Shakespeare has introduced his audience to a character who is forthright, purposeful, strong and determined, more than equal to the challenge of taming Katherina.
The strength and determination of Petruchio are further enforced when he is introduced to Gremio and Lucentio, the suitors of Bianca. These men are delighted that Hortensio has found someone to take on the shrew, but Gremio wonders if Petruchio has been told all Katherina’s faults. His reply shows his confidence.
“I know she is an irksome, brawling scold.
If that be all, masters, I hear no harm.”
(Act 1, Scene 2, lines181-182)
Why is Petruchio not worried about the behaviour of Katherina? All of these suitors seem to be amazed by this fact, and are in reality admitting that they themselves are not up to the task of taming her. Petruchio has had many experiences in his life where he has had to show courage and fortitude and he paints a picture of himself as a man of action.
“Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puffed up with winds,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven’s artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in a pitched battle heard
Loud ‘larums, neighing steeds and trumpets’ clang?
And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue,”
(Act 1, Scene 2, lines 192-201)
This poetic speech is full of machismo, but he gets his point across rather forcefully that when he has successfully fought the elements of nature and enemies on the battlefield, with their accompanying noise and chaos, then he is more than able and ready to fight whatever battles are ahead to tame his shrew. He has certainly convinced Gremio, who nonetheless uses irony to comment to the other suitors of Petruchio’s task:
“Yea, leave that labour to great Hercules,
And let it be more than Alcides’ twelve.”
(Act 1, Scene 2, lines 250-251)
Shakespeare has elaborated further on the character of Petruchio, giving him life experiences that have influenced how he thinks, made him strong and qualified him for the task of taming Katherina. But first he has to get the contracts drawn up and the marriage agreed. He is very impatient to get this settled and sets off at once to see her father Baptista, with a strategy for his mission already forming in his mind.
Prior to the marriage meeting with Baptista, Shakespeare gives a little insight into how Katherina is feeling about the direction her life is taking. It is important to have a little insight into Katherina’s mind as she and Petruchio are inextricably linked and her capitulation to her husband in the final scenes needs explanation. She comes across as a lonely person underneath all the bluster. She sees how the suitors are lining up for Bianca and yet none of them are willing to look her way and even if they were she would not be satisfied, for to her, they are all weak and ineffectual. She is humiliated by her father’s attempts to marry her off and yet also feels she is going to be an old maid and is upset about that. Baptista, she believes loves her sister more than her.
“What, will you not suffer me? Nay, now I see
She is your treasure, she must have a husband.
I must dance barefoot on her wedding day
And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell.”
(Act 2, Scene1, lines 31-34)
We see a woman, who is sharp, smart and witty, but no-one seems to recognise this and she becomes unbearably frustrated and thus displays shrewish behaviour. It is entirely possible that Shakespeare has created a character in Katherina who is waiting, (albeit subconsciously), for someone like Petruchio to come into her life and claim her.
Petruchio comes boldly to lay claim to Baptista’s elder daughter and he shows early indications of the strategies he will later use on this feisty woman. The irony is that he uses wonderful descriptions that he claims to have heard about Katherina, when actually the opposite is true.
“That hearing of her beauty and her wit,
Her affability and bashful modesty,
Her wondrous qualities and mild behaviour,”
(Act 2, Scene 1, lines 47-49)
This humour underlying these outrageous words would not have been lost on the audience, who would have been warming to Petruchio. He tells Baptista he hasn’t got much time to woo Katherina and manages to convince him to allow the marriage, if she agrees. There will be no problem with this, as according to Petruchio:
“I am as peremptory as she proud-minded
And where two raging fires meet together
They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.
Though little fire grows great with little wind,
Yet extreme gusts will blow out fire and all.
So I to her, and so she yields to me
For I am rough and woo not like a babe.”
(Act 2, Scene 1, lines 127-133)
In the first of his two main soliloquies, Petruchio enlightens the audience as to the strategy he will use to begin the wooing of Katherina. He hopes to keep her off balance and disconcerted by continuing his policy of saying the opposite of what is true.
“Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale.
Say that she frown, I’ll say she looks as clear
As morning roses newly washed with dew.
