Wednesday, March 1, 2017

A Word for Wednesday

"Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks and true obedience:
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
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.

~Katharina's final speech in The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare~

11 comments:

  1. It would probably be somewhat unpopular to say so, but I find myself mostly in agreement with this passage:

    Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
    Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
    And for thy maintenance commits his body
    To painful labour both by sea and land,
    To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
    Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
    And craves no other tribute at thy hands
    But love, fair looks and true obedience:
    Too little payment for so great a debt.

    My husband literally cares for me by working in difficult conditions, especially like he has this past month in the field. I'm safe at home with the baby. Maintaining love, my health, and the house is a fair exchange and what I prefer. (I might not agree on the "too little payment" part!) We wouldn't use "obedience" or "sovereign" today because of the connotations, but submission. Appreciate your hard working man, ladies!

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    1. I agree with you which is why I posted it! I think this monologue is actually pretty spot-on Biblically with the purposes God created men and women for. It's obviously not very popular in the 21st century to say so, but women were created for men. I was challenged with this last year when I read Let Me Be A Woman by Elisabeth Elliot. It's not that I'm unfamiliar or in disagreement with Biblical gender roles, but it's definitely easy to lose sight of them in today's culture.

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  2. Dang, dang and dang. What a transformation! Even though I'm not sure what she was like before, so I have nothing to compare it to. Lol I hope her husband appreciated her change in attitude... Although it sounds like he didn't since he made that bet with his friends just to see whose wife was the most whipped :/ Sorry...Submissive.

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    1. And let me also say, I do agree with a lot of things in this speech, but when you take Christ out of the equation, I feel like it (the act of a wife submitting to her husband) gets perverted by the world.

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    2. I agree. Husbands can be too passive (the wife rules) or too authoritarian (abusive). They need to follow Christ's leadership and example, and Ephesians 5:21 actually says that we should submit to one another.

      Some things have changed over the last 500 years, but many things haven't. The fallen nature of man apart from Christ yields the same vices in every age.

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    3. Love this exchange of comments! I was hoping for some good discussion under this post. I wasn't exactly sure how to take this monologue coming at the end of such an outrageous play. I'm not sure if Shakespeare was writing ironically or what, but taken alone, I think it's very good and I agree with what Katharina says.

      (I might add, for the sake of context, that she gave this speech to the two other wives in question: Bianca and the widow who married Hortensio--the women who didn't come when their husbands sent for them.)

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    4. I'm interested to see what Bianca and the other women said in response to this speech. I can't wait to read it! Maybe it's free on my phone ;) Or maybe my best friend will let me borrow it? haha

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    5. Normally I would say OF COURSE! but my Shakespeare is all in one complete volume so I don't lend that out. But if you just wanted to come hang at mi casa, you could probably sit and read it pretty quickly. It's not very long.

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    6. When you say "not very long," what does that convert to in time? We should have a best friend hangout/read-a-thon day where we hangout and read (obviously lol). Is Cody working tomorrow?

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    7. I definitely agree that we should have a best friend hangout/read-a-thon day!! That sounds perfect! And it would be even more perfect if we took it to the beach. Just sayin'.

      As far as how long Taming of the Shrew is: I don't exactly know how to answer that. You read way faster than I do and also I never keep track of how many minutes or hours I'm actually reading. But I did read the whole thing off and on in one day. (I have yet to sit and read an entire play by Shakespeare without taking a few breaks.)

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    8. A good public library might have all of his plays in individual volumes (with footnotes)! I think I used the Penguin editions - Pelican Shakespeare, since that's what my library had. I miss my home library.

      Usually the performance of a play is a couple hours, but when you're reading and visualizing it takes a little longer. 3 hours maybe to read a play?

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