The Taming of the Shrew is a performance that raises a number of issues concerning appearance versus reality. The assumption that many characters in the play are persuaded to be what they are not ignores the evident fact that each character chooses the role that they are to play. The culturally constructed hierarchy of power causes the actors to perform certain roles to avoid the constricting norms in society and retain their identities. Despite the ease with which they mask their true selves, the characters exist as others to oppose the patriarchy.
Shakespeare uses Sly, Katherine, Bianca, and Petruchio to reveal the power of the hierarchy as a farce that can be manipulated. Shakespeare uses the Induction to give the reader a notion as to what to expect, and introduce a number of crucial themes evident throughout the play. The Induction serves as a mirror to the rest of the play, emphasizes the theme of mistaken identities, and constitutes the Taming of the Shrew as a play within a play. This aspect of the Induction gives rise to the importance of performance, which has a drastic effect on one’s interpretation of the play.
The play thus poses the question of whether clothes make the man’s personality, whether a person can change his or her role by putting on new clothes. The ultimate answer is no, of course. As Petruchio implies on his wedding day, a garment is simply a garment, and the person beneath remains the same no matter what disguise is worn. One of the primary themes in literature and drama examines the issue of appearance versus reality, often in terms of some delusion held by a character or characters.
William Shakespeare explores this theme in various ways in many of his plays, and explorations of the issue can be found in Twelfth Night and The Taming of the Shrew. The theme is embodied in both plays in the way certain characters play-act or pretend to be someone they are not, which links the questions of appearance versus reality directly to the drama itself. In the drama, actors pretend to be other people and act out versions of reality before an audience, and both the exploration of the question of what is reality and the way that exploration is presented rely on the contrast between illusion and reality.
Both plays are also love stories, and aspects of love are examined as they relate to the question of what is real and what is illusion. In The Taming of the Shrew, This play features two couples, one couple openly in love, the other couple openly battling their way to the feeling of love without knowing that is what they are doing. The two males are pursuing the sisters, Bianca and Kate, and both relationships are complicated by the conditions placed on the two young women by their father.
Lucentio loves Bianca, and though he wants to woo her, he will have to wait for Kate to be married first, as her father states: Gentlemen, importune me no farther, For how I firmly am res Throughout Shakespeare’s plays, one of the most effective plot strategies springs from characters who are deceived by another’s demeanor or language. When these otherwise intelligent men and women observe a sequence of action or hear an address, they tend to accept the implications of what confronts them without probing further or even questioning the motives of those involved.
Such lack of perception is frequently dramatized in imagery of sight, almost always with implications of “insight,” and the consequences of this “blindness” may be either comic or tragic. For Shakespeare, how characters respond when they distinguish between appearance and reality reveals a great deal about the characters themselves. Throughout Shakespeare’s plays, one of the most effective plot strategies springs from characters who are deceived by another’s demeanor or language.
When these otherwise intelligent men and women observe a sequence of action or hear an address, they tend to accept the implications of what confronts them without probing further or even questioning the motives of those involved. Such lack of perception is frequently dramatized in imagery of sight, almost always with implications of “insight,” and the consequences of this “blindness” may be either comic or tragic. For Shakespeare, how characters respond when they distinguish between appearance and reality reveals a great deal about the characters themselves.
In Shakespeare’s comedies, the conflict usually has psychological overtones related specifically to romance. In The Taming of the Shrew, for instance, when Petruchio arrives for his wedding with the shrewish Katherine, his servant, Biondello, describes the groom’s garb as outlandishly unsuitable for so dignified a ceremony (III, ii, 43–63). Tranio, another servant, understands, however, that Petruchio “hath some meaning in his mad attire” (III, ii, 124).
That meaning, we soon learn, is to teach Katherine to refrain from judging people by clothing or other superficial evidence: Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor, For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich; And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, So honor peereth in the meanest habit. (IV, iii, 171–174) Later, after Kate has undergone Petruchio’s brutal, if well-intentioned, punishment, she learns this lesson as well as many others, and consequently the uncertain meaning of appearance becomes the stuff of hu mor.
