Tough love

Shakespeare, Austen, and the ultimate battle of the sexes

Hello friends,

Today we’re mediating the holiday sparkly-craziness by kicking off a series on Shakespeare and Austen. But this will not be your usual Shakespeare and not your usual Austen: There will be chaos, confusions, gender swapping, hilarity, sexual friction, and romantic tension - in every one of these posts. Because it’s all there in Austen, and when we look around to see how the heck she did it what we come up with is: Shakespeare.  

But! Be warned: This first epistle on Shakespeare might be your least favorite Shakespeare. It is the Shakespeare everyone wants to love but feels they cannot.

And it’s one of his most baffling, dare-we-say-sexiest, and least understood and outlandish comedies. It’s the comedy that perhaps created the Battle of the Sexes and the enemies-to-lovers romcom trope we love - and this prototype is such a strong dramatization of our gender politics and sexual frictions that we almost can’t even take it today. It makes us super uncomfortable.

The audience sees that these two characters, with their wit, their arrogance, and their nonconforming authenticity, are meant for each other before they see it themselves. ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ at Shakespeare’s Globe, 2016. Photo: Marc Brenner

We’re talking about that play: Yes, it’s The Taming of the Shrew, one of the Bard’s first plays that many of us would like to just forget, ignore, burn, because of that infamous final speech. That speech!

But stay with us: You know by now that we always find a way, here at the Austen Connection, to get through our difficulties together, and 433 years later, surely - surely! -  we can finally get a handle on Petruchio, that charismatic dramatic misogynist. Let’s go for it! We’re in this together. 

You know by now that we always find a way, here at the Austen Connection, to get through our difficulties together, and 433 years later, surely - surely! -  we can finally get a handle on Petruchio, that charismatic dramatic misogynist. Let’s go for it! We’re in this together. 

So to begin, let’s look at what Shakespeare is doing - just by checking out the actual text, the dialogue, the settings, the situations - in this early play, estimated to be written around 1590: The Taming of the Shrew.

There are some things that Shakespeare is obviously doing that can lay the foundation as we approach Petruchio and Kate and also Austen enemies-to-lovers like Elizabeth and Darcy - because by the time Austen was coming of age, flirting with Tom Lefroy, and writing her own chaos and absurdity, this plot of Shakespeare’s had been around and on the stages, that Jane Austen frequented, for about 200 years.

Chaotic world, where are you? 

First of all, something Shakespeare is doing is presenting a world-within-a-world of chaos. 

The world of the play, Padua, Italy, like that of Elizabethan England, is full of absurdity, misnomers, mistaken identities, confused hierarchies - and all of it taken to an absurd extreme.

But before we even get to that world, we’re engaged in a fictional frame. Shakespeare put outer packaging on this story that wraps around the fiction already there. Remove outer packaging before serving. And there appears to be a rioter in this audience - Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London does this brilliantly in its 2012 staging by placing a drunk, belligerent Christopher Sly wandering around the lobby as people enter the theater. The drunk guy causes a ruckus, so the actors have to stop and tend to him. After breaking out in a fight, then urinating on the stage and then on the front rows of the audience (causing an uproar, obviously it’s fake) Christopher Sly passes out and the actors decide to play a game: They’ll dress him up like a “lord,” place beside him a “lady,” and then gaslight him when he rouses by talking to him as if he is indeed the lord of this manor we’re all in. They coach him into acquiescence and he settles to watch the play in our midst.

This pre-show has always struck me as crucial. Shakespeare is reminding us right away that we’re play-acting; it’s not real life; and even if it were, confusions, obfuscations, and fake-outs abound. We’re all in on the joke. And we’re all complicit in what happens here.

And some wonderful dichotomies are going to increase the chaos of this world. Confounding for Kate and for us all as we traverse this space is an intense desire and need for order and safety: We’ll encounter it in the language - sun vs moon, master vs. servant, rich vs. poor, subversive vs. loyal, authentic vs. fake. We’ll encounter confusions and mixups in names, ranks, roles - servants acting like masters, masters being misidentified, suitors acting like teachers, daughters and wives acting good or bad or indifferent. Deprivations and disorder punctuate the proceedings - clothes are created for Kate and then thrown off and thrown away, meals are prepared and then removed, bedsheets are all a mess as she is not allowed to sleep.

And by the end of it we’ll all long, along with Kate, for comfort and stability. What’s happening overtly here is a trade-off of power for protection. And it’s a trade-off that will sizzle in romcoms right through to Austen with Darcy and Elizabeth and on to contemporary novels, most importantly Sally Rooney’s brilliant Beautiful World, Where are You?

