17.1 Taming a shrew
Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew has been mentioned in the text (17.1) because of the shifts from you to thou that the main characters display. Here are some more shifts. Petruchio is announcing to the astonished Kate that he intends to marry her, whether she likes it or not. Notice when he uses thou forms, when you ones. Try to speculate what might account for these pronoun uses.
Marry, so I mean, sweet Katherine, in thy bed.
And therefore, setting all this chat aside,
Thus in plain terms: your father hath consented
That you shall be my wife; your dowry ’greed on,
And, will you, nill you, I will marry you.
Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn,
For by this light, whereby I see thy beauty,
Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well,
Thou must be married to no man but me,
Enter Baptista, Gremio, Tranio [disguised as Lucentio]
For I am he am born to tame you, Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates.
Here comes your father. Never make denial,
I must and will have Katherine to my wife.
(2.1.260)
17.2 Thou in love and hate
Barber (1981) looks at the use of thou and you in Richard III. One of the scenes he considers in detail is Act 1, Scene 2. One of the two main characters is Richard, who is brother to the king (Edward IV), and hence high-born. The other main character is also high-born – Anne is daughter-in-law to the previous king (Henry VI). Anne has every reason to hate Richard since he had a hand in the death of her father, her husband and her father-in-law . . . no less! Early in the scene she vents her disgust by spitting at him. Yet such is Richard III’s guile that by the end of that same scene there is the suggestion they may marry.
The scene is rich in its use of thou and you, and Barber (1981) talks through the uses. The main ones are described below. Take careful note of what forms are used (not just the words thou and you of course, but all associated forms like thee and your etc.). Try to account for each choice of pronoun. It is not always straightforward (and answers are given below). Before getting involved in highly complex explanations of emotional states, remember that whenever the addressee is plural, the form must be you; thou cannot be used in the plural.
At the start of the scene, Anne is accompanying the funeral cortege of her murdered father-in-law. She addresses his ghost:
- Poor key-cold figure of a holy king,
Pale ashes of the house of Lancaster,
Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood,
Be it lawful that I invocate thy Ghost.She instructs the bearers to proceed with the coffin:
- Come, now towards Chertsey with your holy load/ . . . Rest you, whiles I lament King Henry’s corpse
But Richard enters and orders the bearers to stop:
- Stay, you that bear the corpse, and set it down.
One of the bearers seems ready to disobey, and Richard is firm:
- Unmannered dog, stand’st thou when I command
Anne knows that Richard had a hand in her father-in-law’s death. She launches into a denunciation of him:
- Avaunt, thou dreadful minister of hell!
Thou hadst but power over his mortal body,
His soul thou canst not have: therefore be goneRichard’s replies are conciliatory:
- Richard: Lady, you know no rules of charity,
Which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.
Anne: Villain, thou know’st nor law of God nor man:They continue addressing each other in this way for a long time. But at one point during this interchange Richard attempts intimacy:
- Fairer than tongue can name thee, let me have
Some patient leisure to excuse myself.
But this is fleeting. A change of address that lasts longer occurs later. Barber calls it an ‘important switch’, as Richard’s charm offensive begins in earnest:
- Anne: Black night o’ershade thy day, and death thy life
Richard: Curse not thyself, fair creature; thou art both.
After a considerable time, Richard bears his breast and offers Anne his sword to put him to death. She wavers:
- Anne: I would I knew thy heart
Richard: ‘Tis figured in my tongue.
Anne: I fear me both are false.
Richard: Then never man was true.
Anne: Well, well, put up your sword.
Richard: Then say my peace is made.
Anne: That shalt thou know hereafter.
202–8It seems that Anne is won over. He puts ring on her finger, and as their conversation ends, he asks her to grant him the favour (‘boon’) of forgiving him:
- Richard: For diverse unknown reasons, I beseech you,
Grant me this boon.
Anne: With all my heart, and much it joys me too,
To see you are become so penitent.
In (a) Anne uses thou because she is addressing the spirit of her dead husband. In (b) you is used because she is addressing the group of men (i.e. it is plural). The same is true of Richard’s use in (c). In (d) Anne is addressing just one of the bearers. It is an example of high → low. Anne expresses her contempt for Richard in (e) and (f) by using thou, while (in (f)) Richard stays with the polite you. Then, when he feels it the time to try intimacy, he switches to thou (g). (h) shows thou being used to express contempt (by Anne) and intimacy (by Richard) together, but by the time (i) is reached, Anne’s feelings are moving from contempt towards intimacy. In (j) they are back on a more formal footing, using the polite you to each other.
This activity is taken from Johnson (2013: 149).