The Tamer Tamed

A Brief Chat with the editor of The Tamer Tamed

Celia R. Daileader is a professor of English at Florida State University where she specializes in Renaissance literature, feminist theory, and critical race studies.  In 2006, she and Gary Taylor co-authored the Revels Students' Edition of John Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed, or The Woman's Prize which is the edition FSU is currently utilizing for its production this month.  For more information about Dr. Daileader and a complete list of her publications, please visit http://www.english.fsu.edu/faculty/cdaileader.htm.

As a sneak preview of what’s to come at the Symposium – which includes a full interview of Dr. Celia Daileader as moderated by  the head of FSU’s playwriting program, Dan Dietz – Aaron Thomas, dramaturg of FSU’s production of The Tamer Tamed, posed a few thoughtful and intriguing questions to Dr. Daileader via email.  Dr. Daileader is currently in Italy where she is teaching for FSU’s study abroad program.

AT:  What about John Fletcher in general and The Tamer Tamed in particular did you find interesting? What drew you to him?

CD: It was my discomfort with the ending of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, which has the heroine submit to male dominance, that initially drew me to Fletcher and The Tamer Tamed.  Having learned that one of Shakespeare's contemporaries wrote a "reply" to Shrew that reversed the outcome of Shakespeare's so-called comedy, I couldn't wait to read it.  Then I liked the play so much I went on to read a number of other plays by Fletcher (some co-authored with Francis Beaumont), many of which I also found surprisingly "modern" both in terms of style and content.

AT: Are there any other of Shakespeare's contemporaries that interest you? 

CD: Yes.  I am passionately in love with Thomas Middleton who, like Fletcher, is fascinated by questions of gender and power, and also like Fletcher populates his plays with strong female characters.  For instance, Middleton co-authored with Thomas Dekker a play called The Roaring Girl, the heroine of which wears men's clothing, shuns marriage, and can hold her own in a duel.  In short, she kicks ass.  Just as do Maria and Bianca in The Tamer Tamed.

AT: The plot of The Tamer Tamed certainly plays off of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, but it also seems to be a kind of adaptation of Aristophanes's ancient Greek text Lysistrata. Would Fletcher have had access to that play? Were there other plays from the time period that used ancient Greek texts as springboards?

   

CD: Yes.  Our introduction to the Revels edition of Fletcher's play highlights Lysistrata as one of Fletcher's inspirations, while also discussing ways in which Fletcher departed from Aristophanes.  There is no doubt that Fletcher read and was inspired by the play.  In general, the classics greatly influenced English Renaissance drama, but in fact most of the known classical sources for the genre are Roman, not Greek.  So in his use of Aristophanes Fletcher was again breaking the mold. 

AT: In your book Eroticism on the Renaissance Stage, you mention the overwhelming amount of food and eating imagery in The Tamer Tamed. Could you talk a little bit about what you think this means, or why Fletcher might have included this?  

CD: The chapter on Fletcher in my first book emphasizes the role of what Renaissance scholars term the “carnivalesque” in the play’s imagery and action.  The carnivalesque is a discourse with its origins in the folk traditions connected to the Medieval church calendar with its alternating periods of fasting and feasting.  During periods of festival the common people in Medieval Europe indulged in fleshly pleasures and celebrated the body and its appetites in public ritual.  You can see vestiges of this in the tradition of Mardi Gras in

New Orleans

or the Italian equivalent of Carnivale.  Why does this discourse saturate The Tamer Tamed?  Because alongside the traditions celebrating the body—which Medieval Christian doctrine subordinated to the spirit—one observed rituals that flaunted the usual social hierarchies.  As Renaissance theorist Mikhail Bakhtin argues in his influential book, Rabelais and His World, the carnivalesque celebrates a “topsy turvey” world, where a beggar can be king and a woman wear pants.  Thus, Fletcher’s play, in representing “women on top,” does so in language that also valorizes the flesh.  For millennia in western thought women were associated with the flesh and its appetites (the wife representing the “body” in a marriage of which the husband was the “head”).  At the same time, women were the ones responsible for the preparation of food in the household, and for catering to the appetites of their children and families.  So women’s relationship to food and eating was complex and fraught.  And indeed this is still the case, as the continuing epidemic of eating disorders amongst women underscores. 

AT: We're setting our production of The Tamer Tamed in Italy, where Taming of the Shrew is set. Are there any connections between England in the 17th century and Italy in the 17th century that our audiences might find interesting?

