Shakespeare - a modern psychologist

The Angel-Faced Shrew

The drunkard Sly is the subject of one of the great Will's most dramatic experiments. Overcome by the fumes of wine, Sly falls asleep in an inn, with his head on the table. A lord returning from hunting finds him and thinks him dead. This confusion breeds the idea of a stratagem: " Lord : [.] Sirs, I will practise on this drunken man. What think you, if he were convey'd to bed, wrapp'd in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers, a most delicious banquet by his bed, and brave attendants near him when he wakes, would not the beggar then forget himself? " ( The Taming of the Shrew - Induction, Scene I)

Together with the other hunters, he concocts and complicates the scheme, makes sure that music is played at wake-up (as the Renaissance philosopher Gardano recommended ), sees that perfumes are not missing, provides the whole game with magnificent, almost Oriental set-up and pomp (as if he had recollections of similar events in the Arabian Nights ), and manages to devise a perfect illusion, masterfully directed, then adds: " 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. [.] It will be pastime passing excellent, if it be husbanded with modesty " ( ibidem ). The First Huntsman's pledge might seem shaking, if we did not know we are dealing with a comedy: " First Huntsman : [.] He is no less than what we say he is " ( ibidem ). Shaking, because a dramatic stratagem is being concocted, in which a handful of people decide to persuade a wretched ruggermuffin that he is not himself - that is, they intend to rob him of his only possession, his only certainty. The most terrifying aspect Shakespeare had in mind is the fact that all the schemers are aware of their being able to steal and replace someone's personality, as well as of their having the effective means to do so. As in so many other instances, the theme of a comedy is essentially tragic.

It is also not new, just the opposite, it is a very old theme, recurrent in the Arabian Nights and, moreover, already tackled in the Latin novel of the Imperial age. Its tragic sense has only been perceived in the modern age and has provided an impetuous source of inspiration to yet another genius of world drama, Luigi Pirandello, in his literary "testament", Henry IV . The Italian author seems not to have been influenced by the English one: "You wish to know how the idea of this tragedy came to me? In just the same way in which the idea of the mounted procession came to my character Belcredi - by leafing through an illustrated magazine". The writer apparently saw a drawing of a costumed mounted procession and wondered: "What if one of these gentlemen disguised as kings or emperors happened to fall off his horse, knock his head, turn mad and come to think he actually is the personage he is disguised as?" It is what actually happens to the play's main character, a young man disguised as Henry IV. His madness lasts for twelve years. During all this time, thanks to his sister's good care, he lives in an environment very much like the one in which the German Emperor used to live, in the 11 th century. After recovery, the convalescent refuses to return to reality and chooses to take refuge in the same fantastic world for another eight years, just as Pirandello himself had taken refuge in the realm of visionary writing ever since he found it impossible to live with his wife's madness.

The theme dealt with in The Taming of the Shrew is in fact a variant of a suggestion in Hamlet . Let us recall that the latter was pronounced "mad" by the royal adviser Polonius, which was an easy means of getting rid of a political adversary. He pronounced Hamlet mad so, since "Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go", the Prince of Denmark was to be simply removed from the public scene (in Polonius' view; in Claudius', who was less sophisticated and more practical, he was, however, to be killed). Sly, the drunkard, is not to be pronounced mad. His madness is about to be induced.

A piece of news in a daily paper informs us that a young pilot who was tortured at the "School for survival, resistence, and escape" became unfit for flying, following the treatment he had been submitted to, and received no medical assistance for as long as six months. When his aggravating health allowed no more indifference, he was shipped over, as a psychiatric case, to a military hospital. This contemporary incident seems to fit the profile of a similar attempt at dehumanization. As the newspaper comments, such training units are "meant to turn a young soldier into a plain flawlessly functioning military machine".

Sly's evil genius is supported by the presence of a team of actors (another hint at Hamlet ). But, before those come into play, as soon as he wakes up surrounded by servants, Christopher Sly addresses them bluntly: "SLY: What, would you make me mad?. " ( The Taming of the Shrew - Induction, Scene II) and reveals his true identity.

However, there is apparently no need of efforts too sustained to alter his identity, for he exclaims: "SLY: Am I a lord? And have I such a lady? Or do I dream? Or have I dream'd 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 Christophero Sly. " ( ibidem ) and a servant encourages him: " Second Servant : [.] O, how we joy to see your wit restored! O, that once more you knew but what you are! These fifteen years you have been in a dream. " ( ibidem ). So the poor man adopts on the spot the new identity that is being presented to him, because the bitter days of the past have taught him that life is worth living; and the new life before him is most tempting.

What follows is a "play-within-play", that is, the most subtle means of bringing about a crisis. Since the whole play deals with a case of split personality, this mutation is supposed to be induced through imitation, the way Don Quixote did, for instance, when he imitated Amadis' low-spirited madness.

In Padua , two sisters have reached the age of marriage: fair-haired Bianca and men-frightening Katharina. Their father, Baptista Minola, refuses to part with the former before seeing the latter married, too. Bianca's suitors, Gremio and Hortensio, who are hence rivals, shake hands and pretend to be friends until they manage to find a husband for Katharina. Here is a first case of upside-down: the adversaries fight side by side and praise friendship. Montaigne was right when he wrote, of graver matters, that great friendships breed great enmities. At first, things appear to be true the other way around as well.

