The Taming of the shrew is play penned by William Shakespeare. The setting of the play is set to be in a 16th century Italy mainly in the cities of Padua and Verona. Even though the play has many characters, there are two main character, Petruchio and Katharine. The Play has 5 acts and many scenes in between those acts and also includes a framing device i.e. an induction in the beginning. The ending of the play and objectification and treatment of the female character has drawn the ire and harsh criticism from various critics and commentators. Shakespeare has brought up societal issues like Materialism, Patriarchy, Gender relations and Female submissiveness. The play has been performed and adapted in many version, most relatable one for a common …show more content…
She is a blunt lady who doesn’t fear speaking and her mind and her behavior is considered quite repugnant. She knows her behavior puts at her odd with the family members and possible suitor but she is not bothered by that. But the bad treatment of Petruchio brings up the change in her behavior. Petruchio – The male protagonist and husband of Katharine. Petruchio moves from Verona with his servants after his father’s death. He has moved to Padua with a motive to enjoy his coming life. He takes up the challenge of taming the shrew i.e. Katharina though initially he agrees with her and tries to charm her. He doesn’t value Katharina as her Bride and only sees her a challenge to be conquered. He treats her cruelly and is shown in believing traditional orthodox patriarchal male dominant character. Bianca – She is the sister of Katharina and is complete anti-thesis of her sister. She is the one suitor’s line up for but due to the ridiculous condition put up by Baptista, they cannot. She is shown to be submissive and materialistic qualities of her which are despised by her sister …show more content…
We have seen Bianca saying she has been under the devilish spirit and she also has been called cursed by Granimo and various others which is the reason that her behavior is so rude and so un lady like but ultimately we see her conforming to the behavior expected from her where she obeys whatever Petruchio asks her to do. It can be argued that Petruchio performed an exorcism on her wife which relieved her of the bad spirits. Even though no religious element has been mentioned explicitly but “the play was written during a time of conflict over the legitimacy of exorcism. Because supposed miracles had such a powerful effect upon the minds of the people, the Church of England sought to discredit exorcisms performed by the Catholics and
She was an orphan, the niece of Leonato. Her most obvious objective is to stay a lonely spinster. She has known Benedick for years and because he wants to be a bachelor their hate for the opposite sex clashes- until they fall in love that is. She never realized that she could love anyone other than her self until she found someone that was the exact copy of her. Once she fell in love she couldn't be helped.
“The Taming Of The Shrew” by William Shakespeare is a work of satire created to criticize the misogynistic outlooks of the 16th century. With this play, Shakespeare is trying to say that the idea and role of women in his society is deeply flawed and should be fixed, as well as to make other social commentaries, such as on the treatment of servants. Through exaggeration and parody, Shakespeare makes society look silly.
Shakespeare, William. _The Taming of the Shrew_. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Ed. Dean Johnson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. 142-171.
In Shakespeare's comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare has a woman as one of the story's main characters. Katherine Minola (Kate) is off the wall, and kinda crazy. Because of her actions, the “male centered world” around her doesn't know what to do with her.
The Taming of the Shrew written by William Shakespeare depicts the common roles of men and women in the early seventeenth century. Shakespeare writes of Petruchio and Kate, a male and female who sharply oppose each other. Petruicho must "tame" his wife Kate without breaking her true inner spirit.
Taming of the Shrew: Male Domination. The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare, deals with marriage. The ideas explored are primarily shown through the characters of Petruchio and Katharina. We are introduced to the trials and tribulations which present themselves in their everyday lives.
The Taming of the Shrew is one of William Shakespeare’s most often adapted into screen plays. Written at the end of the 16th century and set in Padua, Italy, the play describes a bad tempered woman, Katherina Minola. Her aggressively assertive attitude causes many people to believe Katherina will never marry.
In The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare creates a strident language between Petruchio and Grumio that catalyzes the philosophical aims of the play by complementing Petruchio’s relationship with Kate, and also by allowing the interrogation of how individuals within the play are or are not tamed. This construction of language allows investigation into the play’s ideas about miscommunication and its consequences. The interactions between the two characters can also be used to analyze the theme of performance within the play. Further, Petruchio and Grumio’s contentious connection reveals what Shakespeare attempted to communicate about dominance and submission and how the two affect relationships.
