Katherine’s final monologue in The Taming of the Shrew invites many thought-provoking interpretations. One of the most interesting versions that I have seen is where Kate flirtatiously whispers the monologue into Petruchio’s ear as a sort of foreplay and during the monologue the sexual tension clearly builds. This reading emphasizes their attraction and posits that Kate and Petruchio are in love and both stuck in the patriarchy together. However, this version, along with many, I found unsatisfactory.
John Fletcher too must have been unsatisfied with the ending of the play because he wrote a revisionist play inspired by it. He imagines the rest of Kate and Petruchio’s marriage as troubled and violent. In the opening of Fletcher’s play, The Women’s Prize or The Tamer Tamed, Moroso alludes to the past marriage of Petruchio and Katherine,
“What though his other wife,
Out of her most abundant stubbornness
Out of her daily hue and cries upon him –
For sure she was a rebel- turned his temper
And forced him blow as high as she? Dost follow
He must retain that long-sing buried Tempest
To this soft maid?” (1.1.17-22)
Analyzing the final monologue of Kate through Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed offers up a reading that claims Katherine was not in fact “tamed” and supposes an unhappy marriage following the monologue. In Shakespeare’s monologue, Kate claims, “I am ashamed that women are so simple/To offer war where they should kneel for peace.” Fletcher’s descriptions of Kate as “stubborn” and a “rebel” reinforce the characterization of her as shrewish and angry, contrary to ideas found in the monologue. Furthermore, Kate is metaphorically described as a “Tempest” evoking a violent characterization of her, not quite “knee[ling] for peace.” In addition, Moroso posits that the violence continued in their marriage as Petruchio used physical violence to control Kate’s “rebellion.” Alas, Fletcher believes that the shrew was not in fact tamed. Perhaps he read Kate’s monologue in a dejected tone where Kate articulates the horrific prison of wifehood she finds herself in.
Very good Delaney–you make the excellent point that Fletcher is offering his own nearly contemporary reading of the TS in which Kate is NOT tamed–but dies young during the marriage. We will see whether you are satisfied with his revision!
I was pretty surprised by the last scene of ‘Taming of the Shrew’ — mostly by Katherine’s drastic transformation of independent and opinionated woman to obedient wife. Her monologue in the second scene of the fifth act demonstrates this sudden shift clearly. I think it’s important to look at Act V Scene II lines 161 – 172. This begins with “But love, fair looks, and true obedience” and ends with “When they are bound to serve, love, and obey”. Katherine’s statement that women ‘as the subject’ owe their husbands ‘true obedience’ exemplifies the stunning transformation that she has made for Petruchio. Her frustration with the fact that ‘women are so simple’ re-defines her own vision of gender — when she was in her ‘shrewish’ state, the reader saw her as a stubborn figure unwilling to comply to the advances of Petruchio. Now, after being pushed into a marriage with him, it seems that Katherine has no choice but to be a champion of the idea that women are men’s subjects and must do as their male counterparts desire.
In the article “Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds”, Linda Goose discusses the play as well as the controversy behind the way that Katherine is depicted. She writes “…’The Taming of the Shrew’ must be accountable for the history to which its title alludes. However shrewish it may seem to assert the intertextuality that binds the obscured records of a painful women’s history into a comedy that celebrates love and marriage, that history has paid for the right to speak itself, whatever the resultant incongruities” (page 181). I find this statement interesting — from our class discussions, I understand that this play has been controversial particularly due to its depiction of Katherine as an untamable woman who is forced into a marriage that she wants no part of. However, Goose has made me wonder if depictions like these are necessary for viewers of later generations to see so they can be aware of the imbalance of gender power that existed during earlier times. Additionally, I wonder if it’s possible to say that Katherine’s last speech could be the product of brainwashing from Petruchio and Baptista.
great questions–I do think that historicizing the representation in Shrew is important, as Boose says, and you seem to agree–because it is too easy otherwise to obscure the implicit violence of these scenes.
I want to focus on the description of the upside down land in Joseph Hall’s “Discovery of a New World” that Lynda Boose describes. In this land of opposites, women control the public sphere, manage affairs of state and war, and wear beards and trousers, while men are at home weaving and dressed in petticoats. First off, I was struck by this as an unintentional, almost-feminist role reversal — not unlike when somebody makes an internet comment that they believe is ridiculous but instead proves the opposite (I remember seeing this a lot during the Kavanaugh hearings — “what?? So we’re just supposed to believe any woman that comes forward now??” Exactly.) It’s much the same with this satire piece — it’s only ridiculous if you believe that gender differentiation is a natural state. Logically there is no reason for women to stay home instead of men. To a modern eye, invoking the opposite arrangement does not produce the feeling of absurdity that Hall no doubt intended.
More interesting still was the female topography of the landscape in Hall’s satirized world. As Boose writes, “In the region of Linguadocia (tongue), the society has ingeniously devised a means to control the “enormous river” called “Sialon” (saliva) that flows through the city of “Labriana” (lips)” (202). This creates the very earth (including, in this case, society and the public sphere) as an embodied female space. This reminded me of the female geographical analysis that I applied to William Faulkner’s work in Prof. Millier’s class last year. I found that in Faulker’s books (and in a lot of canonical literature written by men) most constructed social places do not have space within them for female pleasure, sexuality, or autonomy. In Faulkner, this manifests as women repeatedly traveling outside to have sex. In shrew taming narratives from the 16th century, this same notion manifests as women being beaten into submissions in their husband’s homes until they fill their prescribed roles. How interesting, then, that in this world where women hold all the social power, the very landscape has taken on a female form. And not only a female form but a grotesque female form with excess saliva running like a river through the mouth, almost like a watery embodiment of continuous, natural speech.
excellent observations–I especially like your analysis of the feminization of landscape in a context in which women are brutally domesticated and forced into abject roles. I wonder how you read the reported description of the only real outside space we hear about in TS–the space between Baptista’s house and Petrucchio’s?
Although it is impossible to accuse Shakespeare of realism, I found myself struck by how unrealistic Katherine’s turn-around from obstinate shrew to cowed wife is. It is not a gradual process; Katherine defies Petruchio up until a very specific point in the text. At that exact moment, she begins to agree with everything he says. This is in Act 4, Scene 5, after Petruchio threatens to go back to his country home because Katherine will not say the sun is the moon. Hortensio says to Katherine, “Say as he says, or we will never go.” Katherine then says:
“Forward, I pray, since we have come so far.
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please.
And if you please to call it a rush candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.” (4.5.14-17)
Everything about this scene is odd to me. It is not just the suddenness of the transformation that confuses me but also Hortensio’s role in it. Why is it that Katherine’s reversal comes only after his remark? She has already been starved, intimidated, and humiliated; she must know that false submission is the only way to appease him. Yet Hortensio’s remark is included, as if this is what changes her mind.
In the narrative sense, I wonder if this is a solidification of patriarchal power that signals how to Katherine how defeated she is. This half-understanding remark from Hortensio (he uses “we” as if he, too, is powerless) is another authority figure reifying her husband’s power in the face of her defiance. No matter how much she argues with him, if she does not bow to him, they “will never go.” The transitional nature of their journey may also represent a sort of transitional space in which Kate can shift identities.
I also come back to Judith Butler’s article on gender performativity. Butler states, “The body is not passively scripted with cultural codes, as if it were a lifeless recipient of wholly pre-given cultural relations” (277). She is speaking about scripting by societal forces, but the very nature of Petruchio’s training matches this nonconsensual outside writing on the gendered body; Kate’s input is entirely unnecessary, as he responds as if she said the opposite. In this way, Petruchio is enacting the post-structuralist theory of imposed gender upon the receiving body.
But according to gender performativity, Kate, too, must perform her role, and in adding Hortensio’s advice, the play strips Katherine’s agency almost entirely. Hortensio is another cultural actor, feeding Katherine her line and reminding her the consequences of not playing her assigned role. This reminder then may bring about her transformation by outlining the performance she has been neglecting as well as the consequences of this neglect. By the time we reach Katherine’s “And you too can be a broken woman!” speech in the final act, maybe she truly is so gaslit as to believe Petruchio’s every word, but here she is not responding so much to Petruchio’s pressure as to the reality that there will be consequences for not playing her role.
very interesting, Rachel–you’ve landed on the turning point in the play, and also asked a shrewd question about Hortensio’s role–he can often seem a dispensable comic role with no structural importance, but your reading suggests otherwise. Does he represent the power of what Butler would see as the social script?
September 26, 2019 at 8:51 am
Katherine’s final monologue in The Taming of the Shrew invites many thought-provoking interpretations. One of the most interesting versions that I have seen is where Kate flirtatiously whispers the monologue into Petruchio’s ear as a sort of foreplay and during the monologue the sexual tension clearly builds. This reading emphasizes their attraction and posits that Kate and Petruchio are in love and both stuck in the patriarchy together. However, this version, along with many, I found unsatisfactory.
John Fletcher too must have been unsatisfied with the ending of the play because he wrote a revisionist play inspired by it. He imagines the rest of Kate and Petruchio’s marriage as troubled and violent. In the opening of Fletcher’s play, The Women’s Prize or The Tamer Tamed, Moroso alludes to the past marriage of Petruchio and Katherine,
“What though his other wife,
Out of her most abundant stubbornness
Out of her daily hue and cries upon him –
For sure she was a rebel- turned his temper
And forced him blow as high as she? Dost follow
He must retain that long-sing buried Tempest
To this soft maid?” (1.1.17-22)
Analyzing the final monologue of Kate through Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed offers up a reading that claims Katherine was not in fact “tamed” and supposes an unhappy marriage following the monologue. In Shakespeare’s monologue, Kate claims, “I am ashamed that women are so simple/To offer war where they should kneel for peace.” Fletcher’s descriptions of Kate as “stubborn” and a “rebel” reinforce the characterization of her as shrewish and angry, contrary to ideas found in the monologue. Furthermore, Kate is metaphorically described as a “Tempest” evoking a violent characterization of her, not quite “knee[ling] for peace.” In addition, Moroso posits that the violence continued in their marriage as Petruchio used physical violence to control Kate’s “rebellion.” Alas, Fletcher believes that the shrew was not in fact tamed. Perhaps he read Kate’s monologue in a dejected tone where Kate articulates the horrific prison of wifehood she finds herself in.
September 26, 2019 at 10:32 am
Very good Delaney–you make the excellent point that Fletcher is offering his own nearly contemporary reading of the TS in which Kate is NOT tamed–but dies young during the marriage. We will see whether you are satisfied with his revision!
September 24, 2019 at 8:56 am
I was pretty surprised by the last scene of ‘Taming of the Shrew’ — mostly by Katherine’s drastic transformation of independent and opinionated woman to obedient wife. Her monologue in the second scene of the fifth act demonstrates this sudden shift clearly. I think it’s important to look at Act V Scene II lines 161 – 172. This begins with “But love, fair looks, and true obedience” and ends with “When they are bound to serve, love, and obey”. Katherine’s statement that women ‘as the subject’ owe their husbands ‘true obedience’ exemplifies the stunning transformation that she has made for Petruchio. Her frustration with the fact that ‘women are so simple’ re-defines her own vision of gender — when she was in her ‘shrewish’ state, the reader saw her as a stubborn figure unwilling to comply to the advances of Petruchio. Now, after being pushed into a marriage with him, it seems that Katherine has no choice but to be a champion of the idea that women are men’s subjects and must do as their male counterparts desire.
In the article “Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds”, Linda Goose discusses the play as well as the controversy behind the way that Katherine is depicted. She writes “…’The Taming of the Shrew’ must be accountable for the history to which its title alludes. However shrewish it may seem to assert the intertextuality that binds the obscured records of a painful women’s history into a comedy that celebrates love and marriage, that history has paid for the right to speak itself, whatever the resultant incongruities” (page 181). I find this statement interesting — from our class discussions, I understand that this play has been controversial particularly due to its depiction of Katherine as an untamable woman who is forced into a marriage that she wants no part of. However, Goose has made me wonder if depictions like these are necessary for viewers of later generations to see so they can be aware of the imbalance of gender power that existed during earlier times. Additionally, I wonder if it’s possible to say that Katherine’s last speech could be the product of brainwashing from Petruchio and Baptista.
September 24, 2019 at 10:32 am
great questions–I do think that historicizing the representation in Shrew is important, as Boose says, and you seem to agree–because it is too easy otherwise to obscure the implicit violence of these scenes.
September 23, 2019 at 11:29 pm
I want to focus on the description of the upside down land in Joseph Hall’s “Discovery of a New World” that Lynda Boose describes. In this land of opposites, women control the public sphere, manage affairs of state and war, and wear beards and trousers, while men are at home weaving and dressed in petticoats. First off, I was struck by this as an unintentional, almost-feminist role reversal — not unlike when somebody makes an internet comment that they believe is ridiculous but instead proves the opposite (I remember seeing this a lot during the Kavanaugh hearings — “what?? So we’re just supposed to believe any woman that comes forward now??” Exactly.) It’s much the same with this satire piece — it’s only ridiculous if you believe that gender differentiation is a natural state. Logically there is no reason for women to stay home instead of men. To a modern eye, invoking the opposite arrangement does not produce the feeling of absurdity that Hall no doubt intended.
