Taming of the Shrew

1
Taming of the Shrew

• Lecture 4
• A Close Analysis of
• Act 2, Scene 1

2
Agenda

• Plot Overview Act 2 Scene 1
• Issues, Concerns Concepts
• Structure of Act 2
• Two Sisters character development
• The Broken Lute function of Hortensios
  commentary
• Baptista Daughters family dynamics
• The Marriage Market commodification of women
• Verbal Duel

3
Act 2 Scene 1 Plot Overview

• - Bianca Katherina Physical Tussle
• - Enter Baptista Father-Daughter relationship,
  Family dynamics
• - Exit Bianca Katherina
• - Baptista Gremio Petruchio Tranio
  Biondello
• - Hortensio enters with lute over his head
• - Exit all but Petruchio
• - Enter Katherina
• - Katherina Petruchio verbal duel
• - Enter Baptista deal is sealed
• - Enter Gremio, Tranio wagering for Bianca
• - Exit all but Tranio who closes the Act

4
Issues, Concepts Concerns

• - Only Act in the play that has only one scene
• - Only Act that opens with two female characters
  Bianca and Katherina
• - Characterisation of Bianca and Katherina
  function as foils for each other
• - Silence of Bianca
• Expected behaviour of women, of daughters
• - Ambiguous who wields more power Bianca or
  Katherina

5
Issues, Concepts Concerns

• Baptistas father-daughter relationship and his
  role and function as the patriarchal head of the
  family
• - Family relationships and power dynamics
• - Marriage as a Market Commodification of
  womanhood and wifehood
• - Characterization of Petruchio
• Power dynamics re- presentation of
  Petruchio-Katherina relationship
• Naming and Identity
• Battle of the Sexes motif
• 
  
• In your tutorials, youll need to
• Analyze dramatic devices employed to raise all of
  the above concerns

6
Structure of Act 2

• An Act that comprises a single scene a very
  lengthy scene with intense dramatic action and
  multiple entrances and exits.
• Length is appropriate for comedy, no change in
  setting necessitates action being enclosed in a
  single scene.
• Staging of one long act with no change of scene
  setting permits action to take place rapidly
  this quick pace reflects the flimflam style
  behind Petrchuos courtship of Kate

7
Structure of Act 2

• Only Act that opens with two female characters
  Bianca and Katherina
• Act opens with a little vignette between
  Katherina Bianca womens argument transfers
  the action from a public to domestic space
• Stark contrast between preceding scene and this
  scene where women are now at the forefront,
  caught in an argument, reinforcing visually how
  the male characters value each sister as women
  and potential wives

8
Structure of Act 2

• Noting also the manner in which this scene
  closes
• Tranios use of soliloquy (instead of dialogue)
  to work through the problem of finding a father
  (a supposd Vincentio) to back up the promises
  he has made
• Dramatic Effect / Theatrical Effect?
• Enhances an audiences sense of connectedness to
  Tranio
• His solution is framed in terms of a paradox
• Instead of a father begetting a son, here, the
  son must beget the father this implied
  possibility of increased farcial confusion, thus
  adding to this scenes comical effects in
  performance.

9
Two Sisters

• Opening scene of Act 2 develops the personalities
  of the two sisters in greater depth
• Note Stage directions
• Padua Baptistas house. Enter Katherina and
  Bianca with her
  hands tied
• Katherina has bound Biancas hands and is
  questioning her sister forcibly
• Stage directions are also implicitly built into
  the dialogue Biancas repeated request
  to Katherina to unbind/untie my hands

10
Two Sisters

• A closer reading / viewing reveals at least two
  matters
• 1. Bianca is aware she possesses something that
  Katherina does not have
• 2. Bianca is also of the impression that
  Katherina has reason to envy her
• Power of the younger sister to provide what she
  presumes the other lacks therefore reverses the
  power dynamics of their relationship
• Katherina is frustrated by Biancas silence
  therein lies the irony for it is Bianca who
  disobeys her husband at the end of the play

11
The Broken Lute

• Hortensios spirited account of Katherinas music
  lesson
• The advantage of relating this encounter through
  the distancing strategy of a storytelling device
  who walks in with a lute over his head rather
  than by presenting it first hand on stage is that
  it
• 1. Complicates the layers of perspective
• 2. Allows a theater audience to simultaneously
  register the slapstick action of Kate smashing
  the lute over her tutors head
• 3. Replicates visually the image summoned up by
  his words
• 4. Delays dramatically Petruchios first
  introduction to Katherina, making audience
  anticipate their impending meeting even more
  eagerly (effect)

12
Baptista Daughters

• Baptista enters when Katherina is questioning
  Bianca His pity for his youngest daughter moves
  him to command Katherina to move away
• Note his dialogue and his blunt estimation of
  Katherina For shame, thou
  hiding of a devilish spirit 2.1.26
• Family dynamics
• Could Baptistas partiality and favouritsm,
  parental cruelty or neglect be the cause of
  Katherinas disruptive and attention seeking
  behaviour?

13
Baptista Daughters

• One may infer that Katherinas non-conformist
  nature has made her father favour Bianca over
  Katherina
• Might not this then be the basis for Petruchios
  tough stance and strategic approach to shrew
  taming, yet suitably distanced from physical and
  ideological brutality?
• Thus ironically presenting Katherina with the
  means by which she is empowered to escape both
  her family and the self-destructive defensive
  mechanisms on which she has learned to depend?