This is a very timely question for me, as I am answering it from Florence, where I am teaching a course called "Shakespeare and Italy in FSU's study abroad program.  The connections between Italy and England in the Renaissance are mammoth: arguably, England owes its Renaissance to Italy Shakespeare in particular was fascinated with Italy; some of his best-loved plays are set in Italy and/or the Mediterranean: Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, Othello, Merchant of Venice, to name just a few.  (For the sake of brevity, I’ll leave aside the Roman plays, which are of course also relevant but differ somewhat in focus.)  So setting Tamer Tamed in Italy makes sense.  On the other hand, I do personally find it interesting that Fletcher altered the setting in his response to Shakespeare’s play, moving the action to (And in fact, there are a striking number of references to local topography in the text, and I’ll be interested to see whether those references are cut or altered in FSU’s production.)  I wonder, for instance, if Shakespeare’s Italian setting in The Taming of the Shrew made its apparently antifeminist message “safer” to English audiences.  Kind of like, “Oh, we know those how those nasty Italians treat their wives. . . .”  So English audiences could vicariously enjoy the spectacle of a spirited woman being broken by her husband, while also congratulating themselves for their greater civility.   Fletcher seemed to want to remove this buffer, and make the play’s politics more edgy.  With regard to the FSU production of Tamer, I don’t think the stakes are quite as high, in that the geo-political dividing lines are drastically different now (otherwise I wouldn’t be participating in this on-line discussion from Italy!). 

For a full interview with Dr. Daileader, as well as other interesting and informative presentations on Fletcher’s play and the theatre of the English Renaissance, please join us for the Symposium on Saturday, February 23, 1:00p-4:00p, at the School of Theatre in the Fine Arts Building.

Fletcher’s Contemporaries:  A “What’s On” in 17^th Century London

During the reign of James I (1603-1625), English drama went through some subtle changes. Tragicomedy replaced the Tragedy in popularity, perhaps due to its (rather contrived) happy endings and focus on the melodramatic rather than on genuine emotion. English audiences were flocking to the theatre for thrills and chills, not for profound insights or complex characterizations.  Despite this seeming disappearance of “serious” theatre at the time, playwriting was becoming more and more advanced.  Playwrights more skillfully offered exposition, condensed the action into fewer and more concise scenes, cleverly weaved and built complications to surprising climaxes, and varied the tone between tame and turbulent within each play.  Below is a sampling of some of these plays and playwrights. Of course, this list is not exhaustive – we figured you already knew about that Shakespeare guy, for example. These are just some of the lesser known gems.

Elizabeth Carey’s The Tragedy of Mariam (1585-1639)

The only woman you’ll find on this list of playwrights, Carey’s The Tragedy of Mariam (written in 1602-04) was, in 1613, the first play by an Englishwoman to ever be published, so you must forgive her for never obtaining a production of the play during her lifetime. A closet drama, Mariam is often compared to Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi because of their similar portrayals of spirited and courageous women. Carey was the first Englishwoman to write a tragedy and also the first to write a history play, The History of the Life, Reign and Death of Edward II (1627). In addition, Carey wrote hymns, poems and translated others’ works into various languages. She was quite the woman in her time (shown to the right in a 17^th century wash drawing by Athow from a painting by Paul Van Somer).

John Webster (c. 1580-1634)

Webster wrote about fourteen plays including some collaborative efforts with Dekker, Heywood, Middleton, and Rowley. The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are his most famous works, though all his plays are greatly admired for their compelling poetic style and well-drawn characters. They are generally criticized, however, for rather dark tones and stories – tales that encompass worlds of corruption that destroy the protagonists without ever proffering them any kind of insight, deep or otherwise. Possibly because of the existence of the Black Death during his childhood (his father was a wagon driver who picked up the victims of the disease), death and blood are frequent themes of Webster’s, as is the law (which he studied, though never practiced); his characters are often abused by the hierarchy of the court system. Regarded as a writer with flashes of brilliance, he was poorly received by both critics and audiences of his time, but contemporary scholars have given him his due: he is now often considered second only to Shakespeare due to his powerful dramatic style. 

The White Devil (1609-1612)

First staged at the Red Bull Theatre in 1612, John Webster's The White Devil is a story of extreme passion and shadowy revenge loosely based on a sensational event that occurred in Italy in the 1580s. The play centers on the love affair between the equally unscrupulous Duke of Brachiano and Vittoria Corombona. Vittoria is both a vicious and sympathetic heroine attempting to endure a deeply corrupt society in which people both good and evil are drawn into murky schemes of treacherous desire, political conspiracy, and bloody retribution.

