Essay on Contrasting Couples in The Taming of the Shrew

I must and will have Katherine to my wife. (Act 2, Scene 1, Page 13)

During the course of the entire play, all of the characters except Petruchio treat Kate with disrespect. Baptista, her father, is especially insensitive to his daughter's feelings. When Petruchio comes to inquire about Kate, he describes her as fair and virtuous woman. Her father neglects to acknowledge that it was possible that his daughter could have those fine qualities (II.i.42-63).

Petruchio wears the psychological mask of a guy who only has eyes for money. He makes his mask clear to the reader when he tells Hortensio to “wife wealthily” adding “you don’t know the power of gold.” after being told about Katherina’s bad behavior, not to mention her temper. It appears that Petruchio marries Kate for her money, but immediately starts to “kill her with kindness”. He begins going so by depriving her of food and sleep because he claims that neither the food from the kitchen nor the bed is good enough for her. Petruchio puts on a show of bad temper towards his servants for every fault, showing Kate what it is like to live with a bad-tempered person. For the first time in her life, Kate finds herself trying to get someone else to control their anger. Petruchio also shows Kate that she will get the things she wants when she learns to agree with what her husband says. By treating Kate in this manner, Petruchio seems cruel, but there is a reason for it. If he were truly interested only in money, he could have left Kate at home and gone out on his own. In the end, his efforts to improve his wife have worked. He improves Kate’s life, so that she does not continue to live an unhappy life. Because of Petruchio, Katherina the shrew is happily married in the end, and comes to be a good example to

Katherina may be a shrew, but Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew does not truly show a study of how a selfish, spoilt individual is made to conform to society’s expectations, or be tamed into a ‘proper’ woman. At the end of the play, Katherina is not, necessarily, tamed - she just realizes what she must to do in order to get the things she wants. Two main examples of her submitting to Petruchio in order to achieve her desires are in Act 4, scene 5, (the sun versus moon scene) as well as Act 5, scene 2 (the kiss me kate scene and her final monologue).

Ironically, they prove to be perfect for one another. Though Katharina seems heartless and unemotional, her one true fear is losing Petruchio. " It is surely worth remarking that Kate has only one true moment of agony, when Petruchio's deliberately tardy arrival for their wedding makes her feel jilted" (Bloom 30-31). Their mutual roughness seems to be their way of flirtation. Though Katharina feels that Petruchio is "a mad rudesby full of spleen," she realizes that she is truly in love and is lucky to have any husband at all, and will not, as the villagers say, "lead apes to hell" (Draper 95). The ironic counterpoint of their relationship is that while Katharina is easily tamed, Bianca, who needs no taming, is difficult for Lucentio to tolerate.

In the play Taming of the Shrew, written by William Shakespeare, many characters are reshaped and given new personality traits. Petruchio is known as being a cocky man who intends to help tame a shrewish young lady named Kate. There are many critics that believe Petruchio is solely obnoxious and a bully but through out his interactions with Kate it is shown that he truly cares about the well being of others. Of course at the beginning of Petruchio’s plan to tame a young lady he is acting off of his confidence and trying to impress those around him but this soon changes once he begins to interact with Kate. Petruchio proves that his ways have changed and he is only taming Kate to make her feel better about herself, “Petruchio uses psychological methods, not aggressive or barbaric ones, to tame Kate, which alls her to still be witty and intellectual, but also happily married, at the end of the play”(Natale,98). Petruchio truly believes that by taming Kate he is preforming a good deed and helping her accept herself in this process.

In addition, Shakespeare intermingles the play with the idea of appearance versus reality, highlighting how truelove can exist within even the curst and is absent amongst even the most attractive. As the play progresses, we see how true this is, as Bianca and Katherina contrast one another on the interior as well, yet Katherina?s true love underneath, allows her to dwell in an effective relationship. As we know, Petruchio?s love is obvious yet Katherina?s shrewish nature masks her true love for Petruchio - proving the deceptiveness of appearances. On the other hand, even though Bianca has many desperate suitors we see how shrewish she really is as she questions, ?Am I your bird? (5.1)?. Bianca?s rhetorical question and indignant tone towards Petruchio highlights her lack of respect and her internal shrewish personality. Moreover, Bianca?s interior personality

Kate and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew An exploration of the way Shakespeare presents the characters and relationships of Kate and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. The relationship between Kate and Petruchio is central to the development of The Taming of the Shrew, as both characters clearly represent and are centrally involved in the main theme of the play, the taming of the "shrew", Kate.