More interesting still was the female topography of the landscape in Hall’s satirized world. As Boose writes, “In the region of Linguadocia (tongue), the society has ingeniously devised a means to control the “enormous river” called “Sialon” (saliva) that flows through the city of “Labriana” (lips)” (202). This creates the very earth (including, in this case, society and the public sphere) as an embodied female space. This reminded me of the female geographical analysis that I applied to William Faulkner’s work in Prof. Millier’s class last year. I found that in Faulker’s books (and in a lot of canonical literature written by men) most constructed social places do not have space within them for female pleasure, sexuality, or autonomy. In Faulkner, this manifests as women repeatedly traveling outside to have sex. In shrew taming narratives from the 16th century, this same notion manifests as women being beaten into submissions in their husband’s homes until they fill their prescribed roles. How interesting, then, that in this world where women hold all the social power, the very landscape has taken on a female form. And not only a female form but a grotesque female form with excess saliva running like a river through the mouth, almost like a watery embodiment of continuous, natural speech.
September 24, 2019 at 10:34 am
excellent observations–I especially like your analysis of the feminization of landscape in a context in which women are brutally domesticated and forced into abject roles. I wonder how you read the reported description of the only real outside space we hear about in TS–the space between Baptista’s house and Petrucchio’s?
September 23, 2019 at 10:29 pm
Although it is impossible to accuse Shakespeare of realism, I found myself struck by how unrealistic Katherine’s turn-around from obstinate shrew to cowed wife is. It is not a gradual process; Katherine defies Petruchio up until a very specific point in the text. At that exact moment, she begins to agree with everything he says. This is in Act 4, Scene 5, after Petruchio threatens to go back to his country home because Katherine will not say the sun is the moon. Hortensio says to Katherine, “Say as he says, or we will never go.” Katherine then says:
“Forward, I pray, since we have come so far.
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please.
And if you please to call it a rush candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.” (4.5.14-17)
Everything about this scene is odd to me. It is not just the suddenness of the transformation that confuses me but also Hortensio’s role in it. Why is it that Katherine’s reversal comes only after his remark? She has already been starved, intimidated, and humiliated; she must know that false submission is the only way to appease him. Yet Hortensio’s remark is included, as if this is what changes her mind.
In the narrative sense, I wonder if this is a solidification of patriarchal power that signals how to Katherine how defeated she is. This half-understanding remark from Hortensio (he uses “we” as if he, too, is powerless) is another authority figure reifying her husband’s power in the face of her defiance. No matter how much she argues with him, if she does not bow to him, they “will never go.” The transitional nature of their journey may also represent a sort of transitional space in which Kate can shift identities.
I also come back to Judith Butler’s article on gender performativity. Butler states, “The body is not passively scripted with cultural codes, as if it were a lifeless recipient of wholly pre-given cultural relations” (277). She is speaking about scripting by societal forces, but the very nature of Petruchio’s training matches this nonconsensual outside writing on the gendered body; Kate’s input is entirely unnecessary, as he responds as if she said the opposite. In this way, Petruchio is enacting the post-structuralist theory of imposed gender upon the receiving body.
But according to gender performativity, Kate, too, must perform her role, and in adding Hortensio’s advice, the play strips Katherine’s agency almost entirely. Hortensio is another cultural actor, feeding Katherine her line and reminding her the consequences of not playing her assigned role. This reminder then may bring about her transformation by outlining the performance she has been neglecting as well as the consequences of this neglect. By the time we reach Katherine’s “And you too can be a broken woman!” speech in the final act, maybe she truly is so gaslit as to believe Petruchio’s every word, but here she is not responding so much to Petruchio’s pressure as to the reality that there will be consequences for not playing her role.
September 24, 2019 at 10:36 am
very interesting, Rachel–you’ve landed on the turning point in the play, and also asked a shrewd question about Hortensio’s role–he can often seem a dispensable comic role with no structural importance, but your reading suggests otherwise. Does he represent the power of what Butler would see as the social script?