Chapter 13

QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION

Are Katherine and Petruchio the most interesting characters in the Play? Why?

Is their prominence due to their personal attractiveness or to the Dramatist's skill?

V

THE TRIPLE MARRIAGE AND THE MORAL

Why should the Play not end with Act IV?

What does Act V add?

Is the quality of the table-talk in keeping with the plot and characters?

The husbands' talk and wager turns on what point, obedience to the husband, or agreement of husband and wife as mutually to their interest?

Show the drift of Kate's expression of the moral of the Play, and state your own way of looking at it.

QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION

Did Petruchio and Kate give an impromptu performance of conjugal felicity, or one decided upon beforehand?

Was Kate quick-witted enough to guess there was money in it, or was she really, once of a different mind and reformed.

VI

THE FOLK ORIGIN OF THE TAMING

Trace the antiquity of this schooling of a wife, and the resemblances and contrasts in the chief variants of the story (for help in this see Sources in "First Folio Edition").

Is there any progress to be discerned in the degree of bodily force deemed expedient?

Is any such scheme of the marriage-relation compatible with advanced civilization, or is it peculiar to crude notions of life in a taming age?

QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION

Is the folk-legend indicative of an inherent relation in marriage of the male and female natures, or is it merely an expression of established custom and legalized institution upon gaining for each the aims and line of conduct desired? If so, is the result of the process to gain a ground of mutual compromise and accommodation and a division of labor in joint life which will enable the process itself to fall into disuse.

Is coercion of others consistent with a high grade of individuality?

Did Petruchio play the Tamer in a "Pickwickian sense" and the whole thing being a bit of acting, did Kate see through it, finally, and play her part too?

The use of finesse in the Play (see Introduction to the Play "First Folio Edition").

Does Shakespeare's way of handling the characters and the process of taming materially differ from the way prevailing both in the crude folk tales and in "A Shrew?"

Does he suggest that in both Petruchio's and Kate's case they are merely bent upon their own individual emotions until closer relation makes them join forces?

What is the modern bearing of Shakespeare's way of putting the story?

Partnership and co-operation _versus_ autocratic rule: Are the administrative advantages of the latter consonant with the good will and continual psychical development furthered by the former?

Does the intellectual advantage rest with the user of force or with the mind that accommodates itself to force by gaining its ends by stratagem and other indirect policies?

Is coercion as wise as persuasion which has no such penalties to pay?

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST

Shakespeare makes us laugh in "Love's Labour's Lost" at the futility of the attempt of ascetic and academic men to shut out love and women from their schemes of life and study.

His early work in putting the past history of England into dramatic form may possibly have suggested to him to put more recent history on the stage by means of this Comedy. Light as it is, the point of it is to satirize the monastic and exclusive element in current educational schemes. Fictitious as the story is, it touches upon names and incidents belonging to actual history. So familiar were these actual happenings of the day to his audience that it could especially enjoy these veiled allusions to them.

The main idea of the plot of the Comedy--the "Academe," was one that had a bearing upon various similarly named educational projects of that time in England.

One such scheme was drawn up about 1570, by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh's half-brother, for the "education of her Majeste's Wardes and others the youths of nobility and gentlemen." This plan was, like Shakespeare's arranged for a "three yeeres terme" (I, i, 20) and at the end of "every three years" some book was to be published which would represent the fruit of the Academy's study during that period. Merely the title of this scheme--"Queen Elizabethes Achademy" may have suggested Shakespeare's "Achademe" (I, i, 17). Of course, however, both Gilbert's and Shakespeare's adoption of the name are examples of the appropriation by educational groups of the classic academes of the Philosophers of Athens and their student followers. Another educational plan "for the bringing up in vertue and learning of the Queenes Majestis Wardes," was devised by Sir Nicholas Bacon, in 1561. Later, in the reign of James I, the establishment of the "Academe Royal" by Bolton, is an example of the early vogue of the name, which has since become familiar everywhere, for educational and learned institutions.

A less important element in the formation of the plot is the allusion to current French politics which the situation of the characters of the Play suggests.

A King of Navarre and a Princess of France conferring in treaty over a disputed province and a claim of allowance for services rendered is an incident constituting a reference to a state of things in France then closely concerning England. The succession to the throne of France of Henry of Navarre, the champion of the Huguenots of France, was long contested. England was friendly to Navarre, the object of her foreign policy being to counterpoise the power of Spain and the Catholics of France, with whom Queen Elizabeth's most formidable rival, Mary Stuart, was allied in interest.

No king of Navarre was ever named Ferdinand. Yet by making an entirely fictitious hero a king of Navarre and the suitor of a princess of France, the relationship of Henry of Navarre to dominance in France was suggested in an unobjectionable and amusing way. And the death of the King of France introduced at the close of the Play, involving the prospect as a probability that the hero might then succeed to the throne of France, could scarcely fail to remind Shakespeare's audience of the actual struggle of the King of Navarre for the French crown, and also of the fact that on the death of the French King in August, 1589, Navarre then became heir presumptive, and after the battle of Ivry in 1590 Spain delayed but could not long obstruct his complete success.

In 1593 the most important cities of the Kingdom yielded him allegiance and in the Spring of 1594 Paris herself opened her gates to him. These dates 1589-1594 indicate the time, also, when "Love's Labour's Lost" is likely to have been timely in these references, and yield a clew to its date of composition.

The effect of these allusions to French political affairs, made more piquant by the downfall of Spain in her political opposition both to England and the party of Henry of Navarre, was intensified in Shakespeare's Play by the names given to Navarre's lords. _Berowne_, as the name appears in the Folio, is an English spelling of the French name _Biron_, to which it is changed in modernized editions of Shakespeare. _Longavill_ is an English equivalent of _Longueville_, and _Dumaine_ or _Dumane_ of De Mayenne, names which also are changed in the modernized editions, although not consistently. All these names are associated with Navarre's struggles in France. The Maréchal de Biron and the Duc de Longueville fought prominently on Navarre's side. The Duc de Mayenne, brother of Henry of Guise, fought on the opposite side. The Duc d'Alençon long a suitor for the hand of Queen Elizabeth, is mentioned as the father of Rosaline.

Another veiled reference to a Russian suitor of the Queen's seems to be made in the incident introduced in the last Act. This scene of the wooing of the King and his lords when disguised as Russians makes fun, perhaps, of an actual embassy of Russians to the Court of Elizabeth, in 1583, when the Queen had arranged to put upon Lady Mary Hastings the suit which the Czar Ivan had originally hoped to proffer to the Queen herself. (For information upon these and other incidents of the period that may be used in the plot see Sources, pp. 106-116 also Notes in the "First Folio Edition" of this Play).