The Taming of the Shrew (1594) (edit title/settings)

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Summary edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Katherine Minola: The 'shrew.' She is the daughter of Baptista, and older sister to Bianca.
• Herrin: Add a description of this character.
• Katherina: The “shrew” of the play’s title, Katherine, or Kate, is the daughter of Baptista Minola, with whom she lives in Padua. She is sharp-tongued, quick-tempered, and prone to violence, particularly against anyone who tries to marry her. Her hostility toward suitors particularly distresses her father. But her anger and rudeness disguise her deep-seated sense of insecurity and her jealousy toward her sister, Bianca. She does not resist her suitor Petruchio forever, though, and she eventually subjugates herself to him, despite her previous repudiation of marriage.
• Signor Lucentio: in love with bianca
• Katharina
• Bianca: The younger daughter of Baptista. The lovely Bianca proves herself the opposite of her sister, Kate, at the beginning of the play: she is soft-spoken, sweet, and unassuming. Thus, she operates as Kate’s principal female foil. Because of her large dowry and her mild behavior, several men vie for her hand. Baptista, however, will not let her marry until Kate is wed.
• Signor Hortensio: suitor to bianca
• Katharina
• Signor Baptista: father if bianca and katharina
• Kati
• Dann
• Katharine
• Bartholomew
• Shakespeare
• Christopher Sly
• Mann
• Antony
• Diana
• Cleopatra
• Petruchio: Petruchio is a gentleman from Verona. Loud, boisterous, eccentric, quick-witted, and frequently drunk, he has come to Padua “to wive and thrive.” He wishes for nothing more than a woman with an enormous dowry, and he finds Kate to be the perfect fit. Disregarding everyone who warns him of her shrewishness, he eventually succeeds not only in wooing Katherine, but in silencing her tongue and temper with his own.
• Sie
• Hortensio: Suitor of Bianca and friend of Petruchio
• Baptista
• Baptista Minola: one of the wealthiest men in Padua, and his daughters become the prey of many suitors due to the substantial dowries he can offer. He is good-natured, if a bit superficial. His absentmindedness increases when Kate shows her obstinate nature. Thus, at the opening of the play, he is already desperate to find her a suitor, having decided that she must marry before Bianca does.
• Frau
• Katherine: The shrew and main female character .
• Diener
• Sohn
• Vater
• Denn
• Gott
• Hier
• Feuer
• Signor Gremio: suitor to bianca
• Weil
• Freund
• Grumio
• Schneider
• Bett
• Kopf
• Lehrer
• Schatz
• Sim
• Madam
• Herrn
• Herz
• Teufel
• Doch
• Kann
• Haus
• Signor Grentio
• Streit
• Biondello
• Vincentio
• Curtis
• Lucentio: A young student from Pisa, the good-natured and intrepid Lucentio comes to Padua to study at the city’s renowned university, but he is immediately sidetracked when he falls in love with Bianca at first sight. By disguising himself as a classics instructor named Cambio, he convinces Gremio to offer him to Baptista as a tutor for Bianca. He wins her love, but his impersonation gets him into trouble when his father, Vincentio, visits Padua.
• Gremio
• Tranio: Lucentio's servant

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Padua: a city-state in Italy prominent during the Renaissance
• Pisa
• Shrew
• England
• Venice
• London
• Gaul
• Petrarch
• New York
• Battista
• Mantua
• Verona

