Ideas - From Page to Stage: Exploring sex and gender in Shakespeare's work

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

In the thorny thickets of love and desire, how do Shakespeare’s characters talk to each other? And what’s changed in 400 years? From the Stratford Festival, IDEAS explores the challenges around issues of sex and gender in staging Shakespeare’s plays.

Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This Is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run through your neighbourhood, or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto, wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad.

But died thy sister of her love, my boy. I am all the daughters of my father's house, and all the brothers too. How do you get a play off the written page and onto a theater stage? A good play can suggest many different interpretations. Directors, actors, and scholars will all have different points of view, and no one is ever entirely right or wrong. What a play can mean is a never-ending creative discussion, and that's a good thing, particularly if the playwright is William Shakespeare. I think the beauty of imaginative literature, especially Shakespeare, is less than in ambiguity.

Unfortunately, people embrace that less and less. And I've often told my students that's a huge problem, especially when you approach imaginative literature with literal mindedness. You're not willing or able to liberate your mind. Today on Ideas, from the Stratford Festival, a pair of actors, a couple of scholars, and a director toss the ball around on scenes from three Shakespeare plays, exploring the theme of sex and gender and how Shakespeare's people talk to each other about these delicate issues. There is no woman's sides can bide the beating of so strong a passion as love doth give my heart, no woman's heart so big to hold so much. On stage at Lazaridis Hall, actor and director Jonathan Goad, scholars Jyosna Singh and Alexa Alice Jobin,

and actors Mev Beattie and Graham Abbey. The ringmaster is Ideas producer Philip Coulter. We're calling this From Page to Stage. The three plays we're going to be looking at are Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, and The Taming of the Shrew. Twelfth Night tells the story of a shipwrecked young woman, Viola, who dresses as a young man, calls herself Cesario, and goes to work for Duke Orsino. She quickly falls in love with the Duke, but A, he thinks she's a young man, and B, he's in love with his neighbor, Olivia, and it falls to Viola

slash Cesario to court Olivia on the Duke's behalf. In Act 2, Scene 4, Viola and Orsino are talking about the nature of love and how men and women have different ways of expressing it. Here's Philip Coulter. So, Jonathan, I'm going to turn to you first and ask, what's your read about this scene and how would you go about directing it? I'll preface this by saying that when I enter a rehearsal hall with a group of actors, and particularly when you have, in this case, two actors who have enormous experience and skill, I sort of feel it's incumbent upon me not to infringe upon the actor, at least for the first series of sort of playing about the space.

But I wrote down just some impressions about the play itself. The play is both natural and unnatural. It is, in essence, a musical. It's in a natural setting, but it also could be a magical island. The play itself will never take itself seriously enough to be serious. It's full of outrageous characters, but thoroughly unforgettable with hints of life beyond the life we see on stage. On this island, love is a spell.

It's a dominant force. Orsino is a lover. He's a lover of love. He behaves like a king. He behaves like a conqueror. He's generous. He's honest. He's looking for a conquest. Viola is uniquely fitted to navigate and create the narrative in which she finds herself. She leads by instinct and emotion, and yet she's sometimes passive. She moves towards adventure, but gently. Her presence unlocks feelings in others. This play, I believe, is akin to many of the romances we see later in Shakespeare's career. So those are my first instincts about the play. Okay, I'm going to turn to the actors now. Let's pretend that we're in the rehearsal hall and the director's given a kind of opening talk about what the vision is of the play.

To you, Mev, and Graham, start with you, Mev, just some of your reaction to what Jonathan's been talking about and your own ideas about this character which you have played and this play. I think it's really delicious to have

faith in process at the beginning of the process. And if you know you have a captain of the ship like Johnny, you can trust the world that he's built for you to be the environment that you're going to start playing in. So I found that really helpful because now I have an image bank in my imagination before I just think about the black and white words on the page. I have some immediate sort of flavors of relationship and also a little bit of caution, which is good because I know myself as a performer, I tend to start by spilling everything I have, going for the largest, deepest emotional choices, and then

adding detail later. Not every actor is like that. So for me, in this context, it's helpful to have a director say, oh yeah, Viola, you know, she's gentle. She goes to things and, okay, unlike me, Viola, I could lean into those parts of myself as a performer that may be helpful to tiptoe at the beginning of process with this character. Before I turn to Graham, and before we start maybe to read a few lines from the play, in a sentence or two, what are you going to go for in Viola? I think because it's a sort of nice challenge for me, I think I will lean into the idea of caution and the gentle approach from her which I think I could do this scene

with the opposite approach and so I think that'll be fun to try. Graham, coming into the play, coming into this scene Yeah, it's great. I mean, as an actor, you know, you often approach these in a vacuum, you read the play you remember past productions, you do your research but of course then you put that up against the litmus of a director's vision and what a director wants to

do so what i would do is take from johnny that notion of i love that notion of an island of a magical place because it's full of potential i i'm always reminded with 12th night the great robin phillips once said that he believed the play was the last night before the end of the world and and i love that with romance because you you see in Much Ado, you see it in Love's Labors, these endings where think not on that till tomorrow. And so this is a play about big heart. The language itself, these two characters approaching the scene are big, big dreamers, and they have big, bleeding hearts.

