39001322   
   XPost: rec.arts.sf.written   
   From: djheydt@kithrup.com   
      
   In article <3b05e8e2-6b23-4a17-8a7b-b572086f8339@u13g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,   
   Robert Carnegie   wrote:   
   >On Oct 20, 4:11 am, djhe...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:   
   >> In article ,   
   >> Dr Nancy's Sweetie   wrote:   
   >>   
   >>   
   >> >I don't disagree that Milton presents gender-specific roles in _Paradise   
   >> >Lost_, and his characters see the clearly-defined roles as an asset.  I   
   >> >can see where that might be grating; but it was written in the 1600s, so   
   >> >that was the world he lived in.  If you're going to take things too   
   >> >personally, you'll lose an awful lot of classical literature.   
   >>   
   >> This is quite true.   
   >   
   >I suppose _The Taming of the Shrew_ didn't please.   
      
   What I'd like to do with _TTotS_ sometime, if I were still young   
   and had time and energy to do it in and had gone into theatre, is   
   to give it an interpretation informed by _The Knight of the   
   Burning Pestle_ and _La Vida Es Sueno._   
      
   _Shrew_, as you'll recall, has half a frame around the main   
   story.  A nobleman and his friends come upon a commoner and take   
   him along for an evening of festivity (I think they get him   
   drunk, but I haven't looked at the text recently) which includes   
   watching a play.  But the frame has no ending.  I seriously doubt   
   Shakespeare forgot to write one, but the last page seems to have   
   been lost.  I would attempt to reconstruct it, showing the   
   commoner coming to himself and thinking the whole evening had   
   been a dream.   
      
   And the play they would watch would be _Shrew_, but the nobleman   
   would insist that they turn it into a drama wherein a shrewish   
   wife is beaten down and tamed by her husband.  The players would   
   protest that it doesn't make sense for such a character to be   
   tamed, but the nobleman would insist, by means either of threats   
   or bribes.  Just as the citizen does in _Knight_, by making it   
   clear that he's going to disrupt the performance unless they make   
   the hero a grocer rather than a knight.   
      
   But I'm old and tired and broke and it will never happen.   
   >   
   >> But every person has his/her breaking point, and mine was when   
   >> Eve, instead of sitting down and *listening to what Raphael had   
   >> to say about the dangers threatening her and Adam in Paradise,*,   
   >> said to herself "Oh, this is men's business, I'll go cook lunch."   
   >>   
   >> FX: camel's back breaks   
   >   
   >He married beneath him, I suppose.   
      
   Well, it isn't as if he had a lot of choice.  Milton did; he made   
   the wrong choice *for him*.  I understand he finally managed to   
   marry a second time and was much happier.   
      
   --   
   Dorothy J. Heydt   
   Vallejo, California   
   djheydt at hotmail dot com   
   Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the hotmail edress.   
   Kithrup is getting too damn much spam, even with the sysop's filters.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)