For instance, during their journey back to Padua, the couple banters playfully, first about whether the source of light above them is the sun or the moon, then about whether a fellow traveler is a young virgin or an old man (IV, v, 1–50). As the pair exchange badinage, we realize, along with the two of them, that they are playing a game, and their capacity to indulge in such byplay reflects a profound bond based on their capacity to view life from a similar perspective, to judge appearances skeptically, and to distinguish posturing from uprightness.
Indeed, the entire plot of The Taming of the Shrew is built on the unmasking of false appearance. Katherine, who initially seems a shrew, is revealed to be a woman of warmth, wit, and passion. Her sister, Bianca, who at the start appears obliging and charming, turns out to be the true shrew. Baptista, father to the two girls, claims to have affection for both, but in fact regards them as no more than prizes to be offered to the highest bidder (II, i, 341–345). Lucentio, Gremio, and Hortensio, who pretend to be steadfast suitors, all disguise themselves shamefully.
Virtually no one in the cast proceeds honestly except Petruchio, whose early protestations about Katherine’s beauty and good nature turn out to be uncannily accurate: Now, Kate, I am a husband for your turn, For by this light whereby I see thy beauty, Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well, Thou must be married to no man but me… (II, i, 272–275) Petruchio alone sees beneath her veneer, and he alone understands that her nature has been thwarted by the patriarchal society in which she has been raised. Ultimately, he is the one who “sees” the truth about her.
All these elements are suggested in the opening “Induction,” when the drunken tinker, Christopher Sly, is subject to a prank by the other patrons of the alehouse. When he is asleep, they dress him in fine clothes and insist that he is a lord. In the words of the Huntsman: “He is no less than what we say he is” (Induction, i, 71). Upon awakening, Sly quickly accepts his new role: Am I a lord, and have I such a lady? Or do I dream? Or have I dream’d till now? I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak; I smell sweet savors, and I feel soft things.
Upon my life, I am a lord indeed, And not a tinker, nor Christopher Sly. (Induction, ii, 68–73) His behavior suggests how the nature of a human personality is subject to external influence, how what we see and hear about ourselves substantially shapes us. In the context of the entire play, this revelation insinuates that for her whole life Katherine has been too powerful a personality for the taste of the male populace of Padua. Yet by boldly revealing her frustration at this predicament, she has invited others to conclude that she is merely a shrew.
As a result, she has isolated herself even further and simultaneously increased her misery. Once Petruchio enters, however, and alters the “appearance” of both the woman herself and the world as she sees it, her “reality” shines through. Struggle between the ClassesAnother theme important to the play is that of the struggle between the classes. The Induction creates a commentary on class rank. With too much time and money on his hands, the Lord highlights Shakespeare’s emphasis on the hierarchal class order as it is represented in The Taming of the Shrew. Disguise.
The theme of disguise is introduced in Act I, Scene I. By the end of the scene, we have a total of four people assuming disguise (Sly and Bartholomew in the Induction; Lucentio and Tranio in Act I, Scene 1). The disguises so far have been overt and sartorial in nature; people assume physical disguises in attempt to pass themselves off as someone else. Seeing so many people assuming identities reminds us that The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy of mistaken and disguised identity — a theme that will become increasingly more complex (yet increasingly subtle) as the play unfolds.
Behavior. After being rejoined by Baptista, Gremio, and Tranio, Petruchio shows us he is a quick and clever thinker. His highly comic lie about how, in private Kate “hung about [his] neck” but in public she’s agreed she’ll be “curst” brings the story’s theme of public behavior and private behavior to the forefront. Although in reality, he’s merely concocting a story of what has just happened, placing himself in a good light, there’s more truth in what he says than we may realize.
The distinction between what denotes proper public behavior and how that may or may not differ from private behavior will drive the play, especially Act V. Petruchio’s lie, too, makes it readily apparent he’s the only man in the story so far who has the wit to compete with Kate. The first and most obvious type of disguise employed in Shrew is the physical disguise. The notion of physical role playing is introduced at the very beginning of the play and continues throughout. A bit less obvious than the physical disguises are the psychological disguises in The Taming of the Shrew.