And the combination of that creates the comedy and the irony of it because as our Cino and Johnny mentioned to about music of course I mean this this is verse this is music so another thing you look at here as an actor is is the potential of the shared lines and what they do you know so both these characters are speaking in in in heightened poetry with big hearts in a magical place. That's my entry point for sure. And the music of it, I love the music of Shakespeare, always have. And same question, going into this, what's the one thing you're going to go for on the first read with Mev? The heartbeat, I would say.

Johnny, what shall we read? I think we should just start at... Line 17, whatever it is? Yeah, Come Hither, Boy. All right, over to you. Now we've really set ourselves up. Come hither, boy. If ever thou shalt love,

in the sweet pangs of it remember me. For such as I am, all true lovers are unstayed and skittish in all motions else Save in the constant image of the creature that is beloved How dost thou like this tune? It gives a very echo to the seat where love is throned Thou dost speak masterly My life upon't, young though thou art, thine eye hath stayed upon some favour that it

loves, hath it not, boy? A little, by your favour? What kind of woman is't? Of your complexion? She is not worthy, then. What years, if faith? About your years, my lord. Too old by heaven. About your years, my lord. Too old by heaven. Let still the woman take an elder than herself. So wears she to him. So sways she level in her husband's heart. For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,

our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn than women's are. I think it well, my lord. Then let thy love be younger than thyself, or thy affection cannot hold the bent. For women are as roses, whose fair flower, being once displayed,

doth fall that very hour. And so they are. Alas, that they are so. To die even when they to perfection grow. Thank you. So I'm going to turn to Alexa and Jyotsna for a moment here and just remind ourselves of the overall theme that we're looking for in exploring this play, which is the idea of gender and cross-gender and how all that plays out.

So going to the two of you, and I'll go first to you, Alexa. This whole question of cross-gender, let's remind ourselves that this young woman, Viola, is now dressed as a young man, a boy, Cesario. So how does that play into how you would think is important about the playing of this play and of this scene in particular? That makes the scene so rich, the double identities, in particular? That makes the scene so rich. The double identities, right, commonly known as disguise, but in my reading, not always disguise. Perhaps

they're presenting their true self. Whatever the case might be, what's of interest here is that makes the entire scene richer because every line is double entendre. Audiences, due to dramatic irony, knowing that it's Viola, but Ross Christina only sees

them as as page boy as as a eunuch right and so there are two layers it's like a fugue and for me that's beautiful musically it's going on audiences perceiving this while the characters on stage they're perceiving another layer of reality on a deeper level cross-gender roles are crucial to the meanings of this comedy. In Shakespeare's times, we know that women were generally forbidden from performing on the professional stage. And so they had boy actors as part of the common theatrical practices. And the boy actors would typically take on female roles, Viola being one of them.

And so if you think about it, for instance, think about it here, you have a boy actor picking on the role of Viola, doubly cross-dressed, if you will. On the modern stage, we generally do not, you generally would not see that kind of practice in motion. What that means, though, is that we lose half of the meanings that is what's originally intended. I'm interested in the play in Shakespeare's own time and what it's telling us about the role of women in society. Jyotsna, can you talk a little bit about that

and what that might bring to performance today? Thank you. I think the larger question I want to raise to this play and to the two other plays we are discussing is larger question I want to raise to this play and to the two other plays we are discussing is, how can Shakespeare's plays speak to our own times? And especially the question students ask is, was Shakespeare a feminist? Was he a misogynist? We don't know what he thought. We don't know what his intentions were. but his works enable a lot of intersectional, feminist, queer-inflected readings. What I look at this play is two things. One is the languages of love. Whether they're

real women or not, these languages, these discourses are available to them. So the mix of language registers, I think, brings out really exciting things. I love that in this, and I'm hoping we will get to read the second part of the scene, that it seems that a binary is being asked for, saying, well, no, men are like this, women are like this, men love like this, women love like this. And what this character argues is no, a sameness and a sharedness, and who better to advocate for a shared desire or appetite than someone who is currently representing both genders or all the genders in between. And back to Johnny's original thing about the potential of an island or an isolated place

to reforge a new identity, it's all set up. It's a beautiful thing. And back to Johnny's original thing about the potential of an island or an isolated place to to to reforge a new identity it's it's all set up it's a beautiful thing. Anything is possible. I actually when I played this part in quite a few years ago on a tour through Germany, Prague, and London I played both the twins so I was a woman playing a girl dressed up as a boy, but also a woman playing the twin brother. And yeah, it was... The Germans loved that. It's wonderful.