The Duchess of Malfi (1613-14)

This tragic play was first preformed at The Globe in 1614. Based on an Italian novella, Webster’s play revolves around the strong-willed and noble ruler of Malfi who, in love with her steward, secretly and defiantly marries him against the wishes of all the men in her life – including a duke and a cardinal who command her to remain a widow. The Duchess is a fabulously spirited and complex woman in this, one of Webster’s greatest works.

Francis Beaumont (c. 1584-1616)

Beaumont studied law, but probably never practiced, as he met Ben Jonson shortly after completing his schooling and thus began his career in verse and eventually in the theatre.  Beaumont, however, is best known in conjunction with John Fletcher – the two playwrights collaborated so often and with such success that around 1609 they replaced Shakespeare as the chief dramatists of the King’s Men; in fact, during this time, their works were much more popular than the Bard’s. Beaumont was known for his strong plots, while Fletcher was seen as the skillful contributor of the poetic verse. Beamont’s best-known work, however, is one that he more than likely wrote entirely on his own (though some claim Fletcher had a hand in it): The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle (c. 1607)

Upon opening at the Blackfriars, Knight was not well-received. Some current scholars claim this was because it was too avant-garde for its time; others speculate that audiences simply missed the satire of the merchant class or that they simply wanted a good old-fashioned romance.  Either way, it was revived during the Restoration with success, though it then fell back into obscurity for almost two hundred years (one of the most recent productions at the Barbican Center in London in 2005 received mixed reviews). Despite its ups and downs, Knight is the most frequently revived play in the Fletcher-Beaumont canon.

Some believe that this popular work was possibly a response to Don Quixote since Cervantes’s book was by that time being circulated throughout England, but others think that Knight was simply a response to prevalent traditions and customs in England. Either way, this burlesque of middle-class taste in theatre is a hilarious play-within-a-play that incorporates a couple whose loud interference causes a troupe of players to improvise more and more in order to keep the play going.

Thomas Dekker (c. 1570-1632) and Thomas Middleton (1580-1627)

Dekker penned 46 plays, ranging in topics from romantic comedies to satires to tragicomedies, and critics of the time were never entirely sure if he was a trailblazer who bravely experimented within the form or if he simply did not know how to write drama properly. We, of course, now think it was definitely the latter. His writing partner was Thomas Middleton who, educated at Oxford, originally wrote for more elite genres, but switched to the popular upon graduation. Looking on himself as a poor scholar, Middleton always elicited sympathy for the working classes, which is exemplified in his and Dekker’s most popular work, The Roaring Girl.

The Roaring Girl

Written for Prince Henry’s Men at the Fortune (the Globe’s main rival), The Roaring Girl was originally performed there in 1611. T.S. Eliot was one of the first contemporary critics to champion this mostly disregarded play, which is a fictionalized dramatization of the life of Mary Frith. It tells the story of Moll Cutpurse (as she was popularly known) who had a reputation as an outspoken, daring woman (remember that discussion of the scolding brides?). Extremely topical at the time, it engaged one of the period’s most controversial issues: women dressing as men. The transgressive practice sparked much debate because society connected a woman’s more masculine change of clothing with her desire to change her social status. It seems Moll Frith was one of our earliest feminists.

Thomas Heywood (c. 1574-1641)

Thomas Heywood was the most prolific English playwright of the time – by a long shot.  He had a hand in the writing of well over two hundred plays and his career spanned from the last decade of the 16^th century to almost the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642. We don’t know much about his life before he became an actor with the Admiral’s Men in 1598, but we do know that he was of gentle birth and probably studied at Cambridge for a time where he generally considered himself a classicist. When he began his career as a dramatist, he was what we would today call a true artist: he did not believe in the commerciality of theatre, and was greatly skeptical of publication, out of both fear of censure, as well as the corruption of subsequent wealth. Stated in his own words (in an “Address to the Reader” in a 1608 publication of The Rape of Lucrece):  “Though some have used a double sale of their labours, first to the stage and after to the press, for my own part I proclaim myself ever faithful to the first and never guilty of the last.” 

A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603)

What some consider a dated play in our feminist age, A Woman Killed with Kindess tells the story of John and Anne Frankford, both paragons of virtue and kindness until John foolishly takes in Master Wendoll who, taken with Anne’s charms, persuades her to accept him as a lover. Of course, the action is complicated with all sorts of sub-plots, but this domestic tale ends in tragedy when John discovers his wife’s infidelity, and though he generously forgives her, Anne starves herself to death. Though clearly a warning tale to women as to how they should behave, Heywood’s play is greatly admired today for its powerful movement with the various plots and his ability to avoid overly poetic language, thereby maintaining realistic and unaffected emotions.

Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

The first “poet laureate” of England, Jonson is widely considered one of the finest Elizabethan playwrights after Shakespeare, and we know more about his life than any other playwright of the period. Growing up in London, he was the son of a poor pastor, but had the great fortune of meeting a “friend” who put him through school at Westminster where he studied under the famous historian William Camden, though he never finished his schooling. Jonson seemed to try a hand in everything before settling in the theatre, including bricklaying and volunteering to fight for the war. It was during his time as a strolling player that the troupe he acted for was handed an unfinished satirical play, The Isle of Dogs, by Thomas Nashe; it was completed (without consent, as the story goes) by the young Jonson who consequently spent some time in the gaol for fabricating such a “lewd” play. This was only the first time that Jonson would find himself in such trouble. It is this colorful life that led to a collection of work known for its realistic and unusually unsympathetic characters, and its concern for reforming faults in human character. It is Jonson who widely popularized the “comedy of humours” through his use of character types, and he is most well-known for his plays Volpone and The Alchemist.

Volpone

Set in Venice – the place many Englishmen considered a den of decadence and sin – the play tells the story of the extravagant nobleman and con artist, Volpone, who cunningly foils the plot of three fortune hunters all desiring his money, while he simultaneously falls in love with a beautiful young married woman who virtuously refuses to give in to his advances. With a foundation in Greek and Roman comedy and those forms’ well-known stock characters, Volpone (shown above in an illustration by Aubrey Beardsley for an 1898 edition of the play) is a tale of greed and lust, both wickedly funny and morally upright. 

Cyril Tourner (c. 1575-1626)

Though generally accredited to Tourner, The Revenger’s Tragedy was entered into the Stationer’s Register in October of 1607 without the listing of an author.  The only play we know for certain to be penned by Tourner is The Atheist’s Tragedy, and due to its strange spelling and general features, a scholarly leap was made, crediting The Revenger’s Tragedy to Tourner based on these slight similarities.  Other scholars, however, have attributed the play to Thomas Middleton because of the playwrights’ comparable language and spelling, while still others believe the play to be the work of John Marston due to dramatic style, tone and theme.  Despite all the contrasting scholarship, custom has deemed Tourner the author for reference purposes. 

The Revenger’s Tragedy

What’s interesting about this play is that despite all the Elizabethan playwrights it is associated with, The Revenger’s Tragedy does not lie within the Elizabethan tradition of revenge tragedy that was established two decades prior in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy – Revenger’s incorporates much more comedy than its predecessor. Set in a decadent Italian court, The Revenger’s Tragedy tells a thrilling, witty, violent, and sexy tale. The Duke's son has attempted to rape the virtuous Gloriana and her death prompts her betrothed Vindice to swear vengeance on the Duke's family (Sweeney Todd, anyone?). Vindice’s merciless plan is aided by the lusts and ambitions of the rest of the family, and it all ends very much like Hamlet (hint: it’s not exactly a happily ever after type of tale).  Because Queen Elizabeth I was often referred to as “Gloriana” (see Edmund Spenser’s epic poem The Faerie Queen for another such reference), the play is considered by many to be a political commentary deploring the corruption of James I’s court as compared to the Golden Age of the Virgin Queen.

17th Century London A-Z

To give you the flavor and feel of the time during which Fletcher and his contemporaries wrote, below is list of fun and random, but always enlightening facts regarding Elizabethan and Jacobean England and the people and society of that time.

Alms collectors: Recovered lunatics from Bedlam, equipped with horns to draw attention and badges to establish authority, were sent out in the streets to raise money for the hospital.

Beer: The oldest alcoholic beverage in the world dates back before ancient Greek theatre. In

England

and throughout

Europe

during the Middle Ages, the brewing of beer was considered “women’s work.” This had begun to change throughout

Europe

in the 15^th century or so, but in The Tamer Tamed, the women are still ironically referred to as “brewing knavery.”

Cuckold: In addition to describing a man whose wife has cheated on him, “cuckold” can also be used as a verb (“My wife has cuckolded me”). The word derives from the cuckoo bird: the females habitually lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, which birds are then deceived into raising chicks that are not their own.

Strangely, cuckolded men were always associated with horns, both in literature (see The Merry Wives of Windsor for such a reference) and artwork. Most scholars fail to explain this association, but at least one source conjectures as to why a man grew such pointy appendages due to his wife’s infidelity: the imaginary horns have their origins in the old custom of cutting the spurs off of cockerels when the young roosters are castrated, then planting the growths in the comb (the fleshy outgrowths atop their heads), where they develop into hornlike features that make it easy to distinguish the castrated male chickens (capons) from other fowl. These capons were traditional symbols of cuckoldry. 

Devonshiring: The cutting off and burning of old pasture that would create fertile land was a common occupation in 17^th century

England

. The worker would use a shallow cutting spade that he would push along by a log placed across his thighs. For this grueling work, he would earn a mere £1 per acre. Farming was still the dominant occupation in

England

from 1600 to 1750 despite the onset of urbanization and industrialization at this time. The most widely utilized processes were malting (making grain, usually barley, into malt for alcoholic beverages), oatmeal, and tanning (converting hides or skins into leather), and some corn milling.

Eggs: Elizabethans didn’t know whether the chicken came first or not, but in the English Renaissance, eggs were considered a powerful aphrodisiac, a kind of 17^th century version of Viagra. In The Tamer Tamed, Petruccio also uses muscatel and buttered parsnips as aphrodisiacs. Yum!

Fire: On the night of September 2, 1666, a small fire broke out in a baker's shop in

Pudding Lane

,

London

, possibly due to the carelessness of a maid.

Whatever the cause, the results were disastrous; the fire spread quickly and soon the whole building was aflame. In the tight-packed streets of

London

, where each building competed for space, the blaze soon became an inferno. Fanned by an easterly wind, the fire spread with horrifying speed, feeding on the tar and pitch commonly used to build houses.

The Great Fire of London devastatingly destroyed much of the city’s center, but thankfully it also killed off most of the black rats and fleas that carried the plague bacillus (aka the Bubonic Plague). 

Gewgaws, or trinkets: They weren’t just for Valentine’s Day – lovers like Roland and Livia in The Tamer Tamed would exchange baubles and gifts of all kinds, including bracelets, rings, and locks of hair, all year round.

Hobbies: Sunday afternoons in

England

were active with various sports including wrestling, archery, music, and dancing. Hawking and hunting were the chief amusements of the rich, and while King James publicly condemned football (soccer) and golf, he encouraged the play of bowls, an ancient lawn bowling game whose contemporary cousins include bocce and curling. The English also enjoyed je de paume which is essentially tennis without rackets and still remains popular today.

I’th’cut, or “in the fashion”: Neither formal nor day wear altered considerably for either sex during the 16^th and 17^th centuries. Small changes were made, but all clothing very much represented what we would imagine original Shakespearean costume to look like.

            Women’s Fashion

The Elizabeth I (Hardwick House), portrait to the right depicts Queen Elizabeth in 1592.  The style of her dress, while popularized during her reign, remained in fashion during King James’s reign. Such dresses were comprised of a long, pointed, and rigid bodice, and a wide skirt that was supported by hip bolsters in the drum farthingale (the platter-shaped object around the waist that caused the skirt to fall straight down). Wearing wide sleeves, low necklines, and ruffs framing their faces, ladies no longer wore caps, but rather their hair was styled high with decorative ribbons and feathers.

Men’s Fashion

Gentleman wore suits with softer lines than previously. The short-waisted doublet (a close-fitting outer garment) with long skirts boasting slits on the torso and sleeve, allowed for easy movement, and the knee-length breeches were supported by hooks inside the waistline. The ribbon “points” at the waist and knee (shown here) originated in the lacing hose supports of the late medieval period. The lace-trimmed ruff fell to the shoulders and the hair was often long with a lovelock: a lock of hair hanging separately from the rest, usually tied with ribbon and typically worn by courtiers.  The portrait (from the 1560s) is of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.

For pictures and further descriptions of 17^th century English    

        dress, please visit:  http://www.historic-uk.com

Jonson, Ben (1572-1637): A famous dramatist, poet, and actor, Jonson is still well known today for his satirical plays, the most famous of which are Volpone and The Alchemist. As Master of the Revels for Charles I, Jonson penned court masques that were performed for foreign dignitaries visiting the king and his wife, Queen Anne of Denmark.

King James I inherited the throne from Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. James was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, whom

Elizabeth

had executed in 1587, and so

Elizabeth

made peace with her rival’s family by recognizing James as her successor. James’s reign is called the Jacobean era (after his Latin name Jacobus), and he commissioned the famous “King James Bible,” which was completed in 1611, the year The Tamer Tamed was first performed. The Tamer Tamed, not surprisingly, has considerably more scatological humor than the Bible.