Say she be mute and will not speak a word,
Then I’ll commend her volubility”
(Act 2, Scene 1, lines 166-171)
Shakespeare is developing the character of Petruchio, showing his audience yet another facet of his personality, a humorous charm. This would have served the purpose of getting the spectators ‘on his side’, and built a sense of anticipation for the eventual meeting between him and Katherina.
When she enters the scene, Petruchio begins his offensive immediately by being deliberately provocative, using the diminutive version of her name, Kate. In six short lines, (lines 181-186), he uses this shortened form of her name no less than eleven times, praising her all the while as he informs her he is going to marry her. No doubt the audience found the situation on stage highly amusing and entertaining, particularly the outrage which was sure to be on Katherina’s face, however, there was a purposeful and authoritative stand being taken by Petruchio too. The witty repartee, which flies between the two, would have involved the audience completely. Shakespeare uses a staccato style of language similar to that used in ancient Greek drama for this meeting, where the two combatants speak a series of one line answers to each other, each using sexual pun and innuendo and trying to outdo the other in terms of their wit and sarcasm.
“Come, come, you wasp! I’faith you are too angry. (Petruchio)
If I be waspish, best beware my sting. (Katherina)
My remedy is then to pluck it out. (Petruchio)
Ay, if the fool could find it where it lies”. (Katherina)
(Act 2, Scene 1, lines 205-208)
For the first time Katherina has not verbally bested a man and she shows her frustration by striking Petruchio. If he were the aggressive, brutal man described earlier, surely he would have retaliated. In fact, he only threatens to do so, while holding her to physically subdue her. He then tells her, very poetically, that what he was told about her being a shrew was wrong:
“Twas told me you were rough and coy and sullen,
And now I find report a very liar,
For thou art pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,
But slow in speech, yet sweet as springtime flowers.”
(Act 2, Scene 1, lines 233-236)
Katherina is impressed by his ‘goodly speech’ and his assertion that:
“Thou must be married to no man but me,
For I am he am born to tame you, Kate
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates.”
(Act 2, Scene 1, lines 264-267)
In truth no other man wanted to have Katherina, so there was no real reason for Petruchio to say this, however using this backhanded compliment he is assuring her that their marriage was ‘meant to be’. It seems to have had the desired effect as, when joined by her father, Gremio and Tranio, Katherina does not protest when Petruchio informs them that the wedding has been agreed and that in private she had been ‘all over him’, allowing him to get away with this outrageous bluff. Was the war won for Petruchio is this first meeting? It may well have been, for although the taming continues throughout the rest of the play, the audience have seen the wild Katherina intrigued and beguiled by her Petruchio. At last, here is someone strong enough to counter her own fiery nature, who will not be intimidated by her wit and intelligence and who will fulfil her physically too. The well-known modern feminist Germaine Greer comments:
“Kate has the uncommon good fortune to find Petruchio, who is man enough to know what he wants and how to get it.”
Whilst the war may have been won, there were many battles still to be fought, and Petruchio continues his offensive against Katherina by first of all being late for the wedding, causing her to believe she is going to be jilted, and then turning up to for their wedding sighs of relief all round, but dressed in old ragged peasants garb. His behaviour throughout the ceremony was outrageous, at one point he cuffed the priest, drank numerous toasts and kissed his bride overly long and loud. Here was another facet of Petruchio’s character. One which showed that he was not worried what other people thought of him but was single minded in the pursuit of the goal of taming his wife. Shakespeare was presenting him in what may have seemed to be an unfavourable light and yet there was a purpose behind his behaviour, (apart from delighting the audience with his unpredictable antics), keeping his bride off balance and anxious about what he would do next.
Petruchio’s strategy continues when they reach his country home. He complains and attacks the servants, hurls food and drink around, persecutes the tailor (for doing what he commissioned) and all the while is welcoming Katherina into his home. This ambiguous behaviour would have created a definite comic element to the scene, with Petruchio blustering around and Katherina (quietly for once), trying to defend the servants and eat. He deprives her of food, telling her it is unfit to eat and hurries her off to bed, where he then deprives her of sleep. To say that Katherina was confused, off balance, tired and hungry was probably an understatement.