It is the best practice of doubling. We're going to do exactly what you were asking for, Mev, and look at the second scene. Johnny, let me just consult with you. Shall we do the whole second part of the scene from line 88, whatever it is? I think, yeah, I think we should pick up right where we left off.

Once more, Cesario, get thee. Okay. Once more, Cesario, get thee to yon same sovereign cruelty. Tell her my love, more noble than the world, prize is not quantity of dirty lands. The parts that fortune hath bestowed upon her, tell her I hold as giddily as fortune. But tis that miracle and queen of gems that nature pranks her in attracts my soul.

But if she cannot love you, sir. I cannot so be answered. Sooth, but you must say that some lady, as perhaps there is, hath for your love as great a pang of heart as you have for Olivia. You cannot love her. You tell her so. Must she not then be answered? There is no woman's sides can bide the beating of so strong a passion as love doth give my heart. No woman's heart so big to hold so much.

They lack retention. Alas, their love may be called appetite. No motion of the liver, but the palate, that suffer surfeit cloyment and revolt. But mine is all as hungry as the sea and can digest as much. Make no compare between that love a woman can bear me and that I owe Olivia. I, but I know. What, what dost thou know? Too well what love women to men may owe. In faith, they are as true of heart as we. My father had a daughter, loved a man,

as it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, I should your lordship. And what's her history? A blank, my lord. She never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm in the bud, feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,

and with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like patience on a monument, smiling at grief. Was this not love indeed? We men may say more, swear more, but indeed our shows are more than will, for still we prove much in our vows, but little in our love. But died thy sister of her love, my boy. I am all the daughters of my father's house, and all the brothers too And yet, I know not. Sir, shall I to this lady? Ay, that's the theme. To her in haste, give her this jewel. Say my love can give no place, bid no denay.

Thank you. Beautiful reading. I want to, just while I have the opportunity to point out, too, that in those initial sort of instinctual responses to the play, Beautiful reading. I want to, just while I have the opportunity to point out too, that in those initial sort of instinctual responses to the play, thinking of the play in whole and in more particularly the scene, I would not so much, caution's not the right word, if I were in front of my actors on a first day of rehearsal, I would be reticent to give impressions of their characters to them, just so you know.

Now, these two actors are, again, are of such experience that they've already done that work almost instinctually themselves. But the point being that, like, as a director, something I've sort of learned, and this is an ongoing process, the learning of the director, but you have to approach with great sensitivity and intelligence how you speak to the actor, because the actor is in many ways a creative animal, and they will latch on to that which may help them greatly and also may not help them. So one of your big jobs is to help remove impediments to their journey, if those do exist, and if you can do that, and also not to provide more and of course

we all know we've been in rooms where you know sometimes that's what happens and and that's why we're also i'm also very uh cognizant or try to be cognizant of what is concept and how concept can be framework which is what i believe it is or concept concept can be literally a bias in how an actor should play upon the stage. So all that to say that, yeah, I would probably not have shared that with the actor, but I might share some of my bigger notions about the play and some of the framework for the actual world that we're hoping to inhabit together as a launching point, if that makes sense. Before we move on, I just want to give maybe the last word to Jotze and Alexa here. Any comments on what we've been doing and what we've been listening to,

what Mev and Graham are presenting? Thank you for the wonderful play reading. I think the theme, and thank you, Johnny, that the theme here really is ambiguity, the double entendre, saying one thing but meaning five, potentially five other things, and that's the pleasure for the audiences to kind of live with that ambiguity. And I would say we can and should embrace more of that open-endedness, that ambiguity, rather than pinning it down.

On the surface, the text that we just read, it's about binary. Men love this way, women love this way, but actually not, right? Because were I a woman, say Cesario, so full of these cues and ambiguity creates comedy, ambiguity compels you to think. So it's a beautiful thing. Thank you. I just wanted to add, it was so interesting the way you read it, because Orsino is trapped in a very formulaic notion of love, whereas Viola has her feelings coming out. So I think the dramatic irony you can what Alexa said is that throughout the play,

gender roles are constantly being described as binaries, but everything in the play subverts those. That's Shakespeare's skill in almost every play, constantly undermining certainties and binaries. Oh, oh, God. Oh, Philip, can I just say something? Please. Just because it really, it just came out of what Jyotsna said. And I was thinking an interesting challenge in discovering

