The