Both Kate and Petruchio assume psychological disguises. Kate becomes a shrew to compensate for the hurt she feels because of her father’s favoritism toward Bianca. In addition, she refuses to be saddled with an unworthy husband and so assumes the role of a shrew, insulating herself from the hurtful world around her, no matter how much she may secretly wish to join in the fun. Likewise, Petruchio assumes the role of shrew-tamer, exaggerating Kate’s bad behavior until she cannot help but see how infantile and childish her actions have been. “You are come to me in happy time, / . . . or I have some sport in hand / Wherein your cunning can assist me much” says the Lord to the players in the Induction of The Taming of the Shrew.
These seemingly simple words of welcome resonate, setting the context for the story about to unfold before us. We know that theatricality will be paramount to the story as the clever Induction pulls us into the drama through the story of Christopher Sly’s duping. The Induction focuses our attention on the idea of appearances being deceiving, as well as on the importance of acting and role playing, but then it stops abruptly once The Taming of the Shrew proper begins.
Why then take the time to introduce us to Sly and the merry jest of the Lord and his household? We can see the Induction as functioning in a number of ways (see the Induction commentary for more), but one of its most important purposes is to clue spectators into one of the play’s main themes: role playing. In Shrew, Shakespeare provides disguises of all shapes and forms, from obvious physical disguises to more subtle psychological ones, and in the confines of a play within a play allows us to see a world which, not unlike our own, is teeming with role players.
The first and most obvious type of disguise employed in Shrew is the physical disguise. The notion of physical role playing is introduced at the very beginning of the play and continues throughout. When Christopher Sly falls asleep, the Lord decides to play a trick on him by having him carried to his manor and dressed as a nobleman. Lucentio, in Act I, Scene 1, assumes the role of Cambio, Bianca’s tutor, while his servant, Tranio, disguises himself as Lucentio.
Later, at the end of Act II, Scene 1, Tranio/Lucentio realizes he will need to present Vincentio, Lucentio’s father, so he decides “suppos’d Lucentio/ Must get a father, call’d suppos’d Vincentio” (II. 1, 407-408), and in Act IV, Scene 2, he finds a Pedant to play the part (72-121). We are introduced to yet another masquerader in Act III when Hortensio disguises himself as Litio, Bianca’s music tutor. Aside from proper clothing, the only other thing these role players seem to need in order to ensure their masquerades is someone to corroborate their stories.
Certainly the ease with which these players enact their roles suggests that as spectators (both inside and outside the theater) we need to be aware that nothing is as it seems and that we are continually surrounded by people who may just be acting a part in order to obtain a desired outcome. A bit less obvious than the physical disguises are the psychological disguises in The Taming of the Shrew. Both Kate and Petruchio assume psychological disguises. Kate becomes a shrew to compensate for the hurt she feels because of her father’s favoritism toward Bianca.
In addition, she refuses to be saddled with an unworthy husband and so assumes the role of a shrew, insulating herself from the hurtful world around her, no matter how much she may secretly wish to join in the fun. Likewise, Petruchio assumes the role of shrew-tamer, exaggerating Kate’s bad behavior until she cannot help but see how infantile and childish her actions have been. Bianca, too, assumes a psychological disguise, changing her perspectives drastically once she is safely married. Although she appears initially as a demure and pure soul, by play’s end we see that is not the case.
As the play draws to a close, we see more and more of Bianca’s true disposition and learn that, ironically, it is Bianca, not Kate, who really is the shrew! In her case, her psychological disguise provided her the opportunity to appear better than she really was, suggesting again that we must be wary of the role playing going on around us. Physical disguises are fairly easy to detect and defuse, but psychological disguises are quite a different and more complicated matter. Psychological and physical disguises, though, aren’t the only ways to look at the role playing in The Taming of the Shrew.
The play is also, in many respects, self-reflective. It is metadramatic in the sense that it is self-reflexive, calling attention to the fact it is a play and the actors are all taking a part. Use of metadramatic devices is not unique to Shrew, however. Shakespeare often uses these devices in his plays to offer spectators inside jokes about the players, the drama, or the men playing the roles, as well as to draw attention to the artificiality of what we see before us and to urge us to recognize the elements of drama that permeate our daily lives.
For instance, in Shrew, the Induction provides a framework for the obvious performance we are about to witness. There must be no mistake about it: What we are about to see is not a mirror held up to life; rather, it is a fiction created by a troupe of actors (note, too, how calling attention to the play as a fiction rather than a slice-of-life lessens the seriousness of the play’s message of male authority).