and having a process at the context of the play. We're looking at some gender dynamic, and actually all these three scenes are about people who are romantically paired at some point in the play. There's lots of dynamic between male and female characters in Shakespeare's plays that are not romantic, that are more about age or family relationship. And also there's the dynamic in this particular scene, in the Twelfth Night scene, of status and class and power, which also intersects with those questions of gender dynamics. So if these were two peers having a conversation

about how men and women love each other, it would be very different than a page boy and a duke. And so one of the huge challenges of the rehearsal process would be for us to try status dynamics, power dynamics. This is a noble woman who is in disguise as a lower-class character too. So these things influence how much, it's not maybe just her femininity that keeps her from being bold. It's also her status. It's also

how much voice can she have in that dynamic. And I just think it's important to flag those things because sometimes we can narrow them underneath gender interpretation and forget that there are other politicized or intersectional power dynamics at play that the actors are also navigating. It's a fascinating idea. You've touched on something really important there because Shakespeare, it's an old thought, I think,

but Shakespeare constantly takes people out of the regular world. Like, look at As You Like It. They take them out of the city and put them in the forest. Now what happens? How do the rules change? Exactly, just like Johnny and Graham were saying about this fantasy island where everything's possible. It also subverts class and status and power in that way. You're listening to Ideas and to an episode called From Page to Stage.

You can hear Ideas wherever you get your podcasts and on CBC Radio 1 in Canada, across North America on US Public Radio and Sirius XM, in Australia on ABC Radio National, and around the world at cbc.ca slash ideas. You can also hear us on the CBC Listen app. I'm Nala Ayed. Hey there, I'm David Common. If you're like me, there are things you love about living in the GTA and things that drive you absolutely crazy. Every day on This is Toronto, we connect you to what matters most about life in the GTA, the news you gotta know, and the conversations your friends will be talking about. Whether you listen on a run

through your neighbourhood or while sitting in the parking lot that is the 401, check out This Is Toronto wherever you get your podcasts. Shakespeare comes back again and again to questions about how and why men and women do what they do, the roles they play on the stage of their lives. men and women do what they do, the roles they play on the stage of their lives. And no questions are more fraught than those around love and lust, sex and gender, and the blurred lines around dissembling, confusion, misunderstanding, and deceit. Sometimes even the people involved don't know what they are doing. And that's part of what makes Shakespeare's plays so resonant in our own times.

We're all aware of the confusions around identity. From the Stratford Festival, a forum about the slippery process of interpreting Shakespeare, getting from the page to the stage, and in particular about the minefields of sex and gender. Actors Mev Beattie and Graham Abbey, scholars Jyotsna Singh and Alexa Alice Jobin, and director and actor Jonathan Goad in conversation with Ideas producer Philip Coulter. So let's move on to Troilus and Cressida, a play that's not produced very often, and it's a play about the Trojan Wars in which the Greek warrior Troilus falls in love with Cressida. Cressida then gets traded to the Greek camp, where she becomes the lover of the Greek soldier Diomedes. It's a play about small human tragedies against the big tragedies of war, and this is the scene where Troilus and Cressida are introduced to each other,

where they fall in love and swear eternal faithfulness. I want to turn first to Jyotsna and Alexa. Jyotsna, starting with you, can you set the scene for us? What's important about this scene? I think it's, you know, on one hand, it's the story of the Trojan War. It's what was called the matter of Troy in the Renaissance. But it also feels like the most modern of Shakespeare's plays, because there's a sort of self-reflexivity, the indeterminacy of language. It's a play very obsessed with language

and the mediatedness of language. And this scene is kind of really interesting because although it's a wooing scene and a love scene, it has an extremely kind of contemporary modern vision in which all those idealized notions of love are kind of, you know, deconstructed. And one last thing I'd like to mention is in all these plays, we are looking at the Renaissance concept of wooing. Nobody uses the word wooing. That's what I tell my students, you know, what is wooing? And it's like not something they think about.

And so here you have a very different wooing scene to other plays, many plays of Shakespeare. Alexa, over to you for a minute. Echoing what Jyotsna said, I wanted to say this wooing scene, it's the first encounter of the lovers, is flipping Romeo and Juliet on its head. In Romeo and Juliet, you have the really romantic love at first sight scene, the balcony scene, this where they love to each other. Marriage is at the center of that concept. Marriage is never mentioned here.

No marriage is ever mentioned. And so I say it flips Romeo and Juliet on its head because the gender relations here is really, I think that the kind of romantic love being portrayed here is a parody. It's a parody of how superficial love is. And that's really important for us to understand this odd play that combines tragic and comic modes all at once. The formality of marriage is never mentioned here.

