Posts Tagged ‘ marriage ’

Why, there’s a wench!


It can be easy to overlook the fact that texts hundreds of years old can be controversial.  Non-religious texts, that is!  But having seen a production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew this week, in the beautiful grounds of St. Augustine’s Abbey, it would be foolish to pretend this isn’t the case.  You could actually feel the tension in the audience rise as we approached the rather sticky conclusion of the play, particularly the husbands nervously wondering how their wives would react to Katharina’s final speech.  Even if you don’t know the play, you probably know of the speech, particularly this bit:

I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war when 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?
…
Place your hands beneath your husband’s foot,
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease

It’s not really an easy pill to swallow, is it?  ‘Let your husband walk all over you.’  Not a message I’d like to give to anyone.  But of course, it’s not quite so simple.  In theatre, the text is only part of the equation, and whether the dramatist likes it or not, the director, the actors and even (to a lesser, though also more complicated, extent) the audience can have as great an influence on the play’s meaning and tone as the words do.  In this particular case, there are various ways of playing the scene or interpreting the action which make the ending far easier for modern audiences to accept.  Whether you should do so is a different question entirely, which I shall dodge around and leave for others. Continue reading →

2006
08/19
CATEGORY
Theatre
TAGS




10 comments

Now we are in-laws


My sister got married at the weekend.  However, other than saying that yes, she looked stunning, yes, it was a fantastic occasion and no, it didn’t rain, I’m not writing this post about the even itself.  It is about a new facet of my identity which perplexes me somewhat.

What is the role of the brother-in-law?

The role of the mother-in-law is very well defined, and the father-in-law almost as much.  But what about the sibling of the newly married man or woman?  We get to add -in-law to our list of titles, which is a privilege denied to uncles, aunts, cousins and so on, but why bother?  If the two of them ever decide to start a family (which is, sadly, fairly unlikely, but I will not apply pressure), then uncledom would be the state entered into, and the role of the uncle is quite clear.  The role of the uncle is to lead the little darlings slightly astray by being crazier than the parents, and also to introduce the wee ones to activities they might otherwise miss as their parents have no particular fondness for a particular sport, craft, genre of film or national cuisine.

But what of the brother-in-law?  I suppose if a sister’s husband started being unpleasant to her, a brother-in-law might step in and say ‘oi!’  But as my sister is more capable of looking out for herself than I am of looking out for her, this doesn’t apply in our case.  And her husband is a very nice, gentle man (as well as a gentleman, I suppose) and I’d be shocked if the issue ever arose.  The only other thing I can think of is that the brother- or sister-in-law is the in-law who you don’t have to put on any airs for, who you don’t have to try to impress.  The in-law who you feel comfortable with and who won’t over-criticise the standard of your cleaning, cooking or DIY.  The good cop to the mother-in-law bad cop.  Hopefully, given time, the friend.

2006
08/14
CATEGORY
Ramblings
TAGS


6 comments
%d bloggers like this: