Today in Literature History...

It's everyone's favorite bard! On this day in 1594, Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew was entered in the Stationers' Register by printer Peter Short. As early as 1538, Henry VIII had issued a proclamation against "naughty printed books," and the creation of the Stationers' Company was yet another attempt to regulate and censor the "many false, scandalous, seditious, and libelous" books that were emerging from the private presses. While this play may seem truly innocent, it can be interpreted in many ways. My favorite is when the ending speech is given sarcastically. Despite many aspects of the story having been borrowed, there was no flogging a dead horse in Shakespeare's Shrew, perhaps thanks to Kate's famous knuckle-under at the end. Her speech is often delivered as if ironic, or as if a new strategy in the battle of the sexes before a blinking, jaw-dropped and totally disarmed Petruchio. The closing lines:

...I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace;
Or seek for rule, supremacy and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love and obey.
Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms!
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband's foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease.