FICTION IN REVIEW

1 4 9 R F I C T I O N I N R E V I E W G R E G J O H N S O N The Taming of the Shrew is one of the most controversial of William Shakespeare’s comedies. Derived, as usual with the Bard, from a far-flung variety of sources, the play is at once artistically unified and thematically problematic: critics of the past century and earlier have argued over its central plot element, the alleged transformation of its heroine, Kate, from the titular ‘‘shrew’’ into a conventional, mild-spoken wife and helpmeet. In her famous long speech late in the play, in which she disavows her rebellious ways and argues that women’s duty in marriage is to ‘‘serve, love, and obey,’’ is she simply being true to Western social and religious norms of the time? Or is her speech ironic, as our modern temperament would prefer? How could the venom-spewing harridan of the first act so rapidly have become the virtuous wife of the fifth? George Bernard Shaw, as early as 1897, decried Kate’s transformation : ‘‘The last scene,’’ he wrote, ‘‘is altogether disgusting to the modern sensibility.’’ But almost seventy-five years later, Germaine V i n e g a r G i r l , by Anne Tyler (Hogarth, 237 pages, $25) 1 5 0 J O H N S O N Y Greer in The Female Eunuch (1971) argued that ‘‘Kate’s speech at the close of the play is the greatest defense of Christian monogamy ever written. It rests upon the role of a husband as protector and friend, and it is valid because Kate has a man who is capable of being both.’’ Film adaptations of the play have been likewise equivocal. Mary Pickford, in the 1929 version, gives the controversial speech dutifully and then turns to the other women present and o√ers them a sardonic wink. Yet in Franco Ze≈relli’s brawling, boisterous 1967 film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Taylor delivers the lines ‘‘straight’’: by this point in the story, her Kate has fallen deeply in love with Burton’s Petruchio, drawn by his virility and confidence. If Shaw had lived to see the film, he might well have disdained the scene, but one cannot seriously argue that it doesn’t convey the general tone and spirit of the play. When the newly revived Hogarth Press began in 2015 a publishing program in which various well-known authors – Jeannette Winterson, Margaret Atwood, and others – were invited to compose a contemporary take on one of Shakespeare’s plays, the bestselling Baltimore novelist Anne Tyler was given first choice. Her pick of The Taming of the Shrew is an unexpected one. The play’s broad, sexually charged humor and its outlandish characterizations would seem to be distinctly opposed to the elements of most Tyler novels, which feature troubled but essentially loving families and marriages, and which have none of the violent conflict or vitriolic language to be found in this comedy. Tyler hews close to the play, at least, in the naming of her characters: Shakespeare’s Kate (portrayed at the beginning of Ze≈relli’s film as a madwoman in the attic, her hair disheveled and her voice screeching) is also Kate in Vinegar Girl, albeit a more restrained and quietly dissatisfied one, a preschool teacher who ‘‘hates’’ some of her charges and who is described as ‘‘darkskinned and big-boned and gawky.’’ The original Kate’s wealthy father, Baptista, becomes Dr. Battista, a Johns Hopkins scientist, and her comely younger sister, Bianca, is transformed into a pretty but rather unlikable teenager named ‘‘Bunny’’ (nicknamed, unfortunately , ‘‘Bun-Buns’’). The male suitor-figure from the play, Petruchio , is here called Pyotr, a Russian lab assistant to Dr. Battista F I C T I O N I N R E V I E W 1 5 1 R who has become indispensable to the older scientist’s lifelong scienti fic project. In the play, of course, Petruchio is encouraged to marry Kate so that Bianca can be married to one of her many suitors: Baptista has decreed that...