The Induction also starts with a fairly violent and hostile atmosphere, however, there is an underlying theme of merriment similar to that in the play itself. Again this could be there to emphasise the violence that is present in the play but avoid it becoming too sinister.
Even in the first scene we meet the Lord who has been hunting, possibly a subtle echo of Petruchio’s fortune hunting later on. We also meet Sly, a tinker who is thrown out of the alehouse by the Hostess when he refuses to pay for broken glasses. Shakespeare seems to use a lot of characters that are of similar, yet very different positions in the Induction, as their possible counterparts in the play itself. For example, Christopher Sly undergoes a dramatic and difficult transformation in the Induction, which is not a world away from the conversion Katherina must make for her husband, also in the play. Both characters, Sly and Katherina, are taken into powerfully male dominated, patriarchal, worlds where they must change to suit and be accepted. A drunken tinker must change to fit into the comfortable surroundings of a Lord whilst a rebellious maiden must become a suitable surrounding for her husband, Petruchio.
At the end of the jest Sly returns to his natural state, however in the play Katherina’s transformation is permanent because of the belief that the way she was before was unnatural and the intolerable behaviour is beaten out of her.
In the Induction, the woman’s roles and behaviour are constructed by a male playwright and the solitary female is played by a young man. Indeed, the cast of plays in Shakespeare’s times were predominately female with the young males taking the female parts. Therefore the women in these plays are merely the males’ idea and even ideology of how a woman should act and behave. The fact that Shakespeare has made this play a comedy however could suggest that perhaps Shakespeare was being ironic and was implying that this perfect ‘obedient’ wife only existed in fiction or on the stage.
Similarly, Katherina’s final submission is perhaps an approval of male power resembling that of the Lord’s for Sly and his players in the Induction.
What is interesting about the Induction is that it is unlike anything Shakespeare had ever used before. It was not uncommon for Shakespeare to use the device of a play within a play – indeed he did so in ‘Hamlet’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ to name but a few. What is odd is that the Induction is not completed at the end of the actual play and we never find out what happened to Sly and the Lord.
Perhaps this was because Shakespeare found that by the end of the play the Induction had done its job and now we are left with the appropriate theme and that comedy was not fitting after Katherina’s Capitulation. It was not uncommon for Shakespeare to downplay the bleaker aspects of his drama with humour to make them more entertaining - ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is a classic example of this - but in this play Shakespeare may have wanted to make a point and leaving us with Sly, which was a very effective opening, would not have presented the audience with quite the same thoughts and reflections in its conclusion.