But that’s all to come, and as this story begins, a drunk, defrauded and complacently confused Christopher Sly watches the commencement of the play along with us, having been convinced that he is an aristocrat, as the very frame through which we’re watching now forces us to be conscious of our identity, our privilege to sit and watch a performance, and to question our place in it all, to be aware of the arbitrariness of who gets to decide who’s who and how to be. 

In this corner, Katherina Minola

So what’s going to happen - and this is a spoiler but the play’s been around 433 years, it’ll survive the spoilers - Kate’s going to get “tamed” by a man who enters Padua looking for wealth and marriage. Looking to “wive and thrive” in Padua. His father has just died, and was a friend it turns out of Katherine’s father, Baptista. So it’s important, I think, in this play where reputation matters - a lot - Petruchio is a friend of the family, and comes from a respected family himself. But he wants money. He wants to get this party started. He immediately presents as someone who is tough, well-spoken, and good-mannered (always important in Shakespeare as a quality that traverses wealth and class lines). He knows exactly what he wants and is able to get it.

Meanwhile, we hear Kate, in many productions, before we see her.

She is spoken of as a “shrew,” as impossible, as unmanageable, and generally terrible, and again this is in a world and in a play where reputation is everything. She’s losing.

And when we are in the same room with Kate, in this play, we can see why: She is raging, mad, literally tying up and hitting her wickedly-sweet sister Bianca and anyone who comes near her. And she’s - it’s important to note - being somewhat exploited by her father, Baptista, who presents as mild and thoughtful but in fact has placed Katherine in a terrible position by requiring that the sought-after Bianca can only marry when Kate does, thereby setting up a situation where Katherine is humiliated and derided but where Baptista stands to benefit.

In short, Katherine’s family and community - which is everything in Padua - greatly under-values her and possibly exploits her. And she’s seething. Beginning to boil over.

We can also see something that we always see in Austen protagonists, and it’s key to understanding the joy of this play: And that is that even while Katherine is angry and over-the-top in every way, we can also see that she is stronger, smarter, is brutally honest, more authentic, and has more character than everyone around her - including her male teachers, her father, and her perfectly-presented, mild sister.

Where two fires meet together

And guess what - in our first minutes with Petruchio, it’s also clear that he possesses the exact same qualities: He’s stronger, smarter, more honest, more authentic, and has more character than everyone around him. He also, like Katherine, has a temper and we see him beating a servant right away. Not pretty I realize, but there is an awful lot of this in Shakespeare, and it seems important and also it’s a play. 

But Kate’s raging and her violence is different than Petruchio’s - and friends yes we are still just in the first 15 minutes of this play - because Petruchio’s raging comes from his absolute confidence in his authority; while Kate’s raging comes from a complete lack of authority. So we see right away that Kate’s raging, as intimidating and as hilarious as it is, contains an underlying pain.

Another thing that seems important when it comes to violence and power is that Katherine is overpowering everyone who comes into her vicinity. She bullies her sickeningly sweet sister, and Petruchio also is amazed to observe that a music tutor - in a really funny moment for audiences - emerges from a lesson with Kate wearing a lute smashed over his head. He is not teaching Katherine anything; instead she’s playing him. At this spectacle, Petruchio declares, “Oh how I long to have some chat with her!” 

So Petruchio decides - sight unseen, though reputation broadcasts loud and clear - that he will indeed marry Katherine, no matter what anyone says. And to everyone’s warnings about her temper and her violence, he stands assured, confident, arrogant, and tall - just like Katherine, he overpowers everyone all the time. 

Before meeting Kate, Petruchio meets Baptista, and they have a detailed conversation about money and land and provisions worthy of Austen mathematics and they strike a deal - Baptista also stipulates that Petruchio must win “the special thing,” her love.

No worries, says Petruchio, who seems genuinely intrigued by Kate and excited by her reputation for raging: “For I am as peremptory as she proud-minded, and where two fires meet together,” he tells Baptista, “they do consume the thing that feeds their fury.” 

Well, that does sound promising, you have to admit. 

With that settled, the two meet. And fiery it is.