Petruchio in his second soliloquy comes back onto the scene to give the audience an up-date on how he is progressing with his shrew. He makes use of falcon imagery to explain the thinking behind his strategy.
“My falcon now is sharp and passing empty,
And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged,”
(Act 4, Scene 1, lines 161-162)
He calls her his ‘haggard’, which was an untrained fully-fledged hawk, (which would have been trained in such a way as to break its own independent will and bond it to its master). Stevie Davis writes:
“Because the hawk was viewed as a majestic creature, a soaring precision killer, emblem of airborne pride, the prowess of taming it was all the greater because it was a genuine and elemental contest of wills.”
(The Taming of the Shrew, Stevie Davies, P88, Penguin Books, 1995)
Petruchio compares this process of taming to his strategy for taming Katherina and appears to genuinely believe that it will work.
“This is a way to kill a wife with kindness,
And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humour.” (Act 4, Scene 1, lines 179-180)
Is Shakespeare presenting Petruchio as an unnecessarily cruel man, in his treatment of his wife? Yes, it seems harsh to the modern reader, yet to the audience of the time hawking and falconry were common sport among gentlemen and perhaps they would not have felt this was inappropriate for taming such a shrewish woman as Katherina. Compare his behaviour here with his rejection of Katherina’s ultimate submissive gesture of putting her hand under his foot, in the final scene of the play. If he were a cruel man he would have trodden on her hand. It is unlikely that a man like Petruchio would have wanted a docile, completely submissive woman. He would have found her boring.
Each time Katherina makes some effort to contradict her husband, even when his comment might be completely outrageous, he threatens to take her back home and begin his training again. Finally, on the road back to Padua where he describes Vincentio as a ‘gentle mistress’, Katherina agrees with him, whereupon he says she is mad to say such a thing. The telling factor in this scene is the fun and merriment that the incident caused. Both Petruchio and Katherina are highly amused and for the first time we get the impression that the couple have bonded and are beginning to understand each other. They watch together as the impersonations by Tranio and Lucentio are unmasked and when, at the end of the scene, Petruchio asks Katherina for a kiss, ironically she hesitates because they are in the street. This shows how much the ‘taming’ has been successful. The old Katherina did not appear to care what people thought of her and her shrewish behaviour (she broke an instrument over the head of Hortensio), but now she is a married woman and wants to be seen as someone who behaves in a manner that society expects of her. Petruchio, however, is not one to comply with society for its own sake and does not want his wife to either, he doesn’t want to break her spirit completely. As long as she complies with him, he is satisfied.
By the last scene in Act 5, Petruchio is so confident of his wife’s behaviour he makes a wager on the strength of it and indeed wins, to the amazement of the other characters. Katherina’s closing words appear to express her total capitulation to her husband, (and if they are exaggerated to allow him to win the wager, then only the two of them know this). The following closing lines show Petruchio’s delight in his wife and the affectionate relationship they have established:
“Why, there’s a wench! Come on and kiss me. Kate.
Come, Kate, we’ll to bed.”
(Act 5, Scene 2, lines 180, 184)
How does Shakespeare present Petruchio in this play? He portrays him as a larger than life character, an intelligent man with exceptional language skills, using metaphors, pun and poetry, but more importantly, he presents him as the only possible person who could have taken on the role of taming Katherina, using masculine strength and aggression on occasion - yes, but showing perceptiveness and above all outrageous humour. The watching audience would have been thoroughly entertained.
BIBLIOGRAPY
The Taming of the Shrew Stevie Davies, Penguin Books Ltd, 1995.
The Taming of the Shrew, Monarch Notes and Study Guides, Margaret L. Ranald, Monarch Press, 1965.
The Taming of the Shrew, York Notes Advanced, Rebecca Warren, York Press, 2000.
The Taming of the Shrew, Notes, Salibelle Royster, Coles Publishing Company Limited, 1964.
The Taming of the Shrew, Brodie’s Notes, T.W. Smith, Pan Books Ltd, 1986.
Sandra Browne A’Level Coursework