INTRODUCTION TO AS ENGLISH LITERATURE

Shakespeare and Poetry

Syllabus• AQA A specification.

TAMING OF THE SHREW

LOVE THROUGH THE AGES

What is a ‘shrew’?

Why might a ‘shrew’ have been used to describe a woman like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrrbyZYnfGE

Taming of the Shrew in less than 5 minutes

Lucentio attends the local university. He sees Bianca and falls in love.

Bianca already has two suitors and Bianca’s father says no one may court Bianca until first her older sister, the vicious, ill-tempered Katherine, is married.

Lucentio decides to overcome this problem by disguising himself as Bianca’s Latin tutor to gain an excuse to be in her company.

Petruchio arrives in Padua to find a wife. He intends to marry a rich woman, and does not care what she is like as long as she will bring him a fortune.

He agrees to marry Katherine sight unseen.

He goes to meet her, and they have a duel of words with Katherine insulting him.

Petruchio tells her that he will marry her whether she agrees or not.

On Sunday, Petruchio is late to his own wedding, leaving Katherine to fear she will become an old maid. After the wedding, Petruchio forces Katherine to leave for his country house before the feast, telling all in earshot that she is now his property and that he may do with her as he pleases.

Once they reach his country house, Petruchio continues the process of “taming” Katherine by keeping her from eating or sleeping for several days—he pretends that he loves her so much he cannot allow her to eat his inferior food or to sleep in his poorly made bed.

In Padua, Lucentio wins Bianca’s heart by wooing her with a Latin translation that declares his love.

Katherine’s willfulness is dissipating, she agrees that all is as her husband says

Other characters are shocked to see that Katherine seems to have been “tamed”—she obeys everything that Petruchio says and gives a long speech advocating the loyalty of wives to their husbands.

When the three new husbands stage a contest to see which of their wives will obey first when summoned, everyone expects Lucentio to win. Bianca, however, sends a message back refusing to obey, while Katherine comes immediately.

The others acknowledge that Petruchio has won an astonishing victory, and the happy Katherine and Petruchio leave the banquet to go to bed.

Themes/ideas

•Marriage

•Women (feminism/attitudes to women)

•Disguise

•Parental relationship/patriarchal society

•Gender and power

POETRY – LOVE THROUGH THE AGES

We study one collection from a choice of 2…

Love through the ages – pre 1900

Love through the ages – pre 1900

Talking In Bed – Phillip Larkin

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,Lying together there goes back so far,An emblem of two people being honest.Yet more and more time passes silently.Outside, the wind's incomplete unrestBuilds and disperses clouds in the sky,And dark towns heap up on the horizon.None of this cares for us. Nothing shows whyAt this unique distance from isolationIt becomes still more difficult to findWords at once true and kind,Or not untrue and not unkind

TITLE: What could be going on here?

CONTENT: What is this poem about?

POET: What do you think Larkin’s attitude to love is?

THEME: What is the state of the relationship?

THE FLEA – John Donne• What do you know about fleas?

• How could a flea be used as a sexual/passionate metaphor?

• Would you be flattered/persuaded is someone used a flea in a love poem to you?

• Read the poem – can you work out what Donne’s main arguments are for getting the woman to sleep with him? Look at the bits in bold.

• What was her response?

• Can you find any sexual/crude imagery being used?

OVER THE SUMMER:1. Get your own copy of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’.

2. Read ‘The Taming of the Shrew’.

3. Watch a film version (even ‘10 things I hate about you’!)

4. Try reading some of the poems from the list previously – though I have not yet decided which selection we will be studying.

5. Read this article - https://www.thoughtco.com/taming-of-the-shrew-feminist-reading-2984901 How far do you agree with the points being made, especially in relation to TTOFS?