It's really about lust and kind of deconstructing it in front of our eyes. Before we go to reading a section, Johnny, any comments on the scene? The scene itself, I just wrote a series of questions. Is this a grim, ironic foreshadowing? Does innocence prevail or must innocence prevail to make this scene work within the context of the play and yet I still find no matter how many times

I've read this scene I find it oddly foreboding and not beautiful so that's those are my thoughts on the scene turn to the two of. Mev? I have nothing but curiosity about this scene. It's one of the plays I'm the least familiar with, and this woman is complex, and so I have questions

about propriety, and I have questions about her desire, and I have questions about her sense of romance. There's a lot of confession of appetite, as you reminded us it's called, on her part. And of course, that comes up against what is proper. So I think this would be a wonderful beginning point

because it does feel like pure curiosity graham yeah so many thoughts i mean that you know that that war is ever present in this play and there is a press a press and a pressure in in their love and and they're young one thing we talk about as actors often is a sense of a world picture and um i was going to say in that last scene we read i would classify that world picture for both of them as say in that last scene we read I would classify that world picture for both of them as almost loss that they both approach love as loss as something they're missing here you've got two young lovers who live firmly in the world of love and large love and what happens naturally because one thing we're avoiding here perhaps the elephant in the room when we talk

about academia and actors is that we take those words from the page and we make them oral I mean and these plays in essence were an oral medium and when you listen to these plays in this language you hear an energy and and a rhythm and a music as we talked about so in that last scene what happened as you as Orsino got more worked up is you you felt the the horse the gallop of that language push forward and you're going to hear a different rhythm here with the prose and then we're going to hear a very different one in true. But all of those rhythms are something about the oral medium

of this language which actors have to negotiate as well. Okay, shall we, let's try this scene. Pick it up with line 61, I think. Whenever you're ready. Will you walk in, my lord? Oh, Crescent.

How often have I wished me thus. Wished, my lord? The gods grant. Oh, my lord. What should they grant? What makes this pretty abruption? What too curious dreg espies my sweet lady in the fountain of our love? More dregs than water if my fears

have eyes. Oh, fears make devils of cherubins. They never see truly. Blind fear that seeing reason leads, finds safer footing than blind reason, stumbling without fear. To fear the worst oft cures the worst.

Oh, let my lady apprehend no fear. To fear the worst oft cures the worst. Let my lady apprehend no fear. In all Cupid's pageant there is presented no monster. Nor nothing monstrous neither? Nothing but our undertakings. When we vow to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers, thinking it harder for our mistress to devise imposition enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed. This is the monstrosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite and the execution confined, that the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit. They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able and yet reserve an ability that they never perform, vowing more than the perfection of ten and discharging less than the tenth part of one.

They that have the voice of lions and the act of hares, are they not monsters? Are there such? Such are not we. Praise us as we are tasted. Allow us as we prove. Our head shall go bare till merit crown it. No perfection in reversion shall have a praise in present. We will not name dessert before his birth, and being born, his addition shall be humble. Few words to fair faith. Troilus shall be such to Cressida as what envy can say worst shall be a mock for his truth, and what truth can speak truest not truer than troilus will you walk in my lord well you hear the the um i mean you hear the prose and the ability to to sort of pull that music but it is it's uh it's thick stuff well there is that thing there in it i mean in many ways

troilus sounds pretty wooden you know as You know, it's kind of a bit of a clod, maybe, you know? Well, a soldier. A soldier. But this is a woman who's very nimble and very quick, and she clearly knows men. I mean, she's quick with the one-liners.

You know, so I guess part of the question that I'd throw out is what's Shakespeare telling us about love in time of war? Any takers? I think the war part, what is really interesting is it is a Trojan war,

but it was the war that was started for Helen. So I think that in the early parts of the play, there's a lot of discussion about shall we end the war? Shall we give Helen back? And she was the ideal.

So in that sense, the Troilus and Cressida is also a love story about desire and wooing, so it kind of complicates it. In terms of, I think, the challenge for actors that you mentioned, that on one hand this can be very acerbic, it can be dark, it's almost a parody, as Alexa mentioned. So how do you convey feeling in this very thick, dense language? And I think that's what the play is grappling with, is these different registers of language that these characters are grappling with, because these characters are also

conscious, you know, we are coming from the story of Troy. So that's why I think in the sonnets, Shakespeare is also constantly questioning the language of love. So that's why I think in the sonnets, Shakespeare is also constantly questioning the language of love and desire and the limits and the problems. This thing begins and ends with, we were walking, we're walking, we're walking, right? We're walking, yeah.

How did you envision, I'm interested in social spaces and physical state spaces, the two of you. This is a radio play right now, but were you on stage? Were you envisioning walking opposite to each other? What kind of spaces do characters

inhabit? Well, it's interesting when you start to put movement in and think about it because there's certainly opportunity. I didn't think of that. Of course, if it's in motion, then those times when you stop become interesting, right? The times when you re-engage movement become interesting. A great actor here once said, never move unless it improves on stillness.