Liquor: Numerous alcoholic beverages were popular in

London

during the English Renaissance. The potent potables mentioned in The Tamer Tamed include muscatel (a sweet dessert wine), metheglin (a spiced—and sometimes medicated—mead), sack (white wine—not to be confused with Japanese sake), and balderdash (a mixture of liquors: beer and milk, or beer and wine, or some other unsavory combination).

Morris Dance: a British folk dance dating from the late fifteenth century. Often the women who dance wear anklets made of bells. The dance is characterized by groups of dancers who execute rhythmic step maneuvers and sometimes wield sticks or handkerchiefs (see picture to right).

Neats Tongue to Hash, or a dish of cow tongues: To make this common 17^th century meal, simply follow the recipe included in The Whole Duty of a Woman: Or a Guide to the Female Sex (1696):

Boil, blanch, and slice the tongues and put the pieces into a pipkin (small pot) with raisins, mace (a spice similar to nutmeg), three or four blades, blanched almonds, and claret. Boil all together, and add a bit of sweet butter, some verjuice (sour fruit juice), and a little sugar. Strain a ladle or two of the liquor, and beat it up with the yolk of two or three eggs. Place it on a sippet (bread soaked in gravy) and garnish with slices of lemons, parsley, and pickled barberries.

YUMMY!  For more delicious recipes and other information on traditional English dishes, go to:

http://www.godecookery.com/

http://historicfood.com/

Occupational structure of

London

was highly gendered, with women being concentrated in the food, drink, and provisions trades, as well as textile manufacturing.

Plague: Known as the Black Death, the Bubonic Plague was a horrifying disease. The victim's skin turned black in patches, the glands in the groin inflamed, and the victim also experienced compulsive vomiting, swollen tongue, and splitting headaches. It was a truly ghastly way to die.

Incubation took only four to six days, and when the plague appeared in a household, the house was sealed, condemning the whole family to a horrible fate. A painted red cross on the door marked these homes, and at night the corpses were brought out in answer to the cry “Bring out your dead” and put in a cart and taken away to the plague pits.

The plague started in the East and quickly spread throughout

Europe

. It began slowly, first overtaking

London

’s poor, but at its peak, over 30,000 people died in one terrible summer.

Quack doctors were popular throughout the 14^th – 18^th centuries. Also called mountebanks, quacks listened to people’s ailments, pretended to know exactly what their symptoms implied, and then offered completely ludicrous medical advice. For example, did you know that to remove freckles all a girl has to do is wash her face with elderflower water in the wane of the moon?  Who knew cosmetic surgery could be so simple!

Ring a Ring O' Roses: The nursery rhyme is said to be a macabre parody on the horrors of the Bubonic Plague. One of the first signs of the plague was a ring of rose-colored spots, and many believed that the protection against this horrific disease was a posy of herbs. Sneezing was taken as a sure sign that you were about to die, and the last line of the poem ("We all fall down") omits the word, "dead!”  Creepy.

Shrew or Scold: The historic definition of the shrew (as in Taming of the) is a poor woman who is a social outcast and likely to vent her frustrations to the nearest authority figure. Essentially, shrews and scolds (basically equivalent terms) were outspoken, strong women who had the guts to speak out against the patriarchal powers of their time. Because of their nerve, they were oftentimes punished in the same manner as “witches”: strapped to a chair (a “cucking stool” – remember the discussion of the cuckold?) on a cart and paraded through town to ensure humiliation, they were then dunked into a river numerous times. Another popular torture was the use of the “scold’s bridle,” a metal device secured to the head that painfully bound down the tongue so that the woman could not speak (her mind). Doesn’t exactly make you want to travel back in time to Shakespeare’s day, now does it?

Tea: What would the English be without their tea? Incredibly, this quintessential British drink was not introduced to Europe and the UK until the early 1600s, though legend has it that the Chinese invented it as early as 2737 B.C.E. Coffee and chocolate also came into European fashion around the same time in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries. To make chocolate, cocoa beans were lightly crushed, boiled for hours with white sugar, cinnamon, Mexican pepper, cloves, aniseed, almonds, orange-flower water, and vanilla straws. It was then enriched with milk and beaten eggs. Such fine ingredients and intricate processing clearly made chocolate a luxury that only the gentry could afford: in fact, it was so extraordinarily popular with the wealthy that a lady would often have a dish of chocolate with her morning cup of tea.