First Sentence edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Petruchio’s Wedding Costume: The ridiculous outfit Petruchio wears to his wedding with Kate symbolizes his control over her. Simply by wearing the costume, he is able to humiliate her. It may be shameful for Kate to be matched to someone in such attire, but she knows she has no choice if she does not wish to become an old maid. She consents to let the ceremony proceed, even with Petruchio dressed like a clown, and thus yields to his authority before the wedding even begins.The outfit also symbolizes the transient nature of clothing. Petruchio declares that Kate is marrying him, not his clothes, indicating that the man beneath the attire is not the same as the attire itself. Thus, Lucentio, dressed as a tutor, cannot escape the fact that he must return to his true identity. By the same token, when Kate plays the role of a dutiful wife, she remains, essentially, Kate.
• The Haberdasher’s Cap and Tailor’s Gown: The cap and gown that Petruchio denies Katherine, despite the fact that she finds them truly appealing, symbolizes yet again his power over her. The outfit functions as a kind of bait used to help convince Kate to recognize and comply with Petruchio’s wishes. Only he has the power to satisfy her needs and desires, and this lesson encourages her to satisfy him in return.
• Domestication: The motif of domestication is broadcasted in the play’s title by the word “taming.” A great part of the action consists of Petruchio’s attempts to cure Katherine of her antisocial hostility. Katherine is thus frequently referred to as a wild animal that must be domesticated. Petruchio considers himself, and the other men consider him, to be a tamer who must train his wife, and most of the men secretly suspect at first that her wild nature will prove too much for him. After the wedding, Petruchio and Katherine’s relationship becomes increasingly defined by the rhetoric of domestication. Petruchio speaks of training her like a “falcon” and plans to “kill a wife with kindness.” Hortensio even conceives of Petruchio’s house as a place where other men may learn how to domesticate women, calling it a “taming-school.”
• Fathers and Their Children: The several father/child relationships in the play—Baptista/Bianca, Baptista/Katherine, Vincentio/Lucentio—focus on parents dealing with children of marriageable age and concerned with making good matches for them. Even the sham father/son relationship between the disguised pedant and the disguised Tranio portrays a father attempting to make a match for his son, as the pedant attempts to negotiate Tranio’s marriage to Bianca. Through the recurrence of this motif, Shakespeare shows the broader social ramifications of the institution of marriage. Marriage does not merely concern the future bride and groom, but many other people as well, especially parents, who, in a sense, transfer their responsibility for their children onto the new spouses.
• Disguise: Disguise figures prominently in The Taming of the Shrew: Sly dresses as a lord, Lucentio dresses as a Latin tutor, Tranio dresses as Lucentio, Hortensio dresses as a music tutor, and the pedant dresses as Vincentio. These disguises enable the characters to transgress barriers in social position and class, and, for a time, each of them is successful. The play thus poses the question of whether clothes make the man—that is, whether a person can change his or her role by putting on new clothes. The ultimate answer is no, of course. In The Taming of the Shrew, society involves a web of antecedents that are always able to uncover one’s true nature, no matter how differently one wishes to portray oneself. Tranio, disguised as Lucentio, needs only to bump into Vincentio, and his true identity surfaces. As Petruchio implies on his wedding day, a garment is simply a garment, and the person beneath remains the same no matter what disguise is worn.
• The Effect of Social Roles on Individual Happiness: Each person in the play occupies a specific social position that carries with it certain expectations about how that person should behave. A character’s social position is defined by such things as his or her wealth, age, gender, profession, parentage, and education; the rules governing how each of them should behave are harshly enforced by family, friends, and society as a whole. For instance, Lucentio occupies the social role of a wealthy young student, Tranio that of a servant, and Bianca and Katherine the roles of upper-class young maidens-in-waiting. At the very least, they are supposed to occupy these roles—but, as the play shows, in reality, Kate wants nothing to do with her social role, and her shrewishness results directly from her frustration concerning her position. Because she does not live up to the behavioral expectations of her society, she faces the cold disapproval of that society, and, due to her alienation, she becomes miserably unhappy. Kate is only one of the many characters in The Taming of the Shrew who attempt to circumvent or deny their socially defined roles, however: Lucentio transforms himself into a working-class Latin tutor, Tranio transforms himself into a wealthy young aristocrat, Christopher Sly is transformed from a tinker into a lord, and so forth.Compared with Katherine’s more serious anguish about her role, the other characters’ attempts to circumvent social expectations seem like harmless fun. However, the play illustrates that each transformation must be undone before conventional life can resume at the end of the play. Ultimately, society’s happiness depends upon everyone playing his or her prescribed roles. Through the motif of disguise, the play entertains the idea that a person’s apparel determines his or her social position, but it ultimately affirms that this is not the case. A servant may put on the clothes of a lord, but he remains a servant, one who must return to his place, as we see with Tranio. Likewise, Lucentio must reveal his subterfuge to his father and to Baptista before moving forward with Bianca. Kate’s development over the course of the play is basically determined by her gradual adaptation to her new social role as wife. She complies with Petruchio’s humiliating regimen of taming because she knows on some level that, whether she likes the role of wife or not, she will be happier accepting her social obligations than living as she has been at odds with everyone connected to her. In fact, the primary excitement in The Taming of the Shrew stems from its permeable social boundaries, crisscrossed continually by those who employ a disguise or a clever lie. In the end, however, the conventional order reestablishes itself, and those characters who harmonize with that order achieve personal happiness.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. William Shakespeare (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. David Bevington
2. Peter Holland
3. Stephen Orgel
4. L. L. Hillegass
5. A. L. Rowse
6. Barbara A. Mowat
7. Paul Werstine
8. Frances E. Dolan

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 822.33

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Drama › Playwrights, A-Z › ( S ) › Shakespeare, William
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( S ) › Shakespeare, William
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › British › Shakespeare
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Drama › British & Irish
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Entertainment

Movie Connections edit see section history

• 10 Things I Hate About You (IMDb): 1999
• The Taming of the Shrew (IMDb): 1967
• Kiss Me Kate (IMDb): released 1953
• Shakespeare Retold (IMDb): TV series by BBC