But that has to do with the instinct of why you would move forward, where they're going. So they're all interesting questions for a director probably to negotiate. But when you talk about love in the time of war, what you get in this play is putting certainly women on pedestals. But also Troilus puts himself on a pedestal. And that's what gets that stiffness. There's a stiffness to the understanding of love here.

And stiffness maybe is wrong. A pedestal nature to it, putting it up on something that can't be achieved or taken down. And of course, that sets up the fall in the play. Yeah, I think the repetition is always a great thing to look at. I mean, part of what process would give us

is the chance to look for all those clues. I mean, I love working with these particular artists because I know we're all super nerds, and so we are like dogs with a bone about all the clues that the text is giving us. And so I think pointing out this repetition of, will you walk in, my Lord, is a wonderful reminder. And for a woman to say, will you walk in, any time you're saying in or out, you mean

ambiguous things, and so that double invitation combined with her is it authentic or feigned um politesse in the upcoming session is, yeah, that's a lovely tension. Can we just finish up with this

it would be fun to go on and read some more from the scene because things really heat up a little later. Yeah, I think we want to hear those speeches. Yeah, okay. All right. And they kiss. My lord, I do beseech you, pardon me. T'was not my purpose thus to beg a kiss.

I am ashamed. Oh, heavens, what have I done? For this time will I take my leave, my lord. Your leave, sweet Cresset, leave, and you take leave till tomorrow morning. Pray you content you. What offends you, lady? Sir, mine own company.

You cannot shun yourself. Let me go and try. I have a kind of self resides with you, but an unkind self that itself will leave to be another's fool. I would be gone. Where is my wit? I know not what I speak. Well know they what they speak that speak so wisely. Perchance, my lord, I show more craft than love, and fell so roundly to a large confession to angle for your thoughts. But you are wise, or else you love not, for to be wise and love exceeds man's might. That dwells with gods above. Oh, that I thought it could be in a woman, as if it can I will presume in you,

it could be in a woman, as if it can, I will presume, in you, to feed for I her lamp and flames of love, to keep her constancy and plight and youth, outliving beauties outward with a mind that doth renew swifter than blood decays, or that persuasion could but convince me that my integrity and truth to you might be affronted with the match and weight of such a winnowed purity and love. How were I then uplifted? But alas, I am as true as truth's simplicity, and simpler than the infancy of truth. In that I'll war with you. Oh, virtuous fight! When right with right wars, who shall be most right? True swains in love shall in the world to come approve their truth by Troilus.

When their rhymes, full of protest, of oath and big compare, wants similes, truth tired with iteration, as true as steel, as plantage to the moon, as sun to day, as turtle to her mate, as iron to adamant, as earth to the center, yet after all comparisons of truth, as truth's authentic author to be cited, as true as Troilus shall crown up the verse and sanctify the numbers. sanctify the numbers. Prophet may you be if I be false or swerve a hair from truth when time is old and have forgot itself when water drops have worn the stones of Troy and blind oblivion swallowed cities up and mighty states characterless are grated to dusty nothing yet let memory from false to false among false maids in love abrade my falsehood when they've said as false as air as water wind or sandy earth as Fox to lamb or wolf to heifer's calf, pared to the hind or stepdame to her son.

Yea, let them say, to stick the heart of falsehood as false as crescent. Just before we move on, just listening to that, I really get the sense that we're listening to almost a different play. It's as if in the first part of the scene, the war is still there, forcing them into a kind of gender role about what a man should say and what a woman might say. And now it's all fallen away. You've forgotten that there's a war going on

and it's just two lovers finally just saying what needs to be said. Or you remember there's a war going on because you cite the stones of Troy will someday shred. Cities themselves will be dusty nothing but what will hold love's truths and falsehoods. But also famous last words.

As false as Christmas. You feel that rhythm change too from these short nervous exchanges to these long runs of stretches of language and gushing. That music is beautiful. We should move on to the last of the three plays that we're looking at today, which is The Taming of the Shrew.

And we can say that The Taming of the Shrew may not be a problem play, but it's a problematic play. Here we have an impoverished, charming bully, Petruchio, who marries the brash and smart and eternally angry Catherine for her money, and determined to make her into a nice, subservient wife, he spends most of the play humiliating and belittling her. Catherine, for her part, gives as good as she gets, but somewhere in

all of this, they do seem to find true love, and by the end, she has at least the outward appearance of the good wife, but it's still a problem play. So this is the scene where they first meet and where Petruchio employs what you might call the mortal combat technique of love play. It's very funny, but... So, Johnny, just throw it to you to do a set-up for this. What's your read about this scene, and how would you enter into the thinking about how to direct it? Sure. So my bullet point about the play. Taming of the shrew is very near Punch and Judy. The play is grounded in need and huge appetites.

