirety from then until the mid–nineteenth century. Instead audiences from the Restoration onward saw partial performances of Shakespeare’s text in numerous adaptations. While these testify to the popularity and familiarity of characters and plot, they suggest unease with its complex interweaving of narrative strands. Apart from the anonymous
A Shrew
which features a complete Sly framework, none of these adaptations treats both the induction and the Katherina/Petruchio plot together. Sometimes they treat the induction material relating to Christopher Sly, in which case the focus is on class, but more commonly the induction has been ignored and the focus is on gender.
In 1698 John Lacey produced
Sauny the Scott or The Taming of the Shrew,
a bawdy farce in which the main character is a Scots servant named Sauny (the Grumio role in
The Shrew
)—from “Sander,” the character’s name in
A Shrew
. Written in prose, it has no induction or framework. It’s set in London and most of the names are anglicized except Petruchio, Tranio, and Biancha
(sic).
Katherina becomes Margaret/Peg; Baptista, Lord Beaufoy; Lucentio, Winlove, and so on. The rough outline of Shakespeare’s play is adhered to but with an
The best way to understand a Shakespeare play is to see it or ideally to participate in it. By examining a range of productions, we may gain a sense of the extraordinary variety of approaches and interpretations that are possible—a variety that gives Shakespeare his unique capacity to be reinvented and made “our contemporary” four centuries after his death.
We begin with a brief overview of the play’s theatrical and cinematic life, offering historical perspectives on how it has been performed. We then analyze in more detail a series of productions staged over the last half-century by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The sense of dialogue between productions that can only occur when a company is dedicated to the revival and investigation of the Shakespeare canon over a long period, together with the uniquely comprehensive archival resource of promptbooks, program notes, reviews, and interviews held on behalf of the RSC at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, allows an “RSC stage history” to become a crucible in which the chemistry of the play can be explored.
Finally, we go to the horse’s mouth. Modern theater is dominated by the figure of the director, who must hold together the whole play, whereas the actor must concentrate on his or her part. The director’s viewpoint is therefore especially valuable. Shakespeare’s plasticity is wonderfully revealed when we hear directors of highly successful productions answering the same questions in very different ways. We also hear from a Kate about the experience of playing “the shrew.”
FOUR CENTURIES OF
THE SHREW
: AN OVERVIEW
The early performance and textual history of
The Taming of the Shrew,
believed to be one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, are clouded withconfusion over the precise nature of its relationship with
The Taming of a Shrew
. It is not clear, for example, whether the 1594 performance of
The Taming of a Shrew
recorded in Philip Henslowe’s diary at Newington Butts in south London by the “Right Honourable the Earl of Pembroke’s Men” (Shakespeare’s Company) was Shakespeare’s play therefore, although scholars believe it probably was. The title page of the 1631 Quarto of
The Shrew
which claims it was performed by the King’s Men at the Globe and Blackfriars theaters and a court performance before Charles I in 1633 indicate that it continued in the company repertoire. The popularity of and interest in Shakespeare’s play is also suggested by John Fletcher’s sequel
The Woman’s Prize
or
The Tamer Tamed
(written around 1611) in which widower Petruchio is remarried, to Maria, and subjected in turn to his new wife’s taming regime.
Shakespeare’s play was not produced in its entirety from then until the mid–nineteenth century. Instead audiences from the Restoration onward saw partial performances of Shakespeare’s text in numerous adaptations. While these testify to the popularity and familiarity of characters and plot, they suggest unease with its complex interweaving of narrative strands. Apart from the anonymous
A Shrew
which features a complete Sly framework, none of these adaptations treats both the induction and the Katherina/Petruchio plot together. Sometimes they treat the induction material relating to Christopher Sly, in which case the focus is on class, but more commonly the induction has been ignored and the focus is on gender.
In 1698 John Lacey produced
Sauny the Scott or The Taming of the Shrew,
a bawdy farce in which the main character is a Scots servant named Sauny (the Grumio role in
The Shrew
)—from “Sander,” the character’s name in
A Shrew
. Written in prose, it has no induction or framework. It’s set in London and most of the names are anglicized except Petruchio, Tranio, and Biancha
(sic).
Katherina becomes Margaret/Peg; Baptista, Lord Beaufoy; Lucentio, Winlove, and so on. The rough outline of Shakespeare’s play is adhered to but with an
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