Shakespear, Taming of the Shrew

A detailed Summary of Shakespear, Taming of the Shrew

Given a taste of your own medicine takes on a whole new meaning as Katherine finds herself having to speak to Bianca and the widow about how to treat their husbands. How very ironic it is that Katherine must now explain to the two women how to be an "ideal" wife in the eyes of their lordly husbands. Given her shrewish background, Bianca and the widow seem taken aback as they watch and listen to Katherine lecture them on being soft-spoken, humble and obedient to their lords.

Not only do we have Bianca and the widow present, but we also have Petruccio, Lucentio, Hortensio and Baptista. It is as if Katherine is going to publicly announce what she has learned about being a proper wife. Of all the members of her audience, Petruccio is the only one who knows for sure that she will actually go through with the speech. Bianca and the widow are among the first to doubt Petruccio's insistence that his wife will obey his command. Her ultimate goal is to "educate" the women on how to be proper wives and servants to their husbands and lords and should feel privileged to do so. It is unclear to me whether her speech takes on the tone of a teacher educating her young pupils or as a motherly figure scolding her mischievous child. Regar

It should not, however, take much to convince a buffoon like Petruccio. Seemingly as a safety precaution, Katherine embellishes her speech by using many metaphors to describe her opinions on men and women, perhaps the icing on the cake. To the ordinary reader, such embellishments should send up a caution flag indicating that maybe the speaker is not quite as sincere as we should be led to believe. Maybe Katherine is only saying what she knows Petruccio wants to hear. As if to appease him to keep him calm and quiet so she may regain some sanity. She refers to men as

The entire tone of Katherine's speech to Bianca and the widow suggests that Kate feels these two should already know what she has been explaining to them and that they both should be on call for their husbands needs at all hours. She further emphasizes this by admitting that she used to be as strong-minded as the two women, but she now realizes what a mistake was and now understands where she went wrong with herself. Is Katherine really a tamed shrew? Shakespeare makes it very difficult for the novice play reader to figure out. However, knowing how strong willed Kate was at the beginning one finds it difficult to believe that she was changed in a relatively short period of time by one man. It wouldn't have taken much to get a buffoon like Petruccio to believe every word of her story. Just to make sure there are no doubts in his mind about her devotion to him she chooses to over-emphasize her speech so that there can be no question that Petruccio believes every word that comes out of her mouth. As I said before, Katherine is in love with the idea of having someon

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Approximate Word count = 1112
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English