How 10 Things I Hate About You Is Different From The Shakespeare Play

How 10 Things I Hate About You Is Different From The Shakespeare Play

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’90s rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You starring Heath Ledger is loosely based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, but what are the differences?

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How 10 Things I Hate About You Is Different From The Shakespeare Play

Some people may know that 1999’s romantic comedy 10 Things I Hate About You is based on the 16th century Shakespeare play The Taming of the Shrew, but how do the two compare? One of several movies based on Shakespeare, this teen flick performed well at the box office, coming in second in behind The Matrix, and received generally favorable reviews from both audiences and critics.

The film centers around the late Heath Ledger as Patrick Verona, whose character in the play is Petruchio from the city of Verona, and Julia Stiles as Katherine “Kat” Stratford, whose last name refers to Shakespeare’s place of birth, Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Both the film and play have a similar set up and conflict; Kat (Katherina in the play) is the titular shrew who is deemed unlikable and not at all wife/girlfriend material while her younger sister Bianca (Larisa Oleynik in the film), an ingenue, is pursued by various suitors. In both stories, the girls’ father decides that Bianca is not allowed to date/marry until Kat, the elder sister, is dating/married. To this end, several of Bianca’s suitors scheme to get Patrick/Petruchio to “tame the shrew” and court Kat.

10 Things I Hate About You is a modern-day retelling that takes place in Seattle, and the majority of characters are high schoolers. How events transpire after the exposition is very different from the play. The most stark difference is the characterization of both Patrick and Kat as well as how their relationship develops. Finally, the movie is considered feminist, with subtle references to topics that weren’t heavily touched upon in cinema at the time and for its depiction of the Stratford sisters’ development. Conversely, The Taming of the Shrew has been called misogynistic, although that has been a topic of debate among scholars. It can be argued that the play could be a satirical commentary on marriage, just as Twelfth Night could be a commentary on gender roles. Regardless of the great bard’s true intentions with The Taming of the Shrew, much of the play’s events would probably not hold up very well to modern scrutiny, and the movie adaptation certainly didn’t try to find that out.

Petruchio/ Patrick

How 10 Things I Hate About You Is Different From The Shakespeare Play

A significant difference is the respective depictions of the male lead. While the cast of 10 Things I Hate About You is not lacking in wonderful performances, one of the film’s breakout actors was Heath Ledger, who would go on to stun audiences as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Ledger’s Patrick Verona is a classic bad boy; he’s endlessly charming but doesn’t care much what most people say or think about him, and has no interest in fitting in. With his long hair, leather jackets, and Australian accent, he’s “dreamy” in the way teen heartthrobs are often depicted: cavalier and nonchalant when it comes to his relationships with others.

In the play, Petruchio wants to marry into money and doesn’t need much convincing to marry Katherina. The two marry almost immediately, and it’s only after the wedding that Petruchio begins to “tame” his new bride through questionable means that are akin to gaslighting and downright neglect. Some interpretations of Petruchio suggest that he likes Katherina’s strong-willed personality and views the act of “taming” her as an amusing challenge. This view of Petruchio has a bit more in common with Patrick’s more easy-going personality. Patrick isn’t scared of Kat like so many others are and often views her quips and rejections as amusing.

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The only other thing Patrick and Petruchio have in common otherwise is a love for money. Petruchio’s main motivation for marriage is money, and in the film Bianca’s suitors bribe Patrick into wooing Kat, something he’s initially hesitant to do. As the film progresses, however, Patrick reveals to be more than just his bad boy reputation and actually succeeds in bringing down the walls Kat has built around herself, falling in love with her and knocking down his own walls in the process. While it’s hardly one of the best Shakespearean film adaptations, Patrick’s journey in 10 Things I Hate About You not only turns the bad boy trope on its head, but it also gives audiences a much more likable male lead to root for.

Katherina/ Kat

How 10 Things I Hate About You Is Different From The Shakespeare Play

Katherine is described by other characters in the play as headstrong, and she’s called a shrew simply because she fails to meet the standards of proper behavior for women at the time. Interestingly, when Petruchio announces they are to marry, she stays silent, neither agreeing nor disagreeing to wed this man she hardly knows. Once married, Petruchio denies her sleep and food on the basis that he loves her so much and will not allow her to eat substandard food or sleep in less than perfect conditions. She is psychologically broken down to the point that when Petruchio points to the sun and calls it the moon, she does not contradict him. At the end of the play, Katherine gives a speech on the importance of wives listening to their husbands, but many have interpreted this speech to be ironic.

