A Fake Character Won't Win Their Heart

A Comparison of “The Taming of A Shrew” to “The Parent Trap, 1998”

All throughout “The Taming of the Shrew,” The scholar Lucentio uses a falsified identity in order to woo the beloved Bianca without her father’s interference. Several others characters of the play also change their name and status to either support Lucentio’s ruse or woo Bianca themselves. Although Lucentio lied to the others about his identity at first, he immediately told Bianca upon their first meeting, which resulted in successful courtship. Similarly, in the 1998 film “The Parent Trap,” reunited twin sisters Hallie and Annie, who have been unaware of each others' existence due to their divorced parents separating them since infancy, also switch identities secretly, but in order to meet the other parent for the first time. They also plan to use the switch in order to get their parents to meet face-to-face and fall in love, so they can be a family again. However, there is another more malignant false identity in this movie. When the twins’ father reveals that he wants to marry the gold digger and child-despiser Meredith, the girls must also work together to reveal her true identity to her fiancé. This play and movie reflect that although it was easy for audiences to accept that lying to win one's hand in Shakespeare's time was okay, by the time “The Parent Trap” came out in theaters, it became less effective in winning someone's heart.

"Love wrought these miracles. Bianca’s love

Made me exchange my state with Tranio,

While he did bear my countenance in the town,

And happily I have arrivèd at the last

Unto the wishèd haven of my bliss.

What Tranio did, myself enforced him to.

Then pardon him, sweet father, for my sake."

(Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 127 - 133)

At this time in the play, Lucentio is apologizing to his father and Bianca’s father for marrying Bianca without his consent, in addition to explaining why Tranio had lied that Vincentio was a fake in order to preserve Lucentio and the Merchant’s fake cover stories. He stated that all his actions; dressing up as a schoolmaster, charging Tranio to pretend to be him, wooing Bianca without her family knowing, setting up a fake Vincentio to ensure that the Minola family would receive a dowry, and more was all in the name of love. This argument somehow meant his logic was irrefutably justified. The extreme reasoning for almost having his father sent to jail and ditching the education his father was paying for was naturally acceptable 430 years ago. Although Lucentio lied a lot in order to win Bianca’s hand, this play was written so the reader would perceive his reasoning as not only simple, but correct.

On the other hand, “The Parent Trap” makes a big deal out of making it obvious to the audience that pretending to be someone you’re not doesn’t usually work out for you. The movie looks down on the character Meredith Blake, as she is only marrying Nick Parker for his money and is not actually in love with him. This intention is confirmed in a scene where Meredith tells her father to behave because, “He’s everything you ever wanted for your little girl, plus millions more.” This sentence insinuated that Meredith is only interested in Nick for the millions he has.

Towards the end of the movie, Hallie and Annie have resorted to playing a series of pranks on Meredith in order to basically make her life miserable. The last trick that they played on Meredith was to drag her blow up mattress into the lake to float there all night. When she woke up the next morning, she was in the middle of the lake, confused and angry. When she managed to drag herself out of the water, she explained that once Nick and her were married, the twins would be sent off to Switzerland. She furiously demanded that Nick choose between the twins or her. This demand alerted Nick to her true nature, and he chose his daughters. Meredith threw her engagement ring at him and left town. This movie tells the audience that lying about your true nature to your partner isn’t the best choice in a relationship and that it will often go wrong for you as it did for Meredith.

“Fear not, Baptista, we will content you. Go

to! But I will be revenged for this villainy.”

(Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 138 and 139)

These two lines in Act 5 are spoken by Vincentio to Baptista, Bianca’s father when he finds out about Tranio and Lucentio’s plan to woo Bianca in disguise. He felt anger at Tranio because not moments before, in order to maintain cover on Lucentio himself, he called Vincentio fake and demanded that he be taken to jail. Thankfully, Lucentio came back in time to stop them, and the ruse was uncovered. This part of the play is one of the times when lying is not acceptable in the eyes of the play: when you are lying to those who employ you. In this play, any time one is lied to or does something wrong in the eyes of their superior, there is often major consequences on the servant. Vincentio did not take kindly to how Tranio lied to him and tried to sent him to jail, but there were often other times when the master Petruchio, husband of Katherine, sister of Bianca, rained down fury on his servants those employed to him, or those he sees as inferior when they lied to him. These actions suggest that although it is okay to lie to loved ones, it is absolutely unacceptable to betray your master or employer in the eyes of the play and most likely in the 1600s as well.