So this scene, and there's quite a setup too. We see other lovers. This scene, hotly anticipated, is a great sparring match between two, in essence, equals. It is outrageous as it is real. It ebbs and flows with witty, half-witty, and crude barbs. The opposing objectives couldn't be clearer, and yet, underneath,

what do they really think of each other? That's what I wrote about this scene. Ambiguity again. What do they really think about each other? Okay, so, Mev and Graham, over to you for the classic, classic scene. Yeah. Mev, start again with you.

I play a few characters in the canon that I believe that I solved from the inside. I get it. I can justify every word this character says. I've built a whole thing where I think I can convince the audience that everything that happens should happen, was going to happen. And then I can convince the audience that everything that happens should happen, was going to happen.

And then I inevitably leave the theater and people stop me and say, oh, God, I hate that speech at the end. Or, oh, I can't, what a, what a, I think, weren't you watching everything we built that justified the, and so that's kind of a fantastic problem that we keep coming back to,

is how to get the audience to see all the journey that we built inside that justifies it. So this is the starting point for these two, and all I can say is this, what do they really think about each other? What Johnny has given would be a fantastic question to go in. I would only add, yes, I mean, problem play indeed. And I love what Johnny said about equals, because it's interesting, Meb just said what they think of the other person. I think what's super important here is what they think about themselves, because I think the Petruchio has deep faults, and he's very vulnerable and he's very scared and and and that manifests itself

at least that's one interpretation of approaching this scene of a man that is very insecure uh about about this and and has a deep connection to this woman because not dissimilar to the first scene we read there there are two people who think one thing about themselves but the audience is seeing something quite different from the outside, I think. And I think that's a step into the scene, for sure. Good morrow, Kate. Or that's your name, I hear. Well, have you heard, but something hard of hearing.

They call me Catherine, they do talk of me. You lie in faith, for you are called plain Kate and Bonnie Kate, and sometimes Kate the Cursed and Bonnie Kate, and sometimes Kate the Cursed, but Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom. Kate of Kate Hall, my super dainty Kate, for dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate, take this of me, Kate of my consolation. Hearing thy mildness praised in every town, thy spoke of and thy beauty sounded yet not so deeply as to thee belongs myself am moved to woo thee for my wife moved in good time let him that moved you hither remove you hence i knew you were the first you were a immovable. Why, what's immovable? A joint stool. Thou hast hit it.

Come, sit on me. Asses are made to bear, and so are you. Women are made to bear, and so are you. No such jade as you of me, you mean. Alas, good Kate, I will not burden thee, for knowing thee to be but young and light. Too light for such a swain as you to catch, and yet as heavy as my weight should be. Should be, should, buzz. Well, ten, and like a buzzard. Oh, slow-winged turtle, shall a buzzard take thee? Aye, for a turtle, as he takes a buzzard. Come, come, you wasp. If you are too angry. If I be waspish, best beware my sting. My remedy is then to pluck it out. Aye, if the fool could find it where it lies. No, not where a wasp, but where his sting, in his tail. In his tongue. Whose tongue? Yours, if you talk of tails, and so

farewell. What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, nay, nay, come again. Good Kate, I am a gentleman. That I'll try. Oh. It's terrible to stop there. Let's talk about this play, and of course,

the elephant in the room is the violence in the play. When you are staging Shrew, are there ways in which we can think about making the violence, which is presented in such a way that it's comical, and of course, it's designed to be that way, and it's hard not to play it that way. How do we get away with what Alexa has called the taming of the play? Yes, I think the other aspect of the play to tame obviously is the violence. Is it good to diminish it? I believe art would become less

interesting if it is censored this way. So I believe the violence should be front and center, but for what kind of purpose? It becomes interesting. I am more in favor of preserving the violence and perhaps compelling the audiences to think about what Kate, for example, really thinks. She's a very flamboyant character center of the show,

says a lot of things, but she doesn't, of course, never means what she says. Jotsna, I want to throw to you, obviously, Dawson, this question too, but I wanted to talk to you about what the scene is telling us, maybe about the way in which,

in this play, and maybe in the wider world too, that men and women act in different ways in what we might call the act of wooing. Think of how women in the audience at the time would look at the play. I think this scene is really interesting because she keeps hearing the word shrew apply to her. Instead, he is saying the prettiest skate, the nicest skate, and he is holding an image before her that she has never seen before. And so she's seeing a different part of herself,

and I think there's a part of it, I always see that she likes these compliments. It appeals to her. The idea of women's speech was very radical at the time. You know, there were images of women with locks on their mouths. So I think to understand the violence is we have to see that Shakespeare was attuned to that cultural discourse. And yet he pushed against that discourse

in interesting ways. You know, he showed violence, but they both understand the power of language. So in the end, they realize we can get a lot of money. I just have to put my hand under his foot and he'll win the wager. That's how I sort of, in the end, they realize we can get a lot of money. I just have to put my hand under his foot and he'll win the wager. That's how I sort of, in the end, I feel that they are both very smart people. And in this battle of wits, that's what they find the winning hand. I had a chance to do this shrew here years ago, and it always struck me that that first line,