Regardless of whether Katherina’s speech is ironic or not, Julia Stiles’ Kat Stratford characterization is much more easily discernible. From the moment Kat appears on screen, rolling in her car to “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett, audiences get the sense that she’s a social outcast in her community. She’s a contrarian and almost the exact opposite of her younger sister; she only listens to bands with female members, prefers books to make-up, and has zero interest in dating. One of the earliest interactions between Kat and Patrick is of her shoving a copy of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan into Pat’s arms. However, Kat does have one commonality with her Shakespearean counterpart: they have both experienced trauma.

While Kat was not gaslighted or starved the way Katherina was, she did have a bad experience with Joey Donner (Andrew Keegan), one of Bianca’s suitors. As Kat reveals to Bianca towards the end of the film, she and Joey dated in freshman year, and she felt pressured into having sex with him. She says she regrets it and was dumped soon afterwards; Kat insists that she knows the kind of guy Joey is and that she’s trying to protect Bianca from him.

Framing Device and Feminist Overtones

A minor though notable difference is the play’s use of a framing device. The first act of The Taming of the Shrew features an unnamed Lord who wants to prank a drunk named Christopher Sly. To distract Sly, the Lord arranges for a performance of a play depicting the story of Katherina and Petruchio. This framing device adds a degree of separation: rather than the audience reacting to The Taming of the Shrew as a representation of reality, the play within a play creates a narrative distance, and the audience is watching a drunk lord’s reaction to Katherina and Petruchio. Shakespeare adding this framing device lends credence to the theory that The Taming of the Shrew is a satire and an overt social commentary on the gender politics of his time.

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A reading of The Taming of the Shrew that concludes it’s misogynist states that audience should take Petruchio’s successful “taming” at face value: he has asserted his male will over his wife, and she has “learned her place.” However, this reading ignores that that kind of simplistic morality is diversionary entertainment for a drunkard. Therefore, people who accept the kind of treatment that Petruchio subjects Katherina to are the targets of the satire. In this way, scholars contend that Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is actually a progressive, feminist play, but the film naturally did away with the framing device since the story it wanted to tell was a more clearly feminist story of modern-day teen rom-com.

Although it doesn’t exactly pass the Bechdel test, 10 Things I Hate About You was ahead of its time, particularly in its depiction of Kat and Bianca’s relationship. They are initially antagonistic towards one another, with Bianca feeling more like the vapid, bratty baby sister and Kat like the overbearing, weird older sister. But by the end of the movie, Bianca is revealed to be much wiser and more mature than one might have guessed from her choice of attire, a wonderful reversal of 1990s movie tropes. Meanwhile, Kat is a much more vulnerable character than even she wanted to admit. It took an honest conversation and Joey’s revelation of his arrangement with Patrick for Bianca to realize that there’s value in Kat’s experiences, and it took some heartbreak for Kat to value Bianca’s softer, more empathetic side. This wholesome development in their relationship earned them a spot on the list of greatest sister duos in movie history.

What’s more, the resolution to Kat and Patrick’s courtship is almost a reversal of the ironic twist in Shakespeare’s play. While The Taming of the Shrew’s possible feminist themes are hidden within its framing device, 10 Things I Hate About You is more overt. Kat didn’t have to change in any real way, and neither did Patrick. As a way of apology for hurting Kat, Patrick uses the money Joey paid him to buy Kat a guitar she had been eyeing, expressing that her happiness means more to him than any amount of money. And after several weeks of not talking and one very emotional confession of love via a sonnet from Kat, she forgives Patrick. Instead of changing who they are at their core, these two young teens simply learned from their mistakes, grew emotionally, and, in Patrick’s case, made up for their error in a meaningful way. No one had to change and everyone got to decide for themselves what made them happy. Modern feminism highlights the individual’s ability to decide what’s best for oneself, and 10 Things I Hate About You is more open and honest with it’s feminist leanings than The Taming of the Shrew.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/10-things-i-hate-about-you-shakespeare-differences/

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