In “The Parent Trap,” there are literally no instances of when servants of the main characters are mistreated or punished during the entire movie. In fact, both servants in the movie, Chessy and Martin, are seen as close family friends that simply also work for the family, which is not the case at all in “The Taming of the Shrew.”

Elizabeth James had brought Hallie to the hotel where Nick, Meredith, and Annie were at in order to switch her back with Annie. Hallie had lied to Liz, saying that Nick knew they were coming to the hotel, when in fact he still didn’t know that the daughter he had was not Hallie. Liz and Nick catch sight of each other in the lobby as the elevators close before Nick. Liz realized that Nick had no idea she was coming, and reprimands the girls for lying to her. However, when she find out that Nick is marrying Meredith, and that everyone knew but her, she simply lets it go that the people that work for her lied to her about it. The movie seems to minimize the consequences of lying to those you are demanded to respect and honor as the Shakespeare play illustrates. Simply put, the play is validates lying to loved ones, but not to those superior to you. On the other hand, the movie is not validating lying to loved ones, but that when someone who works for you lies to you, as long as they have a great excuse or reason for it, there is no need for a large punishment.

“I come to wive it wealthily in Padua;

If wealthily, then happily in Padua.”

(Act 1, Scene 2, Lines 76 and 77)

This quote is when Petruchio, Katherine’s future husband, agrees to Gremio’s plans to have him marry Katherine only because she is wealthy, and not because he loves her or that she has a good temperament. Later in the story, we see that Petruchio uses many methods to tame Kate’s wild nature, all of which are forgiven and seen in a positive light by the end of the story, even though it is never clear whether or not they actually really love each other by the end of it all, or even if this matters. This reflects for the characters and the setting that in this time, money was actually an acceptable reason to marry someone, and they did not actually have to love you. In addition, since this play was looking at this behavior so positively, it can be inferred that the audience of this time was more agreeable to this behavior then as well. Such was the 1600s.

Contrasting Petruchio’s relationship with Katherine in “The Taming of the Shrew,” to Nick and Meredith in “The Parent Trap,” both relationships were quite similar. Both Petruchio and Meredith seemed well off, but were still only marrying each of their fiance's for money. In addition, both Nick and Katherine were wealthy as well. However, the play and the movie views Petruchio and Meredith in completely different ways. In the play, he is seen as the good guy, the beast tamer, who makes his wife obedient properly. In the movie, Meredith marrying Nick is a secret she keeps from him, and is looked down upon by the twins and Nick himself towards the end of the movie.

When Annie first arrives in Napa, she finds out about Meredith Blake, a publicist Nick hired to sell his wine. However, Chessy, Nick’s housekeeper, chef, and family friend speculates that Meredith is, “doing a better job at selling herself than the grapes,” because she is suspicious of why someone as young and beautiful as Meredith is hanging around an older, less in his prime man like Nick. She then stated, “then I realized there were about a million reasons that girl is giggling. All of them are at the Napa Valley Community Bank.” The movie is saying that the only reason someone of Meredith’s social level will go out with someone like Nick is because of their money or financial potential. Throughout the entire movie, this is seen as wrong. Therefore, Meredith is portrayed as the antagonist of the movie. This change reflects that modern entertainment is less open to gold diggers as the good guys, unlike 400 years ago. They paint them as shallow, manipulative, and evil. In this story, she does not marry Nick because as soon as he finds out her true nature, he dumps her. Modern entertainment trends toward lying to your partner of loved one as a very bad thing.

As we moved through each the play and the movie, we saw very similar relationships developing between each of the couples mentioned in both texts. However, the way that each author portrays their relationship is very different. Shakespeare was more open to marrying for love and not really caring if they lie to you, but looked down on insubordination. Disney, however, fiercely fought against marrying for money and a lying spouse, but were particularly lenient towards those who worked for them. Once again, these were very similar relationships, but viewed in opposing lights. The way Shakespeare wrote Petruchio suggested that it was more acceptable then to marry for money only, and that the rift between servant and master was much deeper then than now. The way Disney wrote Meredith suggested that marrying for love instead of money was better and more morally okay. Servant and master lines barely existed, and were looked down upon through the way that Meredith treated Chessy throughout the movie. To sum it all up, 400 years ago, lying to win someone’s heart had more chance of success then than in the modern era.