Usher & 17^th century servants: The usher brought the dishes up from the kitchen, directed the garnishing from the sideboard, and if bread or beer was desired on the table, he would call for it. For unexpected surprises, he always had a boy posted at the chamber door, ready to run errands, and he saw to it that the best dressed servants attended the lords and ladies of the house, while the other servants remained below and out of sight.

Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603): Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn,

Elizabeth

was on the throne during a golden age when both Shakespeare and Fletcher were penning their plays. Extremely popular, it is said that her union with the people substituted for the marriage she never had. Both greatly respected and feared, she famously stated, “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King.”

Films about the Virgin Queen and the time of her reign: Elizabeth (1998), Elizabeth: the Golden Age (2007), Shakespeare in Love (1998).

Women were both better and worse off during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James. With the rise of the Church of England, the convents in

Great Britain

were dismantled and with them, many opportunities for the education of women. However, the roles of women and men in society, as evidenced by The Tamer Tamed, were the subject of much public debate.

X-rated: Puritans and other moralists wrote treatises and preached loudly against the theatres, both in the 17^th century and later. Some of the reasons given for their anti-theatrical prejudices were that the theatres often served as brothels. Such things really did go on at the theatres, as members of the oldest profession would meet their clients during the show and then serve as intermission entertainment.

Yeoman: In

England

, he was a farmer who cultivates his own land.

In addition, Yeoman Warders, now commonly referred to as Beefeaters (see picture to right), have guarded the

Tower

of

London

since its construction in the 11^th century. In early times, they were charged with guarding the Tower’s prominent prisoners and assisting in their punishment, which often involved torture. Today, they act primarily as historians and guides, and live with their families in the Tower so that they may attend to duties at any time of the day or night. Amazingly, it was not until 2007 that the first female warder was installed.

For a musical twist on the Yeoman Warder, see Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard, or The Merryman and His Maid.  One of the darkest of the famous duo’s works, this operetta tells the story of a colonel who is sentenced to be beheaded in the Tower and his bride-to-be who only wants to marry him so that she can inherit his fortunes once he’s dead.

Zennor and other Parishes: A Parish is the smallest unit of the Church organization and can refer to a township or a cluster of townships that maintain their own church (the parish church). A parish has its own priest, vicar, or clergyman to whom the tithes and ecclesiastical dues are paid.

To learn more about Zennor in particular, and to view the beautiful land that inspired the artwork of Terry Frost and Patrick Heron, and the literary masterpieces of D.H. Lawrence, visit that Parish’s official website: http://www.zennor.org/.

Notes from the Dramaturg

More Than Shakespeare

A Note from the Dramaturg of The Tamer Tamed

Dramaturg Aaron C. Thomas argues on behalf of the wild and bawdy John Fletcher: While Uncle Willy is the most prolific and beloved of the Renaissance playwrights, he certainly isn’t the only one – and he might not be the most fun either.

Interest in the writings of William Shakespeare has grown exponentially over the last four hundred years. His plays are done all over the world and in every conceivable language. Productions range from modern re-imaginings to classical adaptations. In the midst of all of this excitement about the Bard, however, the work of many of Shakespeare’s contemporaries has faded into the background. One such writer is the man who took over Shakespeare’s job as chief playwright for the King’s Men when the Bard retired: John Fletcher.

For the first hundred and fifty or so years after his death, John Fletcher was immensely popular, but the reputations of Fletcher and his partner Francis Beaumont began to wane in the 19th century, when British society under Queen Victoria saw Fletcher’s work as altogether too irreverent, too morally lax, and too sexy for stiff-upper-lip theatre patrons.

All that changed in 2002 when the Royal Shakespeare Company in London began to mount Fletcher’s plays, beginning with The Island Princess and following it up with The Tamer Tamed. Their 2003 production was the RSC’s first staging of the play in its history. In the United States, productions of The Tamer Tamed have been equally rare. Florida State is only the second American university ever to stage the play.

The truth is we’ve all been missing out! Partially based on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, an ancient Greek comedy where the women of Athens refuse to satisfy their husbands’ sexual desires until they stop the Peloponnesian War, The Tamer Tamed is a triumph.  Fletcher’s play, it turns out, is a clever, endlessly funny turning of the tables on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. For in Fletcher’s play, instead of taming his scolding bride, Petruccio is himself tamed.

But is The Tamer Tamed a feminist play, or is Fletcher making as much fun of the women as he is of the men? Scholars divide on the issue. Certainly a lot of the laughs in the play are at the women’s expense, but (without giving away the ending) perhaps audience members can judge for themselves how much of a feminist John Fletcher is. The questions I’ll pose are these: Which of the sexes is cleverest in the play? Which of the sexes gets more of what they want?

