“You Don't Mind the Play”: On the Sly Scenes in The Taming of the Shrew

The Prologue of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is unique in its structure. Firstly, it consists of two scenes with the drunkard Christopher Sly before the play proper and the last six lines in Act I, Scene I; in this light it is a play before the play rather than a commonplace prologue. Secondly, the Sly scenes are in themselves a play performed on the stage rather than a routine speech narrated(usually by a Chorus or an actor, who is not necessarily a character of the play). In The Taming of the Shrew, therefore, the Sly scenes, i.e., the play before the play, and the play proper are situated at two different(though closely articulated) levels of the dramatic world and exert different dramatic functions: the former appears as the latter's play-before-the-play, while the latter as the former's play-within-the-play.Seen from the spectator-reader's perspective, the prologue(Sly's story) constitutes the first layer of dramatic illusion, whereas the Shrew's story provides the second.These two dramatic illusions are mirrors reflecting each other: Shakespeare has us watch Sly in the Sly scenes, just as Sly himself watches other players playing The Taming of the Shrew as the play-within-the-play. We watch Sly watch, and Sly being watched in the play represents us watching him watch on the stage: this creates a perfect Mobius strip of The Taming of the Shrew as a whole. Sly does not“mind the play,” nor does he have a rude awakening from the illusion at the end of the play. Here Shakespeare cunningly reveals the truth of life and practically forestalls the underlying modern metaphysical illusion of the Other World.