One point which is worth mentioning is that the three couples have a kind of married love instead of adultery love. Though Romeo and Juliet, Lucentio and Bianca cannot make their marriage public, both couples do marry with the witness of a priest. For Petruccio and Katherine, their marriage is not a significant issue to discuss as it is expected by others, like her father, Hortensio and Gremio. But for the other couples, their marriage, is worth discussing. One may ask the love between the two couples is kind of secret love, why do they bother to have the rituals in church before eloping or having sexual relationship. In my opinion, for the couples, the rituals itself is very crucial for the reason that both of the couples see the value of their love and they respect their beloved. Thus, we can say the love and the marriage of Romeo and Juliet, Lucentio and Bianca are based on mutual respect. However, for Katherine and Petruccio, wealth plays an important role in their marriage, but not love itself.
Though both Romeo and Juliet and the Taming of the Shrew are plays with the theme of love, the way love presented in the plays is a bit different. However, there are also some similarities of the way love being presented, I will discuss them later.
Love appears to be more radical and extreme in Romeo and Juliet than in the Taming of the Shrew. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet regard each other not as ordinary human beings but saints. This can be shown by their use of blasphemous terms, for example, Juliet calls Romeo “the god of my idolatry” (II.i.156) elevating him to level of God. Virtually, it is very dangerous if one is regarded as a saint in the eyes of his/her lover. This may suggest the idea of love is kind of madness and blindness. In the play, the love between Romeo and Juliet has close relationship with death. They are plagued with thoughts of suicide. Meanwhile, they are so blinded that in their eyes, they see nothing but each other. As Marianne Novy suggests “The play expresses both the appeal and the danger of a love in which two people become the whole world to each other” (368). Both Romeo and Juliet ignore their family and society’s opposition in order to pursue their love. For example, they deny their names for the sake of each other: “…be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet.” (Juliet) (II.ii.19-20) and “…call me but love, and I’ll be new baptized; henceforth I never will be Romeo” (II.ii.34-36). For them, love means more than anything, even their lives.
Comparing with Romeo and Juliet, love appears nether too extreme nor too radical in the Taming of the Shrew. Rather, love appears as something normal and part of their daily life. For instance, Katherine is generally regarded as a shrew and no one loves her. One may argue it is Petruccio who forces her to marry him, but one should remember Katherine is such a fire-eating person that no one can force her to do something she does not want to do. Once she is willing to put on the wedding gown, there are some reasons behind. I think perhaps Katherina knows that love and marriage is something ordinary in human life and she does not want to be an old maiden forever, so she agrees to marry Petruccio. For plot of Lucentio and Bianca, the love between them appears to be something naturally happens. Young Lucentio sees beautiful Bianca and he decides to court her. After acquiring more mutual understanding, Bianca starts to love him back. This is something very natural and common to happen in our daily life, so we can say love does not appear too radical in the play, rather, it is quite moderate.
Besides, love between Romeo and Juliet seems to be more sacred than the love between Lucentio and Bianca, and Katherina and Petruchio. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo totally has two lovers, they are Rosaline and Juliet. For Rosaline, Romeo just tries to conquer her and satisfy his sexual desire by showing the image of attacking her: “she will not stay the siege of loving terms/ Nor bide th’encounter of assailing eyes” (I.i.210-11). However, with Juliet, Romeo speaks more of wanting to touch her than to conquer her: “O that I were a glove upon that hand, /That I might touch that cheek…./I would I were thy bird” (II.ii.24-25,183).
Another reason for me to perceive that the love between Romeo and Juliet is so sacred is that their love is not initiated by worldly reason ( because of their wealth and social status), but just their inner passion.
However, the love between Katherine and Petruccio is more materialistic. Ironically, their so-called love (before their marriage) is because of no reason, but the wealth of Katherine. This cheapens love itself though they fall in love with each other at last. For Lucentio and Bianca, when Lucentio first sees Bianca, he says “I saw sweet beauty in her face”, “Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her” (I.i.105,107). This shows that maybe love of Lucentio to Bianca is real, but his love to her is initiated by something, here by her beauty. This means if Bianca is not that pretty, he may not fall in love with her, from this point of view I think their love is not sacred and pure enough.
As defined in the introduction, love refers to kind of relationship. I think the relationship between Juliet and Romeo, and Lucentio and Bianca is based on equality while relationship between Katherina and Petruchio is based on authority. At that time, people tended to believe that men should hold the authoritarian power within the household. In the case of Petruccio, he regards Katherine as a thing, a servant to conquer: “She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,/ My household stuff, my field, my barn,/My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.” (III.ii.230-32). We can say that their relationship is based on hierarchy, but not equality.
