When Petruchio and Katherina first meet, Petruchio does not listen to a word she says as his only goal seems to be to marry her. He neither seems to respects nor listens to what she wants. When she tells him “They call me Katherine”, he ignores this and as if to mock her, he excessively uses the name “Kate” whilst addressing her. This immediately leads one to believe that he has little care for her feelings. Petruchio then proceeds to ridicule her, with use of puns and crude sexual innuendos. This is a novel way, to say the least, of winning a lady’s favor. Already he seems to be attacking her verbally. When Katherina takes offense to this, as any respected woman is likely to, she hits him and he threatens: “I swear I’ll cuff you if you strike again.” Threatening to physically abuse a woman, who is so much weaker than himself, exposes him straight away as a violent character, and this may prove in some ways that she was beaten into submission by the end of the play, through this abuse. Petruchio, then conceited as he is, tells Baptista and various others that “’Tis bargained” and Kate had agreed to marry him. He is not a very truthful man, and only through these methods does he manage to subdue Katherina.
The next time the couple meet is at their own wedding. Petruchio turns up in a ridiculous outfit possibly to symbolize his control over Katherina. Simply by wearing the costume, he is able to humiliate her. It may be shameful for Kate to be matched to someone in such attire, but she knows she has no choice, for her father is so keen for her to marry, and she as all women would, does not wish to end up an old maid. She consents to let the ceremony proceed, even with Petruchio dressed in a clown like costume, thus she yields to his authority before the wedding even begins. The outfit may also symbolize the transient nature of clothing. Petruchio also turns up seemingly drunk to his own wedding, showing his lack of real commitment to Katherina as a wife. He wouldn’t allow her to stay for the Bridal dinner, and when Katherina says “Now, if you love me, stay.” Petruchio refuses and drags her off on a long gruelling journey to his home. Again this seems to imply that love has nothing to do with this relationship.
Then comes Petruchio’s falcon speech. In this speech he compares his taming of Katherina to the taming of a hawk. His first line in this speech straight away is very explanatory of what he feels his position is with Katherina: “Thus hate I politically begun my reign”. He sees himself as a king or a ruler over his wife. This is an obvious point to direct the fact that there was never any equality or understanding in their relationship. He tells the audience that “She ate no meat today, nor none shall eat”. He is starving her like a hawk, training her to obedient and come to him like a Hawk, as she does in the end, when she comes obediently to him and says “What is your will, sir, that you send for me?” Also, he keeps her awake all night to keep her wary, as would happen in Hawk training. At the end of the play, there is sufficient evidence to prove that she has been beaten down by Petruchio’s hawk plan; her end speech shows this. She tells Bianca and the widow “Dart not scornful glances from those eyes, to wound thy lord, thy king”. She has been brought to believe this of Petruchio.
On the other hand, there are many reasons for us to believe that there is more depth to the relationship than is initially seen. For instance at the end of his Hawk speech he says “He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him speak – ‘tis charity to show.” This leads the audience to question if there is a better way to tame Katherina. She too was rude and spiteful to him when they first met, and perhaps he was just fighting fire with fire.
Looking closer at Petruchio and Katherina, they seem to have a lot of things in common. Particularly, it seems, their bad qualities. Like for instance their violence. At the beginning of Act 2 Scene 1, Katherina immediately is shown as being very violent towards her sister Bianca, whilst she pleads her to stop “Good sister, wrong me not”. Katherina tries to bully Bianca into telling her secrets about her love life, which immediately shows Katherina’s violent nature. This links directly to when Petruchio is first presented; in the stage directions it shows him hurting his servant Grumio: “He wrings him by the ears”. Immediately you can begin to see the direct correlation between the personalities. When Katherina and Petruchio first meet, they seem to have a battle of sharp witty puns, each trying to outdo the other which seems to show that their minds think alike in many ways. In Act 3 Scene 2, after the wedding, Tranio says to the other men around him “Of all mad matches never was the like.” Before this, both Katherina and Petruchio had been described as mad in different circumstances. Again implying that they are a good match, a “mad match” maybe, but that is possibly what makes them so good for each other.
Katherina is no ordinary woman. She does not care for things the way her sister Bianca does, and does not behave in a way that is expected of a woman in this time. So Petruchio’s attempts to woo her should certainly be different to the way Lucentio tries to win over a mild girl like Bianca. Petruchio is conceivably showing Katherina by force that he wants to be with her, rather than the typical speeches of love, for the typical women in this play. Petruchio does also seem to want to make Katherina feel good about herself, for before he meets her he tells Baptista; “Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain, She sings as sweetly as a nightingale”, in order to win her over. Petruchio seems to be able to see Katherina’s beauty, even if at times he does not show this for the sake of “taming her”, because he tells her “I am a husband for your turn, For, by this light whereby I see thy beauty.” He’s looking past her shrew like exterior and teaching her to change this and become the true beauty that he believes she is.
What it is important to remember about this relationship, is that the play in which it is set is a comedy and often in comic productions, exaggeration in gestures are used to put across the full amusement value to the audience. When Petruchio is treating Kate badly, and abusing her mentally or physically, it is possible that this is purely a comic ploy, along with use of sharp wit.
The battles between the couple are basically there to amuse Shakespeare’s audience. When it comes to the wedding scene, it is feasible that Petruchio’s clothes are a way of saying how their relationship was not to be shallow or superficial. Like for instance that of Bianca and Lucentio’s; for they fell in love at first site, purely on looks, when Katherina and Petruchio got to know each other first, in a way. Petruchio declares that Katherina is marrying him, not his clothes, indicating that the man beneath the attire is not the same as the attire itself. Thus, Lucentio, dressed as a tutor, cannot escape the fact that he must return to his true identity. By the same token, when Katherina plays the role of a dutiful wife, she remains, essentially Katherina.
In Act4 Scene 5; often referred to the ‘Sun and Moon’ scene, it is often the opinion that this shows Katherina finally brought down and under Petruchio’s thumb. It appears in the text though that this is not necessarily the truth. When Petruchio tests her calling Vincentio a fresh “gentlewoman”, Katherina takes this over the top using sexual puns towards the old Vincentio, she calls him a “Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet”. Almost as though she is playing with Petruchio and making him seem the fool. She takes it over the top.
It is also important to remember the context in which the play was written. Women were not expected to be like Katherina, bold and mean, towards men. They were expected to be mild, modest and subdued like Bianca in order that they get a husband. It was very important for a girl to marry and have children in the sixteenth century, not for love, but for money and political reasons. In order that they could ensure themselves somewhere to live and guarantee that they are safe financially. Queen Elizabeth was ruling England at the time when this play was written, so it is also unlikely that Shakespeare would write a sexist play likely to offend her in some way, in fact probably quite the opposite. It seems that the play may really be a comedy about an assertive woman coping with how she is expected to act in the society of the late sixteenth century and of how one must obey the unwritten rules of a society to be accepted in it. She manages to make a compromise with the man who respects her enough to fight fire with fire for her.