She plays Columbina, the maid for Rosaura. Her objective is to get married after her mistress. Right from the beginning of the play, when she stands along with the cast’s shadow, her perfect body shape has made her stand out to me as the audience. She stands with her back straight up, tilts her head while showing her long leg. From her posture, I can already imagine her as a sassy, bold and confident character. She is good at kinesthetic response. For example, when she is sweeping the props out of the way for the next scene. She still stays in her character, acts sassily and interacts with the audiences. Interestingly, she uses her repetition to increase her tempo in the first scene of the play. When the Professor avoid her when she mentions about marriage, she threatens to reveal the truth of his daughter’s identity by continuously muttering. Even though she does not have much scenes in the play, she has perfectly embodied her character throughout. She grasps the audience’s attention whenever she goes out on the stage, even as the minor role of the scene.
"Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them." -Oscar Wilde. This quote embodies the fight over gender roles and the views of women in society. Taming of the Shrew deals with Kate and Bianca, two sisters who are at the time to he married off. However, suitors who seek Bianca as a wife have to wait for her sister to be married first. Kate is seen as a shrew because she is strong willed and unlike most women of the time. In his 1603 play The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare enforces traditional gender roles and demonstrates how little say women had in society. He accomplishes this through the strong personality of Kate, Baptista 's attitude towards his daughters as transactions, and
Shakespeare often uses satire to showcase the flaws of human nature. In the play, The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare teaches us that people tend to put unrealistic standards on women. Women were treated very poorly at the time. The play is mainly about a man named Petruchio who agrees to marry Katherine for money. Throughout the play, Petruchio tames Katherine. He tries many different methods in attempt to tame her. He wants Katherine to be the ideal wife and behave the way he wants her to therefore he will have control over her. He starts off by almost dehumanizing her by starving her, depriving her of sleep, and forcing her to wear old rags. Petruchio tries to manipulate her in many other ways. He attempts to have Katherine agree with him
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare is a play that is ahead of its time in its views toward gender roles within society. Katherine is a woman who is intelligent, and is not afraid to assert her views on any given situation. She is paired with another obstinate character in Pertuchio. The marriage formed between the two is a match made in heaven for two reasons. First, because Katherine is strong enough to assert her views, and more importantly, she realizes when she should assert them.
Lucentio is the man in The Taming of the Shrew that eventually achieves his goal of having Bianca fall in love with him. This was quite the competition considering the magnitude of feats he had to achieve in order to reach his goals. Not only was there two other men going after the woman that he fell in love with, Hortensio and Gremio, and achieved what seemed like the impossible and married Bianca. Lucentio is a young man coming from the city of Pisa, who eventually arrives in Padua, the location of Bianca. Lucentio eventually takes the role of Cambio, which is a tutor for Bianca’s music, and had his servant Tranio take his place. Throughout the majority of the play, he is disguised as Cambio, but eventually emerges as his real self to Bianca’s parents once he got what he so desperately desired.
In The Taming of the Shrew, the concept of love is a means of emotional manipulation, and manipulation is nothing more than a means of control between men and women. William Shakespeare critiques the patriarchal social structure by ironically employing the manipulative stance Petruchio takes towards winning Katherine as his wife by charming her with words and manipulating her psychologically, and then taming her after their marriage through legal, physical, financial, and psychological control and manipulation. Though Petruchio may think he yields power over his wife, Katherine uses obedience as a tool of manipulation and has the control of the household, as can be seen by her ironic speech at the end of the play, where she claims women must serve their men. Shakespeare uses the irony of a man using manipulation as a tool for control to magnify the significance of the power women yield through manipulation, thus proving that men and women engage in a power-shifting struggle.
A Shakespearean scholar expanded on this, “The play enacts the defeat of the threat of a woman’s revolt; it does so in a comic form – thus so offers the audience the chance to revel in and reinforce their misogyny while at the same time feeling good” (Gay). The Taming of the Shrew at many points is just praising the men in the novel despite their behavior and putting down the women for being anything but perfect. The novel makes the actions happening comedic and the reader does not get upset at the things happening, but in reading further into it and comparing in to modern day, it is not hard to see the plain and simple abuse. Although gender roles are still prominent into today’s society they are toned back. In contemporary version of The