The very definition of meeting your match: ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ at Shakespeare’s Globe, 2016. Photo: Marc Brenner

Kate is overpowered by Petruchio, eventually, but before that happens there is a hilarious battle of wits where she insults him, compares him to a stool (so he invites her to sit on him), runs from him, calls him no gentleman, and finally slaps him. All the while, batting off insults and physical assaults, Petruchio taunts her by calling her “young and light,” “passing gentle,” “pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous, slow in speech (ha ha), yet sweet as spring-time flowers.” Again, in most productions he’s being flipped, slapped, punched, or tripped as he recites these compliments, which is always hilarious fun to watch play out.

When the family and household enter, Petruchio continues the biggest gaslighting in Elizabethan drama by telling the assembled that Kate is in love with him and that they’ve agreed to marry. And “Sunday is the wedding day!” Kate: “I’ll see thee hanged on Sunday first!” LOL.

Now Kate has even more reason to rage - and no one in the space where all of this is playing out can do anything but laugh.

Petruchio is just another bad king

So by the time we get to the wedding we see clearly that this is the most nonconforming pair that ever entered Padua. So much of this play happens in a public setting - the play itself where not only the audience of us but also our friend Christopher Sly & Co. is watching - but also in a public square or public household in Padua, where appearances matter. 

And what’s weird and seems significant is that on this wedding day, the most public and private of events, where the most private is made most public, Petruchio becomes a sort of clown. He arrives at his wedding where an eager - so eager, and so sweet, and we are from this moment firmly on Kate’s side! - bride awaits her betrothed, but he arrives late and swaggering as a baffling sort of clownish Italian Capitano character. 

Critics point to the Italian Capitano caricature as a sort of a dramatic trope from the era and perhaps it serves to distance the audience from the literalness of the drama before us - asking us, as Shakespeare often does, by taking us to a made-up or remote place like Illyria or the Forest of Arden, to follow these characters into absurdity. And to turn the realism of our world upside down in a way that forces us to open up to different ways of seeing our structures, our roles, our world. 

And Shakespeare has also done this thing with power before and will do it many times again - he’s begun with Henry VI (correction: changed from Henry IV, I should not go by memory!) and he’ll continue with all the history plays to show us the inside of power, the arbitrariness of royal power, the corrupting influence. But not just that basic thing but also the more subtle things about how we interact with power, how we find our moral path on either side of it, how we have choices whether we’re in power or under it or abused by it, choices about who we’ll be, what mannerisms and what agency we’ll adopt and what the consequences of that will be. This agency and the choices on either side of power are also the place where Austen plots, from the chaos, skepticism, and conspiracies of an 18th-century revolutionary era. And in Taming it all plays out on a stage for people experiencing Reformation-era divisions and skepticisms and confusions about authority and belief and obedience, like never before. And of course we’re still experiencing those divisions and those questions now, going into 2024. 

It’s all played out for us on the grand stage, and also on the more private, domestic stage, which in the theater and in fiction is the same thing. Petruchio is making Katherine feel something - he’s putting her on a roller coaster of emotion that we see from across a playhouse, as Kate experiences attention and investment in her actions and her future and even a sort of respect and care - faulty as it is - from someone for maybe the first time. And she also is forced here to see the way her own nonconformity affects people.

So Petruchio of course here is beating her at her own game: If you’re wild and nonconforming, I’ll be even wilder and less conforming still, and here’s how that feels. Are you paying attention?! And of course all this is funny! 

And meanwhile the pair are - however absurdly and weirdly - somehow married, and the battle of wills commences immediately.

But interestingly even at this commencement of the marriage, Petruchio immediately imbues Katherine with some power, and more than she’s ever enjoyed: She urges the wedding guests to go in to feast, and declares she’s going with them; Petruchio immediately underscores her authority and what she’s just said: Yes, everyone, you heard her, Go inside and feast. Then when he has Kate’s attention, and has offered her this gift of authority - perhaps yet another thing she’s never felt - he declares that she in fact is going with him.

And this brings us to the taming methods Petruchio uses, which are - yes, uncomfortable, yes, abusive, yes, confounding - and also worth unpacking.

His strategy is clever, and he seems to have good instincts, albeit, you could use similar techniques with success on a horse or - as is often pointed out as likely an intentional analogy - a hawk.

Early in the play, in the initial scenes, Petruchio is told by someone that instead of court Kate he’d more likely “cart” her - this is a reference to what Elizabethan audiences would recognize in a time of grossly cruel punishments. Elizabethan-era women were being “carted”, or waterboarded on ducking stools.

