Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
"I feel that I have spent half my career with one or another Pelican Shakespeare in my back pocket. Convenience, however, is the least important aspect of the new Pelican Shakespeare series. Here is an elegant and clear text for either the study or the rehearsal room, notes where you need them and the distinguished scholarship of the general editors, Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller who understand that these are plays for performance as well as great texts for contemplation." (Patrick Stewart)
The distinguished Pelican Shakespeare series, which has sold more than four million copies, is now completely revised and repackaged.
Each volume features:
* Authoritative, reliable texts
* High quality introductions and notes
* New, more readable trade trim size
* An essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare and essays on Shakespeare's life and the selection of texts
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Mending a jaded heart
Customer Rating:
In Dante's Inferno those deepest in hell are those that can not accept love because they are too suspicious of the actions of others; they think of love as a con-job waiting to happen. Petruchio plays games that save Kathrina's heart, she accepts love, this tough love/ cruel to be kind method, and a sort of miracle happens and Petruchio fully deserves his reward. Petruchio did more than win Kate's love he saved her soul. Bianca suffers from an almost equally deadly disease, vanity, but will there be someone to save her from that? Highly doubtful and now she is the shrew and her husband, Lucentio, can expect a life of dread and discomfiture for being the overly lusty boy he was.
Much of Shakespeare is other than what it seems. Katharina has a cynical, jaded heart one that distrusts the idea of love, one that can not accept love, after being raised in a house where her father openly prefers her younger sister and her younger sister is paraded as the glimmering child of promise Katharina's heart has been drug through the mud.
Shakespeare read Ovid and alludes often to Ovid's idea that a happy marriage (if it exists at all) is between equals. Petruchio shows Kate through his unyielding efforts that he loves her, much of this strategy is to shine a mirror back in Katharina's face through his actions so she can see herself more clearly. Petruchio is her equal. Love is gained when Katharina takes over Petruchio's game herself and plays with Petruchio at it, but it is a loving game, being mean while saying that she loves him like he did; Petruchio's stubborness pays off and the words grow to mean what they say to both of them. Love takes time and commitment, it is a labor. Petruchio also convinces Katharina that he is willing to put his house in a caotic mess for her love.
Gremio never seeks to meet his equal in either looks nor wealth and got what Ovid would probably call a natural consequence.
Does anybody really doubt that the relationship between Petruchio and Kathrina will be of equals and loving? Gremio and Lucentio are set up for dread, they did not set out to find their equals. In a sense it is a tragedy for Lucentio because he fell to lust not to his studies and got what he deserved.
The comparison of dogs, particularly three dogs, at the beginning is interesting. Analogy: Dog is to nose, as woman is to heart - the stage is set - let the play begin. Three women's hearts are compared in the end of the play. What is the condition of your heart? Read and find out.
Christopher Sly? Why, he is you.
Taming of the Shrew Review
Customer Rating:
This is not the book I ordered--If it was a book for personal reading I would have no problem, but it was ordered for academic purposes. It did arrive in a timely manner though.
Great resource for students or teachers.
Customer Rating:
The whole Cambridge series is very valuable. It offers helpful footnotes without cluttering the page, and actually indicates within the text when a footnote will appear. Text appears on right-hand side, and left-hand page offers thoughtful questions and activities to spur engagement, including comprehension and analysis, get-out-of-your-seats and act, and staging/directorial decision-making, and thematic extensions.
hoo-hum
Customer Rating:
"The Taming of the Shrew," by William Shakespeare, is, essentially, about the taming of a shrew. However, in this case, the shrew is in fact a woman, not an animal. The best translation of shrew into modern English is a stubborn, mean woman. About half of the book is about courting, marriage and domesticating Katherine, the shrew. The other half is about Bianca, Katherine's sister, and her dozen suitors.
Being written by Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew" is well regarded in academic eyes. This fame is not entirely deserved. The play is blessedly short, but lacks a solid plot. What plot the story contains is throughly confused by how indistinguishable the characters are. Two thirds of the cast's names end in `io,' making it almost impossible to tell them apart. The theme of male domination is adequately achieved throughout the book. In the end, man triumphs over woman, but has not succeeded entirely in domesticating her. This play is far less amusing than the rest of Shakespeare's works, for they contain a mostly understandable plot.
Terrible.
Customer Rating:
OK, I know I'm going to get hammered for this; once again, there goes my reviewer rating. But I just HAVE to be honest: this is a terrible story. OK, being that it's Shakespeare, it's prettily told, but it's still a HORRIBLE story, and I can't imagine why otherwise sensible people like it. Perhaps they feel that Shakespeare is telling it tongue-in-cheek (it IS a comedy, after all) and poking fun at the system of fathers marrying off their daughters without any concern for whether they want it or not; that would almost make it tolerable, if I could believe it. But given that it IS a Shakespearean comedy, we must assume that the ending is supposed to be a "happy" one, and the situation at the end is far from pleasant. Or perhaps people believe (I've heard this claimed in all seriousness) that Kate has actually "triumphed" at the end, having figured out how to manipulate Petruchio so as to get her way subtly and underhandedly. Even if this were true, I'd hardly consider it a "happy" ending, and personally, I see little evidence of it.
No, what we actually have here is a story of a strong woman (some people seem to like it simply because there IS a strong woman to be found in it) being married against her will to a scheming golddigger who "Tames" her by blatent if indirect spousal abuse (he doesn't beat her, simply starves her and sleep-deprives her, as well as forcing her to wear muddy rags until she behaves exactly as he wants, up to and including winning him a bet by lecturing her contemporaries on their duties as obedient wives.) Her spirit may or may not be broken, depending on how the part is played, but the fact remains that she's forced to BEHAVE as if it is, and that's not a message that should be bruited about in a "comedy". This is absolutely the WORST of Shakespeare's plays.
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