Besides the Induction and the obvious physical disguises (costumes, if you will), we can also see Shakespeare calling attention to his play as just that, a play, through the characters of Kate and Petruchio. Rather than seeing them as the shrew and the tamer, we can also see them as analogous to an actor and a director. In very literal terms, the character of Kate is created by a young man playing a woman who creates a shrewish persona for herself so she can more easily deal with the world around her (largely through avoiding it).
When her disguise is no longer useful to her (or when the director, Petruchio, has finally convinced her to abandon the disguise) she assumes another role — this time the dutiful wife (thinking of Kate as an actress also helps with interpreting her speech in Act V, Scene 2). Petruchio is the director who orchestrates the production we see before us. He theorizes on how to get Kate to do what he wishes and begins planning his performance early. Although the staging of Petruchio’s performance starts at the wedding when he assumes the costume of a wild man, he stages his largest production when he vows to kill his wife with kindness.
In helping Katherine to a more mature state of being, Petruchio dictates all the particulars, just as a director dictates a production. He runs the show, so to speak, governing when his wife will enter and exit, when she will eat and sleep, when the action will advance and when it will repeat itself, and even attempts to oversee time itself. He very carefully sets up the elaborate production at hand, helping move his shrewish wife into desirable mate. Disguising and role playing of all sorts fill the scenes of The Taming of the Shrew.
In addition to advancing the general plot, the pervasive disguising and metadramatic nature of the play suggest that role players abound and that, as wary spectators, we must be like Petruchio, careful not to take things at face value because we are surrounded by duplicitousness. The minor theme of the play is appearance vs reality. Throughout the drama, things are never really as they seem. Katherine appears to be a real shrew, but it is all a cover-up for the hurt she feels. Bianca appears to be a self-sacrificing angel, but she is really a spoiled young lady who can quickly revert to shrewish behavior.
Baptista appears to the outside world as a wonderful father; in truth, he pampers Bianca, totally spoiling her, and treats Katherine badly, depriving her of the loving attention she needs and seeks. Petruchio appears to be a cruel and insensitive husband to Katherine; in reality, he cares enough for her to try and change her shrewish ways by mocking and exaggerating her own behavior. The play is also filled with people in disguise, appearing to be something they are not. Lucentio disguises himself as Cambio, the tutor, so he can get to know Bianca. Hortensio also disguises himself as Licio, another tutor to Bianca.
Tranio disguises himself as Lucentio in order to present his master as a suitor for Bianca. The Pedant pretends to be Vincentio, the father of Lucentio. Through these appearances, the plot becomes complicated and often humorous, but Shakespeare masterfully reveals the true identity of all characters in the fourth act of the play. The Taming of the Shrew is a performance that raises a number of issues concerning appearance versus reality. The assumption that many characters in the play are persuaded to be what they are not ignores the evident fact that each character chooses the role that they are to play.
The culturally constructed hierarchy of power causes the actors to perform certain roles to avoid the constricting norms in society and retain their identities. Despite the ease with which they mask their true selves, the characters exist as others to oppose the patriarchy. Shakespeare uses Sly, Katherine, Bianca, and Petruchio to reveal the power of the hierarchy as a farce that can be manipulated. Shakespeare uses the Induction to give the reader a notion as to what to expect, and introduce a number of crucial themes evident throughout the play.
The Induction serves as a mirror to the rest of the play, emphasizes the theme of mistaken identities, and constitutes the Taming of the Shrew as a play within a play. This aspect of the Induction gives rise to the importance of performance, which has a drastic effect on one’s interpretation of the play. The play is portrayed as the dream of a drunken tinker, and therefore is, in effect, a farce performed for Sly. Shakespeare also raises the issue of the hierarchy and its subsequent power in this scene. He uses Sly as an other, allowing him to enter the realm of aristocracy, and define it by contrast.
The hierarchy is mocked when the drunken tinker is disguised as a lord, and even more so when Sly attempts to exercise his patriarchal power. Although Sly is eventually persuaded to change his outward appearance to that of a lord, he retains his identity. Sly asserts his position and identity with certainty and pride, refusing to accept the evidence of the servants that he is a lord that has been suffering from amnesia, “I am Christophero Sly, call not me ‘honour’ nor ‘lordship'”. (Induction. 2. 6. ) When he finally decides to accept this new role, his behavior proves to be inconsistent with that of aristocracy.