In the play The Taming of the Shrew, men do quite absurd things to get what they desire. Petruchio, Lucentio, Hortensio, and Gremio all derive schemes to win the heart of the woman they choose. Throughout the play many characters create alternate personas to woo the one they love. However, one man, Petruchio, prefers to pursue his soon to be wife ingenuously. All of the ideas the men concoct are in hopes that Bianca or Kate might fall in love with them, whether or not they do fall in love is due to how well their suitors perform their acts of love.

In Taming of the Shrew, the opening starts with an act of deceit. A drunk man comes into a bar and refuses to pay for his drinks. After one too many, he passes out on the floor and is carried home in a carriage by a lord. Once in the lord’s home, he wakes up and is tricked into believing that not only is he a lord, but that he has a wife and that they are watching a play which is how the book begins. Later in the play, Lucentio, a suitor for Bianca, disguises himself as a school teacher to get close to her. His manservant, Tranio, and himself come up with the ploy so that while they search for a man for Kate, Lucentio can win Bianca’s, heart. He was not the only one to use this idea, another suitor of Bianca’s also disguises himself as a teacher. However, it is Lucentio’s ploy that is successful and the two young people fall in love and agree to the marriage. Before they can be married, Bianca’s father needs to meet Lucentio’s father. However, instead of getting his real father, Lucentio finds a man on the street and gets him to act as though he is his father. Again, the ploy works and the two fathers meet and the marriage is arranged. Lucentio is no the only one who uses deceiving as a way to get married, Petruchio too deceives Kate and her father to gain marriage. First, he vows to deceive Kate by telling her the opposite of what he feels. For example, if she was ugly, he would call her beautiful, and if she was mean he would call her the sweetest person he had ever met. This, he believed would allow him to woo her successfully. It did not go quite as planned, but when Kate’s father came in to see Kate and Petruchio together, Petruchio made it seem as though Kate loved him and wanted to be married to him. His

Since the beginning of the book, Kate has had trouble with her behavior. No man wants to marry her because she acts like a shrew. The underlying cause of her issues start with her relationship with her father and sister. Kate’s bad relationship with her father and sister has caused her shrewish behavior; Petruchio has caused her to change for the good by forcing her to submit to him. Kate’s submission is key to her changing her shrewish behavior.

The story is about two sisters Katherine and Bianca. Bianca has a suitor who would like to marry her, Lucentio, but the only way that he will be able to marry her is if her older sister is married first. When Petruccio arrives to Padua he agrees to court and marry Katherine because she will provide a lovely dowry. Rumor has it that Katherine is a cynical, unruly, and

Lucentio's treatment of Tranio is reflected in his treatment of Bianca and their role as man and woman. Lucentio never hits Bianca or mistreats her in anyway, but spends the play wooing her and showing her his love. However, Bianca does not completely mimic Tranio's obedience in her role as wife to Lucentio. Though Bianca is not as stubborn willed and shrewish as her sister, Katherine, she does not obey her husband when he calls her to him. Biondello comes back to Lucentio to report: "Sir, my mistress sends you word that she is busy and she cannot come." [7] This action is in direct contradiction with An Homily on the State of Matrimony which states: "Let not therefore the woman be too busy to call for the duty of her husband where she should be ready to perform her own, for that is not worthy any great commendation." [8] Though Lucentio is consistent with his role as master and husband. His relationship with Tranio differs slightly from Bianca, Tranio's servant hood more apparent and selfless.

William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew tells the story of beautiful Bianca not being able to marry one of her various suitors due to the rule her father has affirmed: she can not marry until her shrewish sister Katherine is betrothed. When Bianca’s suitors persuade fortune-seeker Petruchio to approach Kate he is instantly interested when he hears her dowry. Petruchio marries Kate and takes her to his home where he starves, and does not let her sleep to undertake the job of taming her. Katherine’s been shrewish because of the jealousy she has for her sister getting all the attention. While taming her Petruchio was getting rid of the envy to make her a civil person. The ways he tamed her were very cruel, leading to Kate obeying in fear. Petruchio developing Katherine into a well mannered person did not make it obligatory for her to love him.

Marriage in William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew At the time Shakespeare wrote The Taming of the Shrew the idealistics