Marie Monday

The taming of the shrew

I decided, well-armed with feminism, to brave the taming of the shrew and oh boy, it's much harder to read than I anticipated. I was prepared for the sexism, but going into the play I knew nothing about how the 'shrew' (aka Kate) is actually tamed, so I was not prepared for the abuse. In case you know as little as I did: she's deprived of food and sleep and surrounded by violence until she becomes perfectly obedient. This is supposed to be funny, and the reader is supposed to be ok with it because the violence is not directly aimed at Kate.
It's all very upsetting. There are also good things about the play of course, such as the usual delightfully witty dialogue and wordplay, and I like the ambiguity of the ending and the implications of Bianca's character.

The audience meets Bianca as the most intolerable, servile priss you can image; her lines consist of **** like 'to your pleasure humbly I subscribe' (addressed to to her father). But from act III that turns out to be a total lie: she orders men about, elopes with one of them without her father's knowledge, and refuses to be summoned by her husband. In short, she's much more fun and healthily spirited than she at first seems. Her characterization brings up the point that this kind of obedience can be more or less pretence.

I think the best interpretation of Kate's early behaviour to Bianca is that she sees through her: she resents the obedience that's expected of her and Bianca's phony acceptance of it. What she's doing at the beginning of act II is trying to get an honest opinion out of her, which is answered by Bianca's cowardly 'no u'-s. I'd be annoyed too. When her father, like the audience, asks what Kate's problem is she even tells him it's Bianca's lack of honest openness: 'her silence flouts me'. All the more tragic that by the end of the play, she's forced into the same pretence she abhors.

So about the interpretation of Kate's final speech, I don't think she means it. That aligns well with what I just said about Bianca, although I doubt it was intended that way by Shakespeare, but it's also the realistic interpretation. Petrucio's treatment of her would hardly convince her of the sentiments she proclaims, and her change of behaviour is quite clearly shown to be opportunistic: only when she sees that it's the only way out she gives up her resistance, but with her old sarcasm. This also aligns with the final part of her speech, where she literally says that women should be obedient just because they don't have the strength (or means) not to be. Then there's the encounter with Vincentio. This further establishes the new dynamic between Petrucio and Kate as a silent understanding between the two, misunderstood by outsiders who lack this understanding. With that interpretation, the same applies to the final speech, and petrucio's earlier claim that they have agreed between the two of them that late should keep acting like a shrew becomes nice inverted foreshadowing.

I read that the interpretation of Kate's speech as insincere is sometimes used to get at least some fun out of the ending, by implying that she's fooling Petrucio, or by implying that the understanding between them is somehow fun. I don't see it that way. The power dynamic remains the same in all cases (which is why it makes no difference to Petrucio that she's not convinced of the obedience she claims): she has to act obedient in order to get food, sleep and peace. That's still utterly grim; the fact that she's not brainwashed is a small consolation. So yeah, interesting play

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