He will not try sack, preferring the ale that is familiar to him, and reveals his poor taste upon the introduction to his supposed wife and his unrefined commentary on the play. Shakespeare implies that a character can perform any role, but one’s identity cannot be manipulated. Shakespeare attacks the image of power designated by the culturally constructed hierarchy. He questions the extent to which the hierarchy can be manipulated, and conveys the idea of power as reality or fantasy. Power lies beyond the hierarchy and assumes numerous roles, as do many integral characters in Taming of the Shrew.
Shakespeare introduces each character as a distinct personality. As the play unfolds, the reader is given subtle indications that the roles performed by these characters contrast their identities. Bianca is portrayed as a mild, submissive, obedient, and consequently desirable woman. She acts as a literary foil to Kate, who is depicted as an intolerable and violent shrew in constant opposition to everything around her. Luciento remarks, “But in the other’s silence, do I see maid’s mild behavior and sobriety” (I. 1. 71), further developing the sisters as opposing characters.
Petruchio is illustrated as a violent, witty, cynical man seeking to marry strictly for money. The characters are actors, and it is through their performance that they triumph. Each freely changes and chooses their roles in order to manipulate the patriarchy and gender biases in society, and u | Confusion between appearance and reality is a principal source of humor in The Taming of the Shrew. In the Induction, Sly is misled by carefully orchestrated appearances into believing that he is really a wealthy nobleman rather than a poor tinker.
The subplot likewise depends on the confusion of appearance and reality as various characters practice elaborate deceptions. Hortensio pretends to be the music teacher Litio. Lucentio poses as the schoolmaster Cambio. He and Bianca use Latin lessons as a cover for their courtship, and they deceive her father by eloping on the eve of her planned betrothal to another man. Lucentio’s servant, Tranio, pretends to be his master and persuades an elderly scholar to pose as his master’s father. In the main plot, the difficulty of distinguishing between appearance and reality is emphasized in various ways.
Petruchio’s servant Grumio often misinterprets his master’s instructions, with comic results. More crucially, Petruchio’s strategy in dealing with Katherine often involves replacing the most apparent of realities with something more to his own liking. ”Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain / She sings as sweetly as a nightingale,” Petruchio resolves before his first meeting with Katherine. Although she insists she wants nothing to do with him, he tells her father they have agreed to be married.
At his country house and on the road back to Padua he declares that it is morning when it is afternoon and that the moon is shining in broad daylight. When Katherine finally gives in to him, her surrender is signaled by her acceptance of his version of reality, in defiance of appearance: ”What you will have it nam’d, even that it is,/ And so it shall be so for Katherine. ”The various deceptions in the Induction and the subplot seem to poke fun at social distinctions, suggesting that the difference between a servant and a master, or between a poor Latin teacher and a wealthy merchant’s son, is merely a matter of appearance.
This idea is echoed in the main plot by Petruchio when he appears at his wedding in rags and says of Katherine, ”To me she’s married, not unto my clothes,” or when he tells Katherine not to worry about the way she is dressed because ”’tis the mind that makes the body rich. ”The theme of appearance and reality is also related to the play’s treatment of gender roles. Some commentators maintain that Petruchio transforms Katherine by refusing to accept her appearance of shrewishness as reality. Instead, he sets up a sort of alternate reality, insisting that she is really lovable and obedient until she accepts his view of her identity.
Other people argue, however, that the continual confusion of appearances and reality in the play undermines the concept of male dominance. They suggest that with so much deception going on in the play, the audience should be suspicious of taking Katherine’s transformation at face value. Perhaps she is merely pretending to give in to Petruchio. Or perhaps–as other critics have maintained–male supremacy itself is shown to be merely an illusion. Throughout history there has been a general understanding that appearances can be deceiving.
A person may go through life without anyone understanding the true reality of their character. William Shakespeare, one of the greatest writers of all time, understood the relationship between appearance and reality and often gave characters two sides to their personality. Transformation is one of the most important and pervasive themes in Taming of the Shrew. Closely related to the theme of “Art and Culture,” it can involve physical disguise, changes in attitude and behavior, psychological changes, and even linguistic mutation.
