Hi, folks! This is ELICA Miwa, Theatre director, actor, writer in Japan. I am going to start a new series of One Phrase Shakespeare. The first season was on The Two Gentlemen of Verona. We still don’t know which one is Will’s first play. But we surely know The Taming Of The Shrew is one of the earliest plays he wrote. Yes, it is a problematic play in this age when many of we women think we should not be suppressed by men. How can we read the play now? Is the play still relevant to our age? Let us think about it together.
This play has a peculiar form.
Many of you know Romeo & Juliet has a prologue; it gives us a form of a story-teller telling a story of another time and place.
The Taming Of The Shrew starts with a drunken man called Sly. He falls asleep and tricked by his Lord to believe he is the Lord now, and actors give a play for him: it is a play about a shrew’s marriage.
So, the character Sly becomes the audience to watch a play The Taming Of The Shrew, with us the real audience. Quite strange style to give a play. I also need to think why Shakespeare needed this structure.
Anyway, the first word of the play is this:
I’ll pheeze you, in faith.
Being kicked out of an inn by the hostess, heavily drunk, and without a penny.
The hostess left him outside.
And Sly falls asleep.
And there comes… That I will tell you next cast. See you, Bye!