A newly arrived in town, Lucentio, also falls in love with gentle Bianca and decides that he and his page Tranio should disguise themselves, so he may become a tutor of his beloved, while the servant impersonates the master: "TRANIO: [.] I am content to be Lucentio. " ( The Taming of the Shrew - Act I, Scene I).

The switchings of roles multiply rapidly. Padua is also visited by the Veronese Petruchio who has come to find his marital luck. His acquaintance Hortensio mentions the mean Katharina, thus arousing in him the temptation to challenge his own destiny. Hortensio himself chooses to masquerade as Bianca's music tutor. Since Gremio has already hired Lucentio as tutor to Bianca and Hortensio also strives to obtain the job, the ambivalence of their fresh alliance is unveiled. Sliding from the world of fantasy down to the reality of Shakespeare's contemporary society follows naturally. Tranio, who comes disguised as the third suitor of the youngest daughter, joins the plot of the other two gentlemen who are determined to help Petruchio lay hands on the first-born daughter's dowry: "TRANIO: [.] Please ye we may contrive this afternoon, and quaff carouses to our mistress' health, and do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends " ( The Taming of the Shrew - Act I, Scene II). With Shakespeare, revealing such a behaviour is always tantamount with revealing the lies and conventions undermining the social relationships he relentlessly bore testimony about.

So the entire group make their appearance at Baptista's house. Petruchio, though aware of the truth, asks the master of the house: "PETRUCHIO: And you, good sir! Pray, have you not a daughter call'd Katharina, fair and virtuous?. " ( The Taming of the Shrew - Act II, Scene I). And he goes on spinning qualities as many as can be, all echoing, in fact, the true self of Katharina that nobody has yet seen and he braces himself up to reveal by special techniques. Lucentio, too, is introduced by Gremio as a scientist, under the name Cambio. This school-like listing of a series of personality switchings rather difficult to follow is meant to stress the psychic bombardment to which the spectator of this play is being submitted, namely the drunkard Sly, who has been changed into a lord overnight and, as we remember, the play is being staged in his honour. Moreover, the attempt to forge a new personality does not stop here (for the play, as already mentioned, is meant to support the transformation of his personality).

Katharina's suitor devises his battle-plan. It consists in constantly resorting to a thinking that contradicts reason in a glaring way, a thinking that relentlessly conceives reality as having two simultaneously opposed faces: "PETRUCHIO: [.] I will attend her here, and woo her with some spirit when she comes. Say that she rail; why then I'll tell her plain she sings as sweetly as a nightingale. Say that she frown, I'll say she looks as clear as morning roses newly wash'd with dew. Say she be mute and will not speak a word; then I'll commend her volubility, and say she uttereth piercing eloquence. If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks, as though she bid me stay by her a week. If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day when I shall ask the banns and when be married " ( ibidem ). After he overwhelms her with compliments, in the spirit of his determination, he announces clearly and unequivocally: "PETRUCHIO: [.] Thou must be married to no man but me, for I am he am born to tame you Kate, and bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate conformable as other household Kates " ( ibidem ). It would not even be surprising, with such a program set before him! It is the way to turn a sane man into a lunatic, so why could it not help turn a scatter-brained into a reasonable person? Then, without any warning, he sets the date of the wedding, leaving the yet untamed virgin speechless. It is easy to recognize the theme of Sly's commitment to the cause of a different type of personality.

From this moment on, the friendship of Bianca's three wooers turns back into rivalry. Tranio, the page who takes part in the dispute in Lucentio's stead, commits himself on behalf of the latter, without his father's knowledge, of course, to pay a fabulous dowry in order to win Bianca's hand. After stressing the reversible nature of reality: "TRANIO: [.] Fathers commonly do get their children; but in this case of wooing, a child shall get a sire. " ( ibidem ), he sets about looking for a fictitious father who may warrant his plight.

The day of Petruchio's marriage arrives. Behaving the exact opposite way from what would be considered suitable for such an occasion, he makes his appearance only at the last moment, in a company at least awkward, with only his page and his hark of a horse, and looking like a scatter-minded rather than a bridegroom. Tranio, on the other hand, finally comes across the much-coveted circumstantial father for his beloved master Lucentio, a "parent" ready to vouch for the huge dowry he has promised.

Gremio exclaims, failing to understand what game the newly-wed is playing: "GREMIO: I warrant him, Petruchio is Kated " ( The Taming of the Shrew - Act III, Scene II). Things would even look that way, if only we did not know Petruchio's tactics and strategy beforehand.

