Christopher Sly

Christopher Sly is a minor character in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. He is a drunken peddlar who is easily dominated by women, set up as a foil to Petruchio, the central male character in the play.

Role

The Taming of the Shrew is a play within a play. The frame play, where the action opens (called the "Induction," just prior to Act One), shows a drunk Christopher Sly being ejected from a bar by its hostess. A wealthy lord arrives, finds Sly in a drunken stupor, and decides to play a joke on him. With Sly asleep in his intoxication, the lord's men dress Sly in fine apparel and the men in turn dress up as servants and one even as Sly's wife, in an effort to persuade Sly when he wakes up that he is an aristocrat. After this is accomplished the lord’s men perform what we know as The Taming of the Shrew. He briefly is seen again making a comment about having some privacy with his "wife" (actually a pageboy in drag).

In the standard version of the play the audience never sees or hears from Christopher Sly again and thus assume that he has probably fallen asleep. Another version has a closing segment in which Sly, deposited back outside the tavern in a stupor once more, says he will return home to deal with his own shrewish wife, having had "the best dream that ever I had in my life" in which he learned how to "tame a shrew". The closing part of the frame-play does not appear in the text of The Taming as it was published in the First Folio. It only appears in the version published in quarto as The Taming of a Shrew (rather than "the" Shrew).

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Christopher_Sly

Christopher Sly (opera)

Christopher Sly is an opera in one act and two scenes and an interlude by composer Dominick Argento. The work uses an English language libretto by John Gay Manlove that is based on William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Commissioned by the Mu Phi Epsilon fraternity, the opera was given its world premiere at the Scott Hall Theater at the University of Minnesota on 31 May 1963 under the baton of William Johnson. The premiere cast included tenor Vern Sutton as the Lord.

The Center for Contemporary Opera presented the first professional production of the work in January 1987 at the Harry De Jur Playhouse in New York City. Conductor Richard Marshall led the performance whose cast included Shawn Roy as Christopher Sly, Robert Trentham as the Lord, and Kathryn Fields as Marion Hackett.

Roles

References

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Christopher_Sly_(opera)

Fullscreen pause

'Christopher Sly' is featured as a movie character in the following productions:

The Shrew in the Park (2003)

Actors: Thomas Gofton (actor), Thomas Gofton (actor), Glen McDonald (actor), Sean Ballantyne (actor), Jorge Molina (actor), Peter Mehren (actor), Andre Bennett (producer), Andrew Honor (director), Scott Albert (actor), Andrew Honor (producer), Andrew Honor (editor), Glenn Walsh (actor), Lucas James (actor), Lucas James (actor), Lucas James (actor),

Plot: A cinematic retelling of William Shakespeare's classic farce, The Shrew in the Park follows a community theatre group staging "The Taming of the Shrew" as a Shakespeare in the Park production. We see the backstage drama, the long hours of preparation, the crappy jobs, as the actors make sacrifices to do what they love best: get up on stage and perform. The entire text of the play is the movie's only dialogue.

Genres: Comedy,