In the case of Lucentio he tries to do is to court Bianca and win her love. In Juliet and Romeo, the equality between the lovers is obvious. In their relationship, I cannot see any desire for conquest or patriarchal power. All I can see is that they try their best to cherish and sacrifice for each other. For example, after knowing Juliet died, Romeo says: “Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight.” (V.i.18-19). from this example, we see that not only they treat each other in equal basis, but they are also willing to sacrifice for each other. Their power of love is proved by their treating each other without any desire for conquest, but on equal basis.
Though the way love presented in both plays is somehow different, it also shares some similarities.
Firstly, as mentioned before, love in both plays is kind of married love. That means the lovers in the play have the ritual of marriage. Virtually, I think marriage here means more than a ritual. After lovers get married, not only their love integrates together, but their fate also link together. In Juliet and Romeo, Juliet and Romeo come from two different extremely feuding families. Noticing this point, we readers will never link them together, not even their fate. But with their marriage, their fate is undoubted linked with each other. This can be proved by strong will of Romeo to commit suicide after knowing death of Julie. The corresponding example has been quoted before. In the Taming of the Shrew, it is obvious that fate of two couples Lucentio and Bianca, and Petruccio and Katherine is link together. For example, Bianca elopes with Lucentio; Katherine becomes Petruccio tamed wife and leave with him from her father. For these characters, their fate should be different if they have not met their spouse, it is love that link them and then their fate together.
Secondly, love in both plays appears to be under parental influence. In Juliet and Romeo, the love between the two lovers is strongly apposed by their parents who regarded each other as fend. For instance, Juliet says “My only love, sprung from my only hate!/ Too early seen unknown and known too/ late!” (I.iv.115-17). after they realize the beloved is their feud, they both have psychological preparation to sacrifice for the integrity of their love. In the Taming of the Shrew, parental influence plays an important part on the love of two couple. In Katherine plot, it is father of Katherine who “buys” a husband for her daughter so that Bianca can marry soon. Besides, for Petruccio, as he says, he wants to get a rich wife to a certain extent is because of the death of his father: “Antonio, my father, is deceased, and/ I have thrust myself into this maze, to /wive and thrive as best I may” (I.ii.51-53). In Bianca plot, Baptista creates a contest of bidding between Tranio and Gremio by stating: “‘Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both That can assure my daughter greatest dower Shall have Bianca’s love” (II.i.342-44). Though at last Lucentio can marry Bianca, it is because Lucentio can offer the highest bid for her. It is ridiculous that although love itself is only between two people, the parents can exert so much influence on it. In the two plays, love is kind of personal matter, but it is also influenced so much by parents.
Though love appears as kind of madness and sickness in Romeo and Juliet, their love is still full of obligation and duty as that presented in the Taming of the Shrew does. For example, in Romeo and Juliet, knowing Romeo has killed her cousin, Juliet at first blames Romeo, but soon she realized that she is already his wife and it is her obligation to trust and show her loyalty to Romeo, no matter what has happened:
Some people argue Katherine may not truly mean what she says, it may be she learns to play the game or adapt to the game that initiated by Petruccio. But for me, Katherine does truly mean what she says because I think if she just plays the game and pretends to be loyal in order to get her freedom as some critics state, there is no need for her to give such a speech. Instead, she only has to listens to what her husband tells her to do, she can still get her freedom and in this way the speech itself is somehow redundant. But now she really gives the speech and I think she does truly mean that. Though love is presented differently in both plays, one is more radical, extreme, one is more practical and mild, in both plays, love also represents kind of obligation and duty no matter how mad or sick it is.
To conclude, though love in the Taming of the Shrew appears to be not as perfect and pure as that in Romeo and Juliet, it is more real and more similar to the love we experience in our daily life. The love between Romeo and Juliet though seems to be more sacred and pure, it is something more likely to happen in a fairy tale world than our human world because it is too good and perfect to be true.
Bibliography
Halio, Jay L. Romeo and Juliet : a guide to the play. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Novy, Marianne. “Violence, Love, and Gender in Romeo and Juliet”. Romeo and Juliet : critical essays. Ed. Andrews, John F. New York : Garland Pub., 1993.
Shakespeare, William. The taming of the shrew. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1968
Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1954.