One thing that might be going on with these methods is that Shakespeare is depicting a strategy for influence - so often it’s a theme in Austen also, influence - that is however less violent and coercive than the actual crimes and punishments going on around him. Nonconforming and dissenting heads were on sticks, public punishments and humiliation were common. England was in the midst of a birth of skepticism and schism and doubt that emerged with the Protestant Reformation. And much of this public division was caused by one family - namely the royal family - and its public-private confusions, beginning with Henry VIII’s decision to break with Catholicism and declare himself head of the Church of England precisely so he could divorce one wife and marry another; followed (after six years featuring the boy Edward VI and nine days of Lady Jane Grey, executed at the age of 17) by Mary I’s return to Catholicism and the brutal, public punishment of nonconforming Protestants; followed by yet another return, along with executions of nonconformists, with Elizabeth I and her Protestantism.

So then here we are - in Padua, or in England - at the time Shakespeare sits down to write his little domestic drama about a husband and wife who may or may not get on the same page, publicly or privately. 

But even all this is too simplistic.

While the overt drama here is about a technique, about punishment and control, about strategies for domestic peace and hierarchy and public and private roles, Shakespeare is probably not making an entire play about this. It’s not his main concern. It’s surely the vehicle for deeper concerns.

Xtreme Shakespeare 

And Shakespeare is probably doing something more complicated here than just presenting a vision of humane correction though that’s maybe ambitious in itself. But likely he’s doing the work of getting to the heart of our relationships to each other, whether it’s an examination of king and country, or of family, love, desire, and how power and influence play out in our personal relationships and what we can learn from them in our larger societal structures, and vice versa. 

So, assuming as we watch by today’s standards, which we absolutely can and should, that we find Petruchio abusive, patriarchal and cruel: What then?

Even then, and perhaps especially then, we have Shakespeare complicating our narrative. Because it remains that Kate, again, is superior to all around her. With the one obvious, and even absurd, possible exception: Petruchio.

And with all this chaos, Shakespeare allows us to observe the power structures of the day taken to an absurd - yet at the same time perfectly logical, and legal, and even milder if anything - extreme. He portrays what happens to an inner life, an inner spirit, by being broken - and we get front-row seats to the subordination of a powerful mind to another powerful mind. 

[W]ith all this chaos, Shakespeare allows us to observe the power structures of the day taken to an absurd - yet at the same time perfectly logical, and legal, and even milder if anything - extreme. He portrays what happens to an inner life, an inner spirit, by being broken - and we get front-row seats to the subordination of a powerful mind to another powerful mind.

It forces us to see the raging shrew in a female body as human, and to cringe at her subjection, and to marvel at her own inner strength that is called for in the kind of discipline she endures. And in the end Shakespeare is putting on display also the courage that comes from restraint - the courage it takes for any and all of us, in Elizabethan England and today, to negotiate the gender roles and power structures we are placed in.

You see it in the famous and beautiful speech of The Merchant of Venice when, as Stephen Greenblatt so beautifully points out, Shylock says to the assembled Christians, asking for their empathy for himself as a Jew, “If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?” 

Shakespeare’s complicated stories and his extremes force an empathy - even if the ending is not complicated, as the Taming ending may or may not be. In order to arrive we are traversing territory that forces an examination of questions: What kind of compromises do we make for order in our society; in what ways are we railing at these structures and in what ways are we quietly navigating them? In what ways do they break us and in what ways do they lift us up. And where are the pathways to connection and power that might help us transcend them.

Shakespeare is forcing us to flex our empathy muscles in this display - for Kate, much as he does for Shylock; much as he does for the pathetic Malvolio in Twelfth Night. If you feel uncomfortable, sitting there with Christopher Sly and laughing in your seats, it’s because you’re supposed to.

And when we join this ride Shakespeare creates for us we’ve arrived at some interesting places. 

We arrive not only at empathy, but we are also forced to examine themes of authenticity - who is shallow like Bianca and who is honest and authentic, in all their difficulties; how can one trade on a good reputation, and how can we achieve that through authentic connection; how can we in fact conquer and wrangle reputation and respectability and hierarchy and make it work for us, publicly, and beat everyone else at their own game? 

Because Kate and Petruchio do, it appears, get on the same page. And they do, it appears, beat everyone at their own game.

After Kate is starved, frustrated, deprived of sleep and comfort and clothes and any sense of order amidst the chaos of Petruchio’s house, while he insists on politeness and patience from her while stubbornly pretending that he’s treating her like a princess, he finally somehow breaks through to Kate. 

It’s a funny scene, and one that audiences enjoy, and strangely feel a lot of relief in, when it finally happens.

