Seven Arrows Homeschool: March 2009

Trish won the part of Kate (the lead) in Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew" to be performed by her homeschool Scholar's Class in May. Which sort of Shrew will she be? Hmm, watch out Liz Taylor! We are so proud of her. She really is amazing! Her mentor and director had this to say....
"I wanted to first tell you that Trisha did so well in auditioning for Katharina, although I'm sure you already knew that! I'm so grateful for her dedication and preparation. It inspires the other scholars and sets a standard of excellence in our commonwealth--even more than I can as the mentor. She is a true scholar and I'm so excited to work with her on the performance." Pam Love

Here's a few words about the play...

The Summary of Taming of the Shrew

This drama is one of the great comedy plays by William Shakespeare. The play starts with the Induction where a trick is played by a nobleman on the drunkard Christopher Sly who arranges for an acting troupe to perform a play called The Taming of the Shrew...The beautiful and gentle Bianca has no shortage of admirers (Lucentio, Gremio and Hortensio) but her father insists that she will not marry until her shrewish sister, Katharina, is betrothed. Bianca's suitors persuade fortune-seeker Petruchio to court her. The suitors pay for any costs involved and there is also the goal of Katharina's dowry. Petruchio marries Katharina and he carries Katharina off to his country house with his servant Grumio. Petruchio intends to browbeat Katharina into submission and he denies her food, sleep and her new clothes, whilst continuously singing her praises. Katharina is tamed. They return to Padua where Lucentio has won Bianca. At a banquet they wager on who has the most obedient wife. Each wife is issued with commands but only Katharina obeys and promptly lectures everyone on the importance of wifely submission.

Here's about Katharina (Trisha's role)...

Widely reputed throughout Padua to be a shrew, Katharina is foul-tempered and sharp-tongued at the start of the play. She constantly insults and degrades the men around her, and she is prone to wild displays of anger, during which she may physically attack whomever enrages her. Though most of the play’s characters simply believe Katharina to be inherently ill-tempered, it is certainly plausible to think that her unpleasant behavior stems from unhappiness. She may act like a shrew because she is miserable and desperate. There are many possible sources of Katharina’s unhappiness: she expresses jealousy about her father’s treatment of her sister, but her anxiety may also stem from feelings about her own undesirability, the fear that she may never win a husband, her loathing of the way men treat her, and so on. In short, Katharina feels out of place in her society. Due to her intelligence and independence, she is unwilling to play the role of the maiden daughter. She clearly abhors society’s expectations that she obey her father and show grace and courtesy toward her suitors. At the same time, however, Katharina must see that given the rigidity of her social situation, her only hope to find a secure and happy place in the world lies in finding a husband. These inherently conflicting impulses may lead to her misery and poor temper. A vicious circle ensues: the angrier she becomes, the less likely it seems she will be able to adapt to her prescribed social role; the more alienated she becomes socially, the more her anger grows.
Despite the humiliations and deprivations that Petruccio adds to her life, it is easy to understand why Katharina might succumb to marry a man like him. In their first conversation, Petruccio establishes that he is Katharina’s intellectual and verbal equal, making him, on some level, an exciting change from the easily dominated men who normally surround her. Petruccio’s forcible treatment of Katharina is in every way designed to show her that she has no real choice but to adapt to her social role as a wife. This adaptation must be attractive to Katharina on some level, since even if she dislikes the role of wife, playing it at least means she can command respect and consideration from others rather than suffer the universal revulsion she receives as a shrew. Having a social role, even if it is not ideal, must be less painful than continually rejecting any social role at all. Thus, Katharina’s eventual compliance with Petruccio’s self-serving “training” appears more rational than it might have seemed at first: by the end of the play, she has gained a position and even an authoritative voice that she previously had been denied.