The Stages of Life

The Stages of Life

As you grow older you learn there are certain things in life that need to be accomplished to be able to move on, like graduating high school so that you can go to college. Unfortunately not much has changed in the marriage department since the time when Shakespeare lived and wrote his plays in comparison with today's society. For the most part people still get married for a lot of the same reasons, assumed guarantee of wealth and love being the main ones. Marriage has become just another of the many things that has to be accomplished in life. In the play The Taming of the Shrew, the couple Petruchio and Katherina both portrays different reasons to want to marry. Petruchio's reasons to marry lean more towards the wealth that accompanies marrying well and Katherina's just doesn't want to end up an unmarried old maid. There's a point in the play when their reasons change a little.

In the beginning of the play The Taming of the Shrew, the character Petruchio is very eager to get married; however the reasons for his eagerness have nothing to do with being madly in love. He wishes, "Happily to wive and thrive as best I may" (1.2.53). Petruchio goes to the town of Padua to where his friend Hortensio lives. When arrives there he explains to Hortensio his reason for his visit, Grumio, Petruchio's personal servant says to Hortensio, "Nay, look you sir, he tells you flatly what his mind is. Why, give him gold enough and marry him to a puppet or and aglet-baby or an old trot with ne'er a tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases as two and fifty horses. Why, nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal" (1.2.74-78). In this quote Grumio clears it up for all to understand that Petruchio will marry any woman as long as she's rich. Petruchio doesn't argue the accusations made by Grumio so Hortensio begin to tell him about Katherina, a woman:

With wealth enough, and young, and beauteous,

Brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman.

Her only fault - and that is fault enough -

Is that she is intolerable curst,

And shrewd and froward so beyond all measure (1.2.82-86)

This of course does not put off Petruchio: he replies, "Hortensio, peace. Thou know'st not gold's effect./ Tell me her father's name and ‘tis enough" (1.2.89-90). Hortensio thought that if he described how horrible Katherina was to Petruchio, he would reconsider his qualifications for how he selects his wives but Petruchio assures him that anything is tolerable when there's enough gold involved. Petruchio would have had no problem fitting into society today. Like Petruchio a lot of people, particularly women, are known to marry men twice their own age because of money. It happens so often that it's only frowned upon and no longer made a big deal. In today's society it has become a popular norm that everyone should get married. This idea is placed in our heads when we're young and is pushed on us as we get older and closer to the age that is expected for couples to get married. Everyone is in such a rush to marry and get that part of their lives over with, that unless the marriage is affecting you directly no one really cares anymore whether its for love or not.

Katherina, on the other hand, lacks Petruchio's enthusiasm when it comes to marriage. Katherina's father Baptista tells Hortensio and Grumio that his youngest daughter, Bianca can not wed until his oldest daughter, Katherina has a husband. Baptista tells them that if either of them is in love with Katherina they have his permission to "court her at your pleasure" (1.1.54). Based on the two suitors' responses, we learn how Katherina feels about marriage and come to some understanding as to why:

GREMIO: To cart her rather! She's too rough for me.

There, there, Hortensio, will you any wife?

KATHERINA: [To Baptista] I pray you, sir, is it you will

To make a stale of me amongst these mates?

HORTENSIO: ‘Mates', maid? How mean you that? No mates for you

Unless you were gentler, milder mould.

KATHERINA: I'faith, sir, you shall never need to fear.

Iwis it is not halfway to her heart – (1.1.55-62)

Katherina basically told Hortensio and Grumio not to worry because marriage is last thing on her mind or in her heart. It's unjust that Hortensio and Grumio spoke about Katherina,