Shakespeare After All

by Marjorie Garber

“What think'st thou of the fair Sir Eglamour? … What think'st thou of the rich Mercatio? … What think'st thou of the gentle Proteus?” (1.2.9, 12, 14).

(The word “cod” in the period meant “bag,” “scrotum,” “peapod,” and “stomach,” and it is used by Shakespeare at one time or another in each of these senses.)

Silvia Thou counterfeit to thy true friend. Proteus In love Who respects friend? Silvia All men but Proteus.

The increasingly unlikable Proteus now attempts to rape her (“I'll force thee yield to my desire”), the very threat against which he was supposedly defending her, a few lines before, when he came upon her in the outlaws' grasp.

And yet less than twenty lines later this same Valentine will deliver himself of the play's most astonishing line, one that has sent critics and editors scurrying to find an explanation

And that my love may appear plain and free, All that was mine in Silvia I give thee. 5.4.82–83

Speed Why, she hath given you a letter. Valentine That's the letter I writ to her friend. Speed And that letter hath she delivered, and there an end. 2.1.142–144

The comedy of a too-strict law can become tragic in an instant, as death threatens to follow upon the enforcement of an edict handed down from above.

Launce's swipe at Jews cannot be wished away; here and elsewhere in the plays the social caricature of the hardhearted or mercenary Jew is casually invoked, with the implication that most in the audience would recognize this characterization and agree with it. His namesake character in The Merchant of Venice, Lancelot Gobbo, shares Launce's views of Jewish nature.

Nay, I remember the trick you served me when I took my leave of Madam Silvia. Did not I bid thee still mark me, and do as I do? When didst thou see me heave up my leg and make water against a gentlewoman's farthingale? Didst thou ever see me do such a trick? 4.4.29–33

The Taming of the Shrew

Two

Some larger themes of dream, impersonation, transformation, and disguise, initiated in the Induction, carry through and unify the entire play.

Lord Persuade him that he hath been lunatic, And when he says he is, say that he dreams, For he is nothing but a mighty lord. Taming Induction 1.59–61

Or do I dream? Or have I dreamed till now? I do not sleep. I see, I hear, I speak. I smell sweet savours, and I feel

soft things. Upon my life, I am a lord indeed, And not a tinker, nor Christopher Sly. Induction 2.66–71

all the women's parts in The Taming of the Shrew are played—as always in this period on the English public stage—by boy actors.

the Induction, the play-before-the-play, introduces and mirrors all the major issues that will preoccupy the actors in the main drama to come.

“ 'Tis death for any one in Mantua / To come to Padua” (4.2.82–83);

Petruchio Thou hast hit it. Come, sit on me. Katherine Asses are made to bear, and so are you. Petruchio Women are made to bear, and so are you.

(Katherine: “Where did you study all this goodly speech?” Petruchio: “It is extempore, from my mother-wit.” Katherine: “A witty mother, witless else her son” [2.1.255–257]),

“she, poor soul, / Knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak, / And sits as one new risen from a dream” (4.1.165–167).

Katherine Husband, let's follow to see the end of this ado. Petruchio First kiss me, Kate, and then we will. 5.1.122–124

Part of the problem, if it is a problem, is that many modern readers do not want Shakespeare to hold, or to have held, views that are socially or politically incompatible with their own; this is “our Shakespeare,” who seems to know us better than we know ourselves, since, in a way, he, or his plays,

have made us who and what we are. Thus, to discover, say, any trace of anti-Jewish sentiment or anti-Moorish (antiblack) sentiment in “our Shakespeare” feels like a disappointment, perhaps even a betrayal.

Katherine Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee, And for thy maintenance commits his body To painful labour both by sea and land, To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe, And craves no other tribute at thy hands But love, fair looks, and true obedience, Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince,

I am ashamed that women are so simple To offer war when they should kneel for peace, Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway When they are bound to serve, love, and obey. Taming 5.2.150–168

Hortensio Now go thy ways, thou hast tamed a curst shrew. Lucentio Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so. 5.2.192–193

One pertinent question we might ask is whether the play is “meant” to be experienced from Kate's perspective or from Petruchio's. There is, of course, no way to know Shakespeare's

“intention,” a will-o'-the-wisp that has led many commentators astray. What is more important here is to remember that stage plays, unlike novels, memoirs, or lyric poems, have no single point of view, and no narrative voice.

it is one of Shakespeare's brilliant gifts as a dramatist to provide, in almost every case, a credible contrary argument, onstage, to what might seem to be a prevailing viewpoint.

Is the insistence of these early comedies on the character of the shrewish woman or shrewish wife any commentary on Shakespeare's own marriage?

Guessing and speculating about what Shakespeare's own views might be is part of the game of “supposes” that playgoing, or play reading, permits and encourages. But it is vital to remember that these are indeed just suppositions, some of them spurious, or false,

Titus Andronicus

Three

HE PLAYGOERS of Shakespeare's time would have been far more familiar with Roman history and classical mythology than is a modern audience.

The classical myths were well known through readings of Ovid—a basic text in grammar school education—Virgil, and other ancient poets. For Elizabethans, these were not arcane or obscure texts. References to Tereus, Philomela, and Procne, to Dido and Aeneas, would have been part of the

common store of knowledge, as is clear from those many moments in Shakespeare's plays when “low” characters joke about mythological figures.

Aaron, Shakespeare's witty and vengeful Moor. When Aaron boasts to Titus's son Lucius that he “must talk of murders, rapes, and

massacres, / Acts of black night, abominable deeds, / Complots of mischief, treason, villainies” (5.1.63–65), he sounds very much like Marlowe's Barabas.

“How can I grace my talk,” wonders Titus, “Wanting a hand to give it action?” (5.2.17–18).

much that seems strangest or most arcane to us in Titus Andronicus would have been well within the cultural reach of a contemporary audience:

These appalling spectacles, which uncannily resemble the events of a modern horror film, are not what we are used to thinking of as “Shakespearean.”

In particular, the use of what our time has come to call “black humor” or moments of “absurdist” and “existential” comedy may seem out of place in the lexicon of a Shakespeare best known to many readers for his emotional verisimilitude and his psychological acuity.

an extraordinarily powerful story in its own right—one that may serve, in our consideration, as the root or radical form of all Shakespearean tragedy.

the popular Elizabethan theme of madness, feigned or real (an issue that will reappear with full force in the “madness” of the title characters—and of others—in Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear);

Thanks, noble Titus, father of my life. How proud I am of thee and of thy gifts Rome shall record; and when I do forget The least of these unspeakable

deserts, Romans, forget your fealty to me. Titus 1.1.253–257

come to grisly life, with famous (or notorious) stage directions like “Enter a Messenger with two heads and a hand” (3.1.233).

By choosing emperor over kindred, impersonal law over personal affection, Titus has made the kind of error that, in Shakespearean tragedy, is irreversible.

“Rape” call you it, my lord, to seize my own— My true betrothèd love, and now my wife? 1.1.402—403

Titus, I am incorporate in Rome, / A Roman now adopted happily” [1.1.459–460]),