Indeed, let us follow the adventures of the newly-weds and their reactions - opposed to her nature, for Katharina; opposed to reality, for Petruchio - after the countless mishappenings the haughty bride had to face, and being so cold-bitten, so mud-smeared, so much ridiculed at every turn, and so hungry that they could eat the bark off the nearest tree. The couple arrive at their future home, a house uncared for and full of spider-webs (according to the master's indications). Dinner is finally served. The owner of the house catches the scent of the tray and yells, gloomy-faced: "PETRUCHIO: [.] What's this? Mutton? [.] 'Tis burnt; and so is all the meat " ( The Taming of the Shrew - Act IV, Scene I). He then furiously throws everything off the table, swears like a cesspit clearer, curses like a madman, kicks about like a gadfly, until he finally hears Katharina sigh, in a conciliatory attempt: "KATHARINA: I pray you, husband, be not so disquiet: the meat was well, if you were so contented " ( ibidem ). But to Petruchio it does not suffice that she should beg for peace only once: he wants her to be like a dove, like a medicine that heals the wound, he wants her obedient like an artist's model. Hence, they go to bed affamished.

Petruchio knows the process of taming by heart, as a man who has often delighted in hunting does: "PETRUCHIO: Thus have I politicly begun my reign, and 'tis my hope to end successfully. My falcon now is sharp and passing empty; and till she stoop she must not be full-gorged, for then she never looks upon her lure. Another way I have to man my haggard, to make her come and know her keeper's call, that is, to watch her, as we watch these kites that bate and beat and will not be obedient. She eat no meat to-day, nor none shall eat; last night she slept not, nor to-night she shall not; [.] This is a way to kill a wife with kindness. ( ibidem ). (What we have here is the pattern of a persistent joke; the reader may remember the notice in the window of an electrical commodities shop: "Why let your wife get killed by household labour? Choose electricity!")

In the meantime, in Padua , Biondello, one of Lucentio's pages, draws his master's attention: "BIONDELLO: [.] Baptista is safe, talking with the deceiving father of a deceitful son " ( The Taming of the Shrew - Act IV, Scene IV) and urges him to take advantage of Baptista's absence to secretly marry his daughter Bianca.

The final scene of Act IV allows us to admire the final touch of the husband's striving: "PETRUCHIO: Come on, i' God's name; once more toward our father's. Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon! - KATHARINA: The moon! The sun: it is not moonlight now. - PETRUCHIO: I say it is the moon that shines so bright. - KATHARINA: I know it is the sun that shines so bright. - PETRUCHIO: Now, by my mother's son, and that's myself, it shall be moon, or star, or what I list, or ere I journey to your father's house. Go on, and fetch our horses back again. Evermore cross'd and cross'd; nothing but cross'd! - HORTENSIO: Say as he says, or we shall never go. - KATHARINA: Forward, I pray, since we have come so far, and be it moon, or sun, or what you please; and if you please to call it a rush-candle, henceforth I vow it shall be so for me. - PETRUCHIO: I say it is the moon. - KATHARINA: I know it is the moon. - PETRUCHIO: Nay, then you lie: it is the blessed sun. - KATHARINA: Then, God be bless'd, it is the blessed sun: but sun it is not, when you say it is not; and the moon changes even as your mind. What you will have it named, even that it is; and so it shall be so for Katharina. - HORTENSIO: Petruchio, go thy ways; the field is won. [.] Enter VINCENTIO. - PETRUCHIO (to VINCENTIO): Good morrow, gentle mistress: where away? Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too, hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman? Such war of white and red within her cheeks! What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty, as those two eyes become that heavenly face? Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee. Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty's sake. - HORTENSIO: A' will make the man mad, to make a woman of him. - KATHARINA: Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet, whither away, or where is thy abode? Happy the parents of so fair a child; happier the man, whom favourable stars allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow! - PETRUCHIO: Why, how now, Kate! I hope thou art not mad: this is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither'd, and not a maiden, as thou say'st he is. - KATHARINA: Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes, that have been so bedazzled with the sun that everything I look on seemeth green: now I perceive thou art a reverend father; pardon, I pray thee, for my mad mistaking " ( The Taming of the Shrew - Act IV, Scene V).

The astounding fact, in the end of the "play-within-play", is that Bianca has now taken Katharina's place and has become a mutinous creature, while the latter proves to be the embodiment of tameness.

It goes without saying that, let aside this entire comedy, we would have been interested in how the tragi-comedy of Christopher Sly ended. But the genius of the English bard has simply forgotten all about that one. What if Christopher Sly had actually lost his mind once and for all?

We had better wait for the psychologists' prognosis.

See Mihai Radulescu, Montaigne: The Maskless Man , a foreword to Montaigne's book of Aphorisms , anthology, translation and foreword by., Bucharest , Albatros Publishing House, 1977.

Fragments of a letter by the author quoted by Benjamin Crémieux in Henry IV et la dramaturgie de Luigi Pirandello , a foreword to his translation of Pirandello's Théâtre complet (Paris, Gallimard, 1928, pp. 10-11).

România Libera ( Free Romania ), of Thursday, March 11 th , 1976 .

See the section "Methods of inducing the dychotomic-antonymical mechanisms of thinking ", in our article quoted above, "Anthropological Stylistics. An Application: Dychotomic-Antonymical Thinking" (note 10).

Les Essais de Montaigne , 4 vols., Paris, Ernest Flammarion Éditeur, [no date], II, 12, p. 201.



[ inapoi ]  [ sus ]  [ inainte ]