avatarTom Barrett

Summary

The website content explores the nuanced nature of endings in Shakespeare's plays, specifically examining the potential for both tragic and happy elements in the conclusions of "King Lear" and "The Taming of the Shrew."

Abstract

The article delves into the complexities of interpreting the endings of Shakespeare's "King Lear" and "The Taming of the Shrew," challenging the traditional binary of tragic versus happy resolutions. It argues that "King Lear," despite its tragic events, offers a form of redemption and reconciliation that can be seen as a positive outcome. Conversely, "The Taming of the Shrew," typically categorized as a comedy, is analyzed for its tragic undertones, particularly in Katherina's submission to Petruchio, which some modern interpretations depict as a form of psychological and physical abuse. The piece suggests that the endings of these plays transcend simple categorization, reflecting the intricate blend of human emotions and experiences.

Opinions

  • The ending of "The Taming of the Shrew" has been reinterpreted in modern productions to highlight its tragic aspects, contrasting with its traditional classification as a comedy.
  • Katherina's final monologue in "The Taming of the Shrew" is seen as a tragic surrender rather than a comedic resolution, indicative of a figurative death of her independent spirit.
  • "King Lear" presents a narrative where the protagonist's suffering leads to a form of spiritual awakening, which can be construed as a happy ending in the context of Lear's personal growth.
  • The article posits that the conclusion of "King Lear" may be interpreted as hopeful, especially when considering the Folio version where Edgar's closing lines suggest a new era of governance.
  • The piece references the opinions of scholars such as Barbara Everett and John Holloway, who find elements of hope and love in "King Lear's" ending, likening it to the biblical story of Job.
  • Lisa Hopkins' observation that marriage is a central theme in Shakespearean comedy is used to contrast the tragic implications of Katherina's marriage in "The Taming of the Shrew."
  • The author of the article suggests that endings in Shakespeare's plays cannot be easily categorized as purely tragic or happy, as they often embody a complex interplay of both.

A Happy Ending or Tragic Ending: Can an Ending Be Both?

Using Shakespeare’s King Lear and The Taming of the Shrew to explore the concept of endings.

Photo by Max Muselmann on Unsplash

The concept of happy or tragic ends at first seems straightforward. King Lear ends with the death of Lear after all three of his daughters have died along with many others: a clearly tragic ending. Conversely The Taming of the Shrew ends with Katherina’s famous last monologue after she has been ‘tamed’ by Petruchio in which she now sees her true place in society and marriage: the happy ending and resolution to a comedy, free of death and tragedy. Yet ‘more recent [productions have been] tragic’ (Schafer 2002, p. 1), and the conclusion to King Lear is not as tragic or simple as it may seem on the surface.

Tragedy in The Taming of the Shrew

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor as Petruchio and Katherina (1973)

The Taming of the Shrew has been a divisive play since it was first performed, with John Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed being written in response to it within Shakespeare’s lifetime in approximately 1611. The fact that Fletcher felt it necessary to ‘write back’ to Shakespeare shows that he, like many, was dissatisfied with the ending.

From there, the performances of The Taming of the Shrew have ranged from comedic to overtly tragic. As Elizabeth Schafer points out, by 1973 we see a production in which Katherina is ‘held down and anally raped onstage’ (2002, p, 38), delivering her final speech as ‘a lobotomised broken woman wearing an institutional gown, stuttering her words’ (2002, p, 38) — hardly the staging of a comedy with a happy ending.

This adaptation highlights the potential tragedy of Katherina’s final monologue and the end of the play: whilst no character has literally died, Katherina has died a figurative death in her uncharacteristic submission to her husband Petruchio. Given that Katherina is ‘conned into marrying a man she doesn’t love and [is] then deserted by him at the church door’ (Kahn 1975, p. 91), it is clear from Act 3 onwards the play will not be the comedy the audience is led to expect. As Coppélia Kahn states, Katherina is called:

devil, hell, curst, shrewd (shrewish), and wildcat, and referred to in other insulting ways because, powerless to change her situation, she talks about it (1975, p. 92).

Merely for speaking her mind, Katherina is condemned and subjected to psychological torture and the denial of food and sleep — ‘My falcon now is sharp and passing empty,/And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged’ (4.1.161–2) — until she goes from striking Petruchio in Act 2 and calling him a ‘fool’ (2.1.208) and ‘withered’ (2.1.229) to submission and claiming that she is ‘ashamed that women are so simple’ (5.2.161) as to fight against men when their hearts are as ‘soft, and weak, and smooth’ (5.2.165) as their bodies in a style that is more appropriate to tragedy than comedy.