Good morrow, Kate, for that's your name I hear, because picking up on what you're saying, he's not sure if the beautiful creature he's looking at is what he's been told about. And that's the first meeting of them. So it's a question in his mind to say, I don't know if you're what everyone described. And you see this so often in Shakespeare, right?

I mean, it's that opportunity of being told something. I've always wanted to see this done with Caliban in The Tempest, that a description is made of that creature. But when you see the creature, it's not what you were told. And that's the thing we've been talking about, about identity and language. It's so true. I think Kate finally meets her equal. Kate only becomes really interesting, sparkling, when Patricia finally shows up. And that's when really Kate comes to life. So you may argue that they are equals

and they find you can think of it as more consensual, perhaps. I think that's one of the things, too. We engage with Catherine on stage and we immediately recognize a heroine. And then the end of the play somehow can feel like a betrayal,

which, of course, as you pointed out, I don't necessarily think it is. Most likely it's not, but it's one of those things that we carry. We carry the expectations of our heroine and then we feel disappointed by them. And that somehow becomes problematic. I think the beauty of imaginative literature, especially Shakespeare, is less than in ambiguity. Unfortunately, people embrace that less and less.

In the U.S., for example, there's a very strong political polarization. People live in absolutes, both sides. And I've often told my students that's a huge problem, especially when you approach imaginative literature with literal mindedness. You're not willing or able to liberate your mind from it. And so they latch on to what Kate literally says. They are incapable now to parse the layers.

It's meant periodically, perhaps. No. And there's this demand sometimes from this generation of students I'm having of what I see as being lecture to but they see that as empowering and feminist you know a

kind of a very superficial plot level literal mindedness and you know this is empowering plot and the truth is not can we end kind of where we began the question of gender and gender identities here and i i guess in this particular play what interests me is this the degree to which shakespeare is showing us that they have in effect schooled each other you know there that there is a blending of minds and as in I guess in any good

relationship a blending of identities too so they are you know there is male and female and it gets to your point about the blurring of of gender and the idea of trans in its largest sense there's that in the play too on that deeper level it like if you can get your head over the idea of the problem of the violence, there's something a lot more subtle going on. I think I would just like to second what everybody else said.

The real issue in the last few years, and I think we are all concerned about social problems and other problems in the world, and we are trying to use literature as a kind of tool to solve those problems. And I think literature has to make you think deeply and broadly and widely about the problems and arrive at your journeys. And I'm actually troubled by the way literature is being ideologically flattened, even by people

I share their views with, you know, we are all feminists or, and I think when you flatten literature, then you lose the immense ability to actually think through these issues. You know, why are men violent? Why is there violence? Why is there coercion? But when you condemn certain things, then the ideology is over. So in this play, there are many ways to keep the gender issue alive and talk about it and talk about power and class and he's poor and he's a money grubber. All of those issues. But if you just shut them off, then there's nothing left. Then you don't do the play. And when we put them into performance, I just read a beautiful article calling for the continued need for secular communion,

as they referred to it, that theaters offer. As religion becomes more parsed south of the border and becomes more political, we still need spaces. When you put it in front of an audience, they'll interpret what they want. They'll bring all their love and hate and bias and everything to it but that's communion you know and that's that's the beauty of theater and what we're saying is when you when you put these plays into a space douglas campbell's talking about an ectoplasm that goes between actors and audience and we need that more than ever now you know and and we need to put this

stuff as you're saying not not um edit it, but put it out there in front of people for discussion. If your students are having those discussions, that's fantastic. They're having the discussion. It's in the arena, you know, and that's important. And in that, what is shared cannot preach. It has to invite, you know. There can be, of course, moral arguments made, but in the end, it is something about the shared community having a voice in that as well. On Ideas, you've been listening to From Page to Stage, a discussion from the Stratford Festival about the challenges around issues of sex and gender in staging Shakespeare's plays.

Our thanks to Jyotsna Singh and Alexa Alice Jobin, and to Stratford Festival company members Jonathan Goad, Mev Beattie, and Graham Abbey. The program was produced by Philip Coulter. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Technical production, Danielle Duval. Our acting senior producer is Lisa Godfrey. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly. And I'm Nala Ayyad. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.