They’re on the way from Petruchio’s wildly chaotic but well-staffed house back to Baptista’s where Kate clearly longs to go. The entire company is exhausted, and where Kate is resting, Petruchio approaches her and with fake-nonchalance says to her, “How bright and goodly shines the moon.” The company freezes in concern. Kate looks at him like he’s mad and points out that it’s the middle of the day and it is of course the sun. An absurd argument ensues and Petruchio orders everyone to get the horses and return, telling Kate that if she continues to “cross” him he’ll deny her a visit to her family’s house. As the company is turning around, Petruchio’s faithful, long-time servant Grumio pleads with Kate: “say as he says” or we’ll never get anywhere!

We see something like desperation but also perhaps determination light up in Kate’s eyes as she bursts out with, Yes, it’s the moon! She knows what she knows, she believes what she believes like any good Elizabethan. But she can also make a choice. It’s a clear bright day but of course, Petruchio, “I knoooooow it is the moon!” He promptly disagrees, “It is the blessed sun!” but Katherine keeps up with him and stubbornly agrees again with him no matter what he says, and so on, with Kate acknowledging but acquiescing to the absurdity as she finally declares, “the moon changes even as your mind.” And, friends, this may be the most important line of this entire play - revealing that Kate can say this, knowing of course it isn’t true but mustering the strength that it takes to go along with it for one’s own preservation.

The two of them seem to now be in a little private party even as we all watch in confusion, and relief, along with the company of servants. 

Petruchio, still not satisfied, then tests Kate further. An old gentleman approaches, and he loudly observes that it’s a “gentle mistress” that approaches and proceeds to regale the fair young maiden with poetic speech. Kate watches curiously and picks up the game, and - and this detail is crucial - in front of everyone approaches the old man loudly addressing him, theatrically, as a “young, budding virgin,” much to the company’s relief and the old gentleman’s confusion.

Petruchio, delighted, quickly steps in and rescues her saying, “I hope thou art mad. This is a man,” and it always gets a laugh, as Petruchio graciously and gallantly apologizes for his wife, and also proceeds to proclaim his wife and her family as noble. 

Kate, Petruchio, the gentleman and all the company including the audience are delighted. It’s funny! And also uncomfortable!

In a semi-private yet public moment, they’ve reached an understanding: Petruchio may be dead wrong, but he must be publicly respected. Kate may be right, but she must show even more strength than Petruchio, as absurd as he may be, and reconcile to authority. She may be stronger, smarter, and better; but in this world - chaotic and fictional though it is - he will be in the lead. And in return, he’ll acknowledge her as the best wife in all the land, and many riches and respect and wealth will come to them both. It’s fiction!

Let’s take this show on the road

And this is the show this company takes on the road. They take their show straight to Kate’s home and the scene of her former humiliations, and the drama they stage there allows them to win a bet while publicly confounding and one-upping the more shallow, less authentic, appearance-obsessed and hierarchy-obsessed household that makes up their community.

They take their show straight to Kate’s home and the scene of her former humiliations, and the drama they stage there allows them to win a bet while publicly confounding and one-upping the more shallow, less authentic, appearance-obsessed and hierarchy-obsessed household that makes up their community.

That discomfort, that forcing of an examination and inquiry into how we got here, that fantasy of superiority and subjugation and the play of mind around it that still to this day has the power to both confound and excite: All of that is Shakespeare’s take. He doesn’t have to have any other. 

And meanwhile back in Padua this couple’s reputation is made - not only Petruchio’s but also Kate’s. She kneels before him in an elaborate display of submission, and delivers a lengthy speech - she’s the best speaker in this play, by the way - about the role of a wife and a husband. “Thy husband,” she tells the indignant wives of the company, “is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee.”

It’s a speech that in its relentless humility amazes even Petruchio and sends him rushing to grab Kate’s hand and lift her out of it, as if to say, Enough. We’ve won. Clearly this is a show of strength as much as subjugation taken to its logical extreme conclusion on the part of Kate, and further complicating the narrative. We got here but at what cost? The playwright is asking. 

It’s easy to see this as an act on Kate’s part; as an absurd extreme set up to force an examination. But still somehow, even 433 years on when we hear this closing speech about subjugation we are tempted to feel that we have to take Shakespeare at his word. We’ve just seen these two lovers defy meaning by acting out the ways that we can call the sun the moon and the moon the blessed sun; but still even 15 minutes later we take this speech of Katherine’s so literally.