The reference to Katherina as a ‘falcon’ implies that she is merely a wild animal to be trained and tamed. Falcon trainer Jannes Kruger identified that you need to establish dominance over a falcon, doing so by pinning their large wings and holding their talons in your bare hands because ‘a falcon is like a snake with feathers’ (2001).

Photo by J-Photos on Unsplash

The key to training falcons is dominance, something Petruchio spends the entire play exerting over Katherina until she breaks and gives her final speech in language that carries a ‘grave moral tone’ (Kahn 1975, p. 99).

Nowhere is this more clearly displayed than in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1967 film adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew in which Katherina’s monologue is given without a hint of irony, mocking or sarcasm. Katherina (Elizabeth Taylor) angrily forces the Widow and Bianca to their knees when she says ‘But now I see our lances are but straws’ (5.2.173) before looking upon Petruchio and kneeling before him in total obedience and respect. This display of utter devotion and submission is tragic in both its necessity to exist and its proof of the death of Katherina’s independent spirit. Even if Katherina is deemed to be hoodwinking everybody into thinking she has changed, and the speech is merely ironic or an act, the fact that she has needed to stoop so low and fake subordinance is enough in itself to make the play’s conclusion an uneasy one.

From whatever perspective, the ending of The Taming of the Shrew is undeniably tragic. It is worth noting that in the so nicknamed ‘Bad Quarto’, the text returns to Sly and concludes the framed narrative of the play and finishes with him believing he now knows how to tame a shrew, however for the purposes of this article the ending is considered solely as the way it is written in the Folio.

Lisa Hopkins observed that the:

most outstanding feature of Shakespearean comedy is its pervading obsession with marriage. In many instances single or multiple marriages are used to provide comic closure (1998, p. 16),

giving As You Like It, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing and Two Gentlemen of Verona as just some of her examples, stating that often ‘marriage is used as the mainspring of the comedy’ (1998, p. 16), rather than simply being a trope with which a comedy should end.

However, The Taming of the Shrew does not end in marriage: it has its marriage in the third act, a curious choice for a comedy. Rather than ending on the happy note of a wedding, The Taming of the Shrew concludes with the tragic display of Katherina’s obedience to a manipulative and controlling husband. The word ‘love’ appears in the speech only twice and never without the words ‘obey’ or ‘obedience’:

[Your husband] craves no other tribute at thy hands But love, fair looks and true obedience - […] When they are bound to serve, love and obey. (5.2.153–64)

Yet the word ‘obedient’ (5.2.158) appears on its own as well as coupled with the condition of love, showing not only is love not necessary for obedience but that love is nothing without it. Thus, the ending condemns Katherina to a loveless marriage, arguably a fate more tragic than death as her marriage will ‘be devoid of kindness, joy and passion’ (Depression Alliance, 2018).

Comedy in King Lear

Sir Ian McKellen as King Lear in Trevor Nun’s 2007 production.

King Lear is, without argument, a tragic play. Yet Barbara Everett points out that over the course of its action, Lear:

unlearns hatred, and learns love and humility. He loses the world and gains his soul [and the play is not] pessimistic (1992, p. 160).

In a way, it is similar to the fate of Creon in Antigone, who, ‘through suffering, become[s] wise’ (p. 55). Everett’s assertion that the play is not pessimistic hangs partly upon the ending, which essentially exists in two different forms due to the subtle differences between the Folio and in the Quarto. As noted by Jay L. Halio, the Quarto assigns the final lines 5.3.368–71 to Albany but the Folio gives them to Edgar (1973, p. 162). Whilst the words remain the same:

The waight of this sad time we must obey, Speake what we feele, not what we ought to say, The oldest have borne most, we that are yong, Shall never see so much, nor live so long. (5.3.368–71)

the change in which character says them alters the ending.

Arguably it is more logical to give the lines to Albany as he has a higher status than Edgar. As the widower of Goneril, he would presumably be the next in line for the throne given that the rest of the royal family are dead. With the new king stating that people should ‘speake what [they] feele’ rather than what they ‘ought to’ speak, he appears to be insisting upon a new way of ruling that he shall adopt, the beginning of a new age for the kingdom.

However, with Edgar speaking these closing lines, there is a greater sense of optimism. As a relatively young character whose father and traitorous bastard brother are both deceased, his insistence that the young shall ‘never see so much’ of the pain and tragedy seen by Lear suggests that this volume of suffering is in the past. It adds to the feeling of ‘reconciliation’ at the end of the tragedy in which we find ‘tragic pleasure’ in the Restoration of Order (Everett 1992, p. 165).

