The Taming of The Shrew

In 1967 Franco Zeffirelli directed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in a Hollywood version of The Taming of The Shrew. I remember watching it at home with my mum but I don’t remember if Sly the tinker made it into the final cut. Bill Shakespeare, who wasn’t much of a filmmaker, started his version thus:


SCENE I. Before an alehouse on a heath.
Enter Hostess and SLY

SLY
I'll pheeze you, in faith.

Hostess
A pair of stocks, you rogue!

SLY
Ye are a baggage: the Slys are no rogues; look in
the chronicles; we came in with Richard Conqueror.
Therefore paucas pallabris; let the world slide: sessa!

Hostess
You will not pay for the glasses you have burst?

SLY
No, not a denier. Go by, Jeronimy: go to thy cold
bed, and warm thee.

Hostess
I know my remedy; I must go fetch the
third--borough.

Exit

It might just be the only time that William used a tinker, or beggar as his opening character.

I’m not sure that anyone is allowed to be poor in Seattle or in fact anywhere in the white corridor that runs northward from here to Vancouver Canada, but I have noticed that in comparison to two years ago there are a lot more people begging. Is this a result of Bush’s policies or simply a reflection of something that is happening everywhere around the world?

There is an underpass that leads downtown rush hour traffic very slowly to Highway 5 and almost-highway 99 and there is always someone at the lights asking for help but it would be difficult to imagine a place as far removed from an “alehouse on a heath” as this.

I did meet someone near an alehouse asking for money, well….. he was outside a burger bar…….. but his technique was certainly superior to Sly’s, who only seemed to anger the Hostess.

He had a large piece of cardboard on which he had written – “You will give me a dollar”. In the centre of this message he had pinned a circular piece of cardboard on which he had patterned a spiral that he was able to spin with a grimy finger for a suitable hypnotic effect.

I didn’t see a single passerby that didn’t laugh and give him a dollar. I even almost stopped the car as I drove past him the second time and gave him another. If he had hissed a drunken “I’ll pheeze you in faith” I would have given him 10.

“Ye are a baggage” would be a useful insult for anyone who failed to give, and is a term I think we should all strive to find more use for in our general conversation.

One Seattle tinker who would probably never need such a come back is the guy I met outside my favourite coffee shop. He stopped to talk to two people sitting at the next table, he was clearly intoxicated and wobbled as he waved two long leaves of a palm like plant that he had clearly decided to recycle from someone’s garden.

He offered to make them a rose in less than three minutes if they gave him a contribution. His client, also intoxicated, though in this case with caffeine, negotiated the exact nature of contribution and then watched as the man skilfully stretched, twisted, twined and knotted the two strands into a tight green rose bud.

It took a little longer than three minutes but the story he told of the Alaskan native that taught him the method was worth the contracted contribution on its own. If Zeffirelli had seen him it would have been in the film.