Whichever you decide is the answer, it’s hard to deny that the play is hilarious, raunchy, and smart. As our love for William Shakespeare continues, we can perhaps find room for a few more plays by Mr. Shakespeare’s contemporaries. They’re certainly out there. The Tamer Tamed is just one such gem in a treasure-trove of Renaissance riches.

So what’s The Tamer Tamed all about?

A synopsis of Fletcher’s play

By Aaron C. Thomas

In the early 1600s, about twenty years after William Shakespeare penned The Taming of the Shrew, John Fletcher wrote a sequel to that woman-taming play and turned the tables on Shakespeare’s main character. In Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed, Petruccio’s shrewish wife Katharine has died and Petruccio has decided to marry Maria, a young, quiet woman who loves him very much. But Maria has other plans for Petruccio. Aided by Katharine’s sister Bianca and the other townswomen, Maria sets out to tame her husband and to fight for equality between the sexes. The women fortify the house and keep Petruccio and his friends out, refusing to make love to the men unless they agree to their terms.

Of course, it couldn’t be that simple – nor would it be a Renaissance comedy – without more romantic complications. Maria’s sister Livia and her young lover Roland want to marry, but Livia’s father wishes her to wed Gremio, the rich old man from The Taming of the Shrew. However, the clever and industrious women always triumph in The Tamer Tamed; Bianca and Livia cunningly trick the older men and true love conquers all.

Since Shakespeare was still writing his own plays when Fletcher penned The Tamer Tamed, it is more than likely that the Bard himself saw the play. Shakespeare and Fletcher, in fact, wrote three plays together after The Tamer Tamed premiered in London. And though Shakespeare’s original, The Taming of the Shrew, was popular in its day, London theatregoers enjoyed Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed even more, and it’s easy to see why: The Tamer Tamed is bawdy, witty, and fun, and the comic battle of the sexes is as timeless as Shakespeare himself.

Think The Tamer Tamed sounds like fun?  Here are a few other works you may enjoy:

Lysistrata by Aristophanes: Resourceful women cunningly withhold sex from their warring men, who foolishly refuse to succumb without a fight.  The result is an uproarious battle of the sexes in this classical Greek comedy.

The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare & John Fletcher: Their first collaboration is a play about two friends named Arcite and Palamon, who fall in love with Emilia, the sister of Hippolya, queen of the Amazons. The two friends then fight to the death in this late romance.

Adam’s Rib: This 1949 film starring Hollywood’s royal couple, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, is a classic battle of the sexes from director George Cukor.

The Witches of Eastwick: John Updike’s classic novel, the 1987 film with Jack Nicholson, Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Susan Sarandon, as well as the 2000 West End musical starring Ian McShane, all paint a picture of women who find inner strength by battling a he-devil.

The First Wives Club: Starring Diane Keaton, Bette Midler, and Goldie Hawn, this movie is the story of three women who enthusiastically take revenge on their ex-husbands and their new trophy wives.

10 Things I Hate about You: Director Gil Junger’s modern film adaptation of Taming of the Shrew starring Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles (as Patrick Verona and Kat Stratford) takes place at Padua High and is chock-full of witty banter.

A Word from the Director

The Tamer Tamed’s director, William Martin, tells us what drew him to the project.

The play was Cameron Jackson's idea. It is he who first suggested the play to me. I had never read it, although I, of course, knew of John Fletcher. It was a perfect fit for me, because of my experience with directing Shakespeare and my interest in his work. I think I was particularly drawn to the show because of my love for Taming of the Shrew and its characters, which make their reappearance in Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed.

Coming Attractions on the SOT Blog....

Each Monday a new entry will be added, so be sure to bookmark this blog and check back frequently for more fun and informative postings about what’s new at FSU!  Future entries will further illuminate the SOT’s continuing work on The Tamer Tamed and may include:

•  Fun facts about Shakespeare and Fletcher’s London

•  A “What’s On” of the 17^th century London theatre scene:  what people were seeing and

   where they were seeing it

•  Gender relations and the role of the “shrew” in early modern England 

Mark your calendars!

•  February 22 – March 2, 2008: FSU’s production of The Tamer Tamed

•  February 23, 2008, 1-4 p.m.:  Symposium for The Tamer Tamed at FSU

•  February 25 & 26, 2008:  Actors from the London Stage present William Shakespeare's

   Taming of the Shrew at Turner Auditorium at Tallahassee Community College