John Holloway identifies the parallel ‘between the condition of Lear and that in the Old Testament of Job’ (1992, p. 185) within the play. In the book of Job, he is described as a man whose suffering was so great that he ‘cursed the day of his birth’ (Job 3:1, NIV), yet if King Lear is to parallel his story, then it is worth examining the ending to Job’s narrative. In its final chapter, the ‘Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before [and] blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part’ (Job 42:10–12, NIV). Yet Lear dies with the corpse of his youngest daughter in his arms, hardly similar to the restoration of and salvation for Job.

However, upon closer analysis, it is plain to see that Lear’s salvation is his release from a life of torment rather than the restoration of his mind, family or kingdom to him. The ending can be

frame[d as] the victory of Cordelia and of Love [with] the primary persons, good and bad, d[ying] into love. (Holloway 1992, p. 191)

This emphasis on love and release from suffering is the ultimate happy ending for Lear: he is reunited with his family in death and becomes freed from the burdens of leadership and his potential dementia and the agony so great that he questions why ‘a dog, a horse, a rat have life’ (5.3.348) when Cordelia does not.

Not only is it a happy ending for Lear, but also for Gloucester, Edgar, Albany and the kingdom. Gloucester’s death is described by his son as a heart attack caused by ‘two extreames of passion, joy and griefe’ (5.3.221) in which his heart ‘Burst smilingly’ (5.3.222). After suffering so much, to die with a smile after such an intense joy of being reunited with his son, Gloucester could not have died a more content death.

Similarly, by the end of the play, Edgar is freed from his traitorous brother and able to be with his father in his father’s final moments as well as being present to witness the dawning of a new age for the kingdom and monarchy. With his experience and status as the new Earl of Gloucester, his future at the play’s closing is one of optimism and opportunity.

Albany too ends the play no longer married to an adulteress wife, and the next in line for the throne. He is presented by the end with the chance to put right the faults of the previous reign, given that a king who would divide his kingdom into three and a father who would ‘disclaime all parental care’ (1.1.114) over the daughter he loves most for speaking the truth to him is, presumably, not an efficient or beloved king.

This makes the ending happy for the kingdom as well, for not only is their ailing king finally at rest but he also will not be succeeded by Goneril or Regan, who have proven themselves to be lustful, unfaithful, selfish and thirsty for blood throughout the play through their adultery, Regan’s assistance in the blinding of Gloucester and Goneril’s poisoning of her sister. Neither of them, it seems, would have made good rulers either.

Conclusion

The concept of tragic or happy endings is not as simple as it first appears. Both The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear have the capacity to be happy and tragic simultaneously. In the same way that no character can ever be considered as truly evil or good, endings cannot be boiled down into such narrow categories. The catharsis necessary for a tragic ending results in a kind of tragic pleasure or happy ending as found in King Lear and the subtext of happy endings often have tragedy underpinning them, such as Katherina’s submission in The Taming of the Shrew. Perhaps George Eliot put it best when she wrote that endings are ‘at best a negation’ (1954, p. 324).

If you enjoyed this, you may like my article on why women were not allowed to perform onstage in Elizabethan theatre:

References

Depression Alliance, ‘How to Survive a Loveless Marriage’, Depression Alliance, (2018) .

Eliot, George, “GE to John Blackwood” in The George Eliot Letters, ed. Gordon S. Haight, V.2 (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 324.

Everett, Barbara, ‘The New King Lear’ in Shakespeare: King Lear, ed. Frank Kermode, (London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1992).

Gannon, Mo, ‘How to Train a Falcon.’ The National (2011) < https://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/travel/how-to-train-a-falcon-1.432282>.

Holloway, John, ‘King Lear’ in Shakespeare: King Lear, ed. Frank Kermode, (London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1992).

Hopkins, Lisa, The Shakespearean Marriage, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998).

Kahn, Coppélia, ‘The Taming of the Shrew: Shakespeare’s Mirror of Marriage.’ In Modern Language Studies, Vol. 5, (1975) .

Schafer, Elizabeth, Shakespeare in Production: The Taming of the Shrew, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Shakespeare, William, King Lear, ed. Jay L. Halio, (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1973).

Shakespeare, William, The Taming of the Shrew, ed. Ann Thompson, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Sophocles, Antigone, Trans. Don Taylor (London: Bloomsbury, 2006).

Zeffirelli, Franco, The Taming of the Shrew, (Columbia Pictures, 1967).

The Holy Bible, NIV (Job 3:1, 42:10–12).

King Lear
The Taming Of The Shrew
Shakespeare
Tragedy
Literature
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