Humour in Taming of the Shrew

A detailed Summary of Humour in Taming of the Shrew

In the Taming of the Shrew Shakespeare creates humour in at least three different ways. First, with the amusing induction which makes the audience laugh and anticipate more comedy. Second, the Taming of the Shrew is a comedy of characters where false realities are everywhere. Finally, it is also a comedy of intrigue, full or irony where characters are placed in amusing situations where things are not always what they seem.

The humour in the play is first presented to the audience by the induction in which Sly the drunken tinker is the chief person.

The elaborate joke played by the Lord on Sly is very amusing, Bartholomew pretending to be the wife is hilarious. Layers of illusions are added in this induction when players themselves are deceived by the Lord. The audience goes along with this impossible deception of Sly and a humourous ambience is achieved even before Act I has started.

The deception and false reality continue right through the play. One can see two aspects of this amusing presentation:

The comedy of characters where the behaviour and actions of some characters are truly humourous; sometimes because they are not what they pretend to be but other times because their behaviour or their persona is different f

The language especially in the scenes with Katherina and Petruchio adds another facet to the humourous impact of the play. In Act 2 Scene 1 they both try to outwit eachother. The humour here relies on intelligent insults on, play on words, on fast competitive dialogue, on sentences and phrases with double entendre one of which is crude and on amusing puns.

" She ate no meat today nor none shall she eat...and as with the meat some undeserved fault I'll find about the making of the bed... This is the way to kill a wife with kindness...he that knows better how to tame a shrew, not let him speak "(Act IV Scene I).

Biondello describes Petruchio's appearance to Baptista, and by doing so sets up the expectations of the audience. He says that Petruchio comes wearing: New hat and old jerkin; a pair of old breeches thrice turned; a pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled another laced; an old rusty sworde...with a broken hilt and chapeless; his horse hipped...with an old mothy saddle (Act III Scene II).

False realities are demonstrated for example by Petruchio's behaviour and attire in the scene of his wedding. This false reality (a real situation falsely presented in order to deliberately deceive) creates great comic scenes.

A comedy of intrigue is the other of the main ways used by Shakespeare to create humour. A good example of that 'things are not always as they seem' is the

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Approximate Word count = 945
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English