8/3/2019 Taming of the Shrew - Question 1

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Taming of the Shrew:Question: Is the lord kind and charitable to Christopher Sly?

Is the lord in the introduction of the Taming of the Shrew kind and charitable

in his treatment of Christopher Sly? We meet Sly as he exits an alehouse, having

drunk more than his fill. He refuses to pay what he owes for damages incurred,

and promptly lies down in the street, unwilling and unable to make his way 

home. We are not immediately moved to pity, for his indignities are self-

inflicted. The lord, seeing Sly in this sad state, responds similarly: “O monstrous

  beast! How like a swine he lies.” It is then that he conceives a plan to make Sly 

forget who and what he is and to transform him into a lord. He executes this plan

  with all gentleness and apparent care:

Carry him gently to my fairest chamber and hang it round with all my   wanton pictures: Balm his foul head in warmed distilled waters and burnsweet wood to make the lodging sweet: Procure me music ready when he  wakes to make a dulcet and a heavenly sound, and if he chance to speak, beready straight… This do and do it kindly, gentle sirs.”

If we were to look at the manner of treatment that Sly receives, we might be

persuaded to think the lord something like a good Samaritan. He gives his own,

  best things for Sly’s comfort. However, the question of whether the lord is

  beneficent or not lies more in his motives than in his means. As with any action,

  what is done is made morally significant by why it is done. Charity, that is, real

love, seeks the true good of another as opposed to the apparent good. In this case,

the lord is not seeking Sly’s good, but rather his own passing pleasure. He will

happily pay handsomely for some humor at Sly’s expense.

“Even as a flattering dream or worthless fancy. Then take him up andmanage well the jest.”

“It will be pastime passing excellent, if it be husbanded with modesty.”

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“Well, you are come to me in happy time; the rather for I have some sportin hand wherein your cunning can assist me much.”

“I long to hear him [Bartholomew] call the drunkard husband, and how my men will stay themselves from laughter when they do homage to this

simple peasant. I’ll in to counsel them; haply my presence may well abatethe over-merry spleen which otherwise would grow into extremes.”

He will “practice on this drunken man” and see if he cannot make “the beggar

then forget himself.” He does not hope for any permanent change: in fact, the

ruse at some point must fail, for the lord will not give up his own to a beggar.

 When it does fail, and Sly realizes he is not what he has come to believe himself to

  be, what will pass through his mind? The delicious food, luxurious surroundings,

tender care, and sweet music are not his, and never will be again. Some comforts

are better not known, for they make the return to ‘real’ life that much more

painful. Epicurus thought that men should delight in simple things, for such

goods are commonplace and thus more accessible. Who is more likely to be able to

  be happy, the man whose pleasures are costly and rare, or the man who can take

  joy in the simple pleasures of life? Is Sly, then, better off for having fleetingly felt

the joys of the ‘good life’, a life that will never be his? More telling, how will he

feel when he realizes the woman presented as his loving wife is in truth a man

playing a part? He will leave the lord’s manor with less than he came, stripped of 

any dignity, mocked with everything he does not have, for being what he is.

“Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds: … I would not lose thedog for twenty pound.”

“Thou art a fool: if Echo were as fleet, I would esteem him worth a dozensuch. But sup them well, and look unto them all.

The lord has more real care for his dogs than for this unfortunate man.