Taming of the Shrew

Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew was written well over four hundred years ago and is still able to cause critical analysis from all who read the comedy. The play is based upon the idea of people using deception, or disguises, to get what one wants out of life. Each character is important to the plot but none as important as Katherina Minola. Katherina, or Kate, is “the Shrew” that gives meaning to the play. Her presence begins in a rather negative tone but by the end of the play the reader feel that Kate has outwitted and outplayed all the other characters involved. Her final monologue, the longest one of the entire play, has been analyzed and debated by scholars for centuries and still envelops criticism to this day.

Kate is quickly shown to the audience to be a shrewish, unmanageable and headstrong female. She speaks her mind, which in Elizabethan England is uncommon for women. Her husband, Petruccio was to teach her a lesson and in so doing this Kate begins to realize there is another way to �act’. Her behavior takes on a more submissive, demure and subjugated form. Her husband shows pleasure in his ability to tame the shrew and teach her how to behave like a proper wife. He flaunts his accomplishments at the wedding feast of Kate’s sister, Bianca. After proving that his wife is obedient he asks her to speak to the other women on how to behave. Her final speech, at first glance, seems to prove that she has, indeed become a changed woman. When looked at more closely and analyzed, one can see that Kate is �acting’ the role of demure wife to a tee and is in fact, the same strong Kate from the beginning.

Kate’s speech is not the proof of her subjugation as a female but rather another act she is performing. She may very well indeed love her husband but she knows what to say to keep things peaceful, whether she actually feels that way or not. Her speech is full or irony and sarcasm. Kate talks of how marriage is like government, “Such duty as the subject owes the prince,/Even such a woman oweth to her husband;/And when she is forward, peevish, sullen, sour,/And not obedient to his honest will,/What is she but a foul contending rebel/And graceless traitor to her loving lord?’ (5.2: 159-164) Using language such as this Kate is still showing that she is a learned female and is able to twist