14
The Marriage Market

• In this Act, there is repeated reference to
  marriage as a market, where goods are sold and
  bought
• Petruchio brushes aside the niceties of courtship
  to focus on money and finances remain at the
  heart of marriage negotiations
  Signor Baptista, my business asketh haste,/ And
  everyday I cannot come to woo. 2.1.113
• Baptista After my death, the one half of my
  lands,/ And in possession twenty thousand
  crowns. 2.1.120.
• 20,000 crowns 500 pounds. (best alebrewers and
  cooks earned 6 pounds a year)

15
The Marriage Market

• Baptista Faith, gentlemen, now I play a
  merchants part,/ And venture madly on a deperate
  mart. 2.1.318. He uses a mercantile metaphor to
  draw out his own financial interest in Biancas
  marriage, as a merchant undertaking a high-risk
  enterprise .
• Tranio responds in a business-like manner and it
  is implicit in his comment that women as
  commodities have a sell-by date and Baptista
  might as well risk a bad venture. Twas a
  commodity lay fretting by you/ Twill bring you
  gain, or perish on the seas. 2.1.320. There is a
  direct reference to women as commodities for sale.

16
The Marriage Market

• Is there a contrast between how the marriages
  between the two sisters are negotiated?
• A stark contrast
• Katherinas marriage arrangements are sharply
  contrasted by the way Biancas marriage is
  negotiated. The suitors are to pay or to declare
  their wealth before they can marry Bianca.
• Why? Perhaps Bianca, because her ideal femininity
  is dowry enough. And that a competitive number of
  suitors has rendered her dowry non-negotiable

17
The Marriage Market

• Dramatic Effect of Tranio negotiating for the
  hand of Bianca on behalf of Lucentio?
• Distances the latter from business aspects of
  marriage
• And this sustains the illusion that Bianca and
  suitor marry for romantic love instead of
  Petruchios main interest money

18
The Marriage Market

• Petruchio cuts short his verbal sporting match
  when he announces that whether Katherina likes it
  or not, her father has already agreed to their
  marriage.
• Polemic tracts in late 16th C emphasize the
  importance of compatibility and even love between
  husband and wife, but
• children of noble families remained restricted in
  their choices of spouses women having less
  choice naturally.
• Still, here it is evident that Petruchio wields
  linguistic power and decides when their verbal
  tennis match ceases

19
Good morrow, Kate, for thats your name, I
hear,

• Verbal Duel
• Begins

20
Verbal Duel

• Good morrow, Kate, for thats your name, I
  hear, 2.1.181 Petruchio assumes a familiarity
  that Katherina immediately challenges. We hear
  the name Kate, conventionally only used within a
  family context (Bianca and Baptista).
• Here, Petruchio uses repetition, alliteration,
  amplification and heavy metrical emphasis.
• And also through comical irony to elevate the
  diminutive form of her name to the stature of a
  title (Kate of Kate Hall)

21
Verbal Duel

• Word-play (Punning / Paronomasia) used as both
  noun (a choice delicacy), and as an adjective
  (both valuable and overly scrupulous)
  super-dainty Kate / For dainties are all
  Kates
• Effect?
• Through this, Petruchio at once praises her worth
  and ridicules her imperious behaviour
• Early clash about names and naming also
  foreshadows Sun-Moon Scene (4.5) and the unique
  way Petruchio displays his absolute linguistic
  power within their marriage
• The concept of naming and identity figures
  largely in these lines
• Also, animal imagery abound in their verbal battle

22
Verbal Duel

• This is essentially an extended dialogue sequence
  of stichomythia (a rapid and highly stylized
  verbal exchange in which a one- or two-line even
  half-line speech from one character is balanced
  and so exactly countered by a riposte from his or
  her opponent)
• Dramatic Effect?
• This creates a dramatic effect of emotional
  intensity and intimacy at the very moment the
  characters are engaged in a combat of words

23
Verbal Duel

• Audience is able to empathize with Katherinas
  growing frustration and exasperation with
  Petruchios treatment of her during their
  marriage
• Competitive style of dialogue reproduces the
  physicality and muscular energy of improvised
  performance as spectators mark how each rejoinder
  becomes in turn the raw material out of which the
  next rejoinder is constructed
• Excitement of this style of drama in performance
  results from virtuoso display of fast-paced
  wordplay and bawdy innuendo AND also from an
  anticipation that at some point this repartee
  will collapse

24
Verbal DuelPetruchios Weapon

• Language as a weapon in this early tussle for
  power to disempower Katherina used as a weapon
  to break down normal communication
• Petruchio disempowers her ability to communicate
  by taking what she says that is hostile in
  contrary sense.
• Tactic is foreshadowed by his paradoxical
  description of her as bashful and mild
  1.160-2
• Language transformed into a weapon of anger and
  conflict disempowering from the outset her
  ability to communicate at all.
• Everything she says that is hostile in tone or
  context, he will strategically take it in its
  contrary sense.

25
A closer look...

• Repartee does break down at least at two points
• First, when Katherina is shocked into silence
  with Petruchios oral sex pun on tale/tail. She
  then resorts to physical violence.
• Note the stage direction lt She strikes him gt,
  Petruchio then threatens to cuff her and this
  once again sparks off the verbal jousting,
  revealing her continued hostility and defiance,
  although she recognizes that in hitting
  Petruchio, she has overstepped the rules of the
  game and is indeed in potential physical danger.
• Second time repartee breaks down is when it is
  implicit in Katherinas lines that she is
  struggling in Petruchios arms I chafe you if I
  tarry. Let me go. 2.1.243

26
Questions

• Why does Katherina not object violently to their
  marriage?
• Between Bianca and Katherina, who appears to
  possess a more shrewish nature in this Act?
• Why is this Act critically significant to your
  understanding of the play in its entirety?

27
Let the Battle of the Sexes Begin!

• KATHERINA

• PETRUCHIO