And it’s a little like Austen’s covert examinations about class, power, influence, gender roles, that all resolve into a mildly happy ending and a marriage - almost all of them ambiguous. We also take Austen at her word, and say: Oh well. Guess she didn’t really mean all of that subversive table-turning she spent 150 pages delivering.

And whatever Shakespeare’s delivering with this final speech, we know one thing for sure: He’s causing us to feel along with Katherine as she submits, because we’ve seen her for the rational, human, and frankly superior creature that she is. We see that when she is pricked she bleeds, just like Shylock who will come later. 

But Shakespeare kept on writing, and so perhaps he does give us an answer. His answer is Beatrice, Rosalind, Olivia, Portia, and a parade of strong women to come - many of them disguised as men and surpassing them in moral strength.

So let’s not, from now on, leave Katherina Minola on her own; let’s bring in her sisters that are also Shakespeare’s creations to surround her and make sense of her and her final speech.

Because maybe Shakespeare isn’t Petruchio in this play. Maybe he’s Kate. He feels everything right along with her, and makes us, whatever our gender identification, feel it all too. Jane Austen is not just Elizabeth Bennet; she’s Charlotte Lucas, she’s Emma, she’s Jane Fairfax, she’s Lucy Steele, she’s Darcy, she’s all the power and all the pain.

And when we realize that this is an omnipotent author play-acting, and that Shakespeare can in fact be all of his characters, and especially the Kates, we know that this play is about the courage of nonconformity amidst stricture. It’s about the will to authenticity amidst hypocrisy. And it’s about the search for a lover who is as smart and courageous as ourselves. Let the battle begin. 

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Tell us what’s on your mind, friends: Are you a Shakespeare lover? A Shakespeare avoider? Are you a Taming of the Shrew hater? We get it! Let us know if you’re curious about this play, or about Shakespeare, and its connections to Jane Austen.

What is Katherine’s pain about? Is it about the world and its disorder? Is it about the absurdity and hypocrisy surrounding her? It could be all of the above, and it’s what makes this play so endearing and almost sweet, even though we are uncomfortable with the violence taking place within these roles.

What are you reading and watching these days? Let us know, and find more links and fun below!

Cool links and community: 

• You can’t go wrong watching the online productions of Shakespeare’s Globe.

• The 1974 Shakespeare in the Park with Raul Julia and Meryl Streep - sizzling hot:

• Stephen Greenblatt’s book Will in the World is just wonderful. And here’s a global lecture Greenblatt does on his personal experience reading The Merchant of Venice and his approach to the character, and humanity, of Shylock.

• “You can make an entire series on romantic tension. Wow!” - This podcast, The Play’s the Thing, is fun and smart. It’s a series of conversations about Shakespeare plays, including five whole episodes devoted to Taming, conducted by theater people, actors, directors, podcasters. They are candid and curious and tackle the serious questions straight on, and sometimes perhaps from a Christian perspective as this podcast is associated with the CiRCE Institute and it’s also here on Substack with Goldberry Studios. If you don’t want to invest hours in this conversation, skip to the last Q&A episode about the play. Also this conversation/episode with Dr. Peter Adamson about philosophy and Shakespeare is helpful for understanding the beliefs and skepticisms of Shakespeare’s world.

• Austen and Shakespeare from the Folger Library

• ‘How Austen created a Shakespearean world in Pride and Prejudice’, Harold Bloom reprinted in Lit Hub

• My love of Shakespeare began as a student in London. In 1989 I had just flown in to the city and was killing time waiting for a British boyfriend at the maze-like Barbican, which staged Royal Shakespeare Company productions. They had an afternoon matinee of Macbeth. I didn’t realize you could get fantastic tickets with a student ID, so I bought a cheap seat, ended up on the back row, plopped my feet on a ledge and put arms across my knees, hoping to stay awake despite the jetlag. When intermission came I realized I had not changed positions the entire time. And the thing mesmerizing me and utterly holding my attention was the husky-voiced, vibrant Lady Macbeth, played by none other than Amanda Root. I took note of her name and never forgot it. And of course Jane Austen readers and watchers know her well as the beloved Anne Elliot of the 1995 adaptation of Persuasion.

  

• 10 Things I Hate About You - just like Jane Austen with Clueless, Shakespeare inspired one of the best-loved romcom films from the 1990s, starring Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles in a story loosely based on The Taming of the Shrew.

• This Stratford Festival production of Taming has become legendary - the leads are married actors taking on the roles. Intense!

• Sally Rooney as we have written about before is influenced by Austen, particularly the power plays of Emma and Knightley, and this fuels her latest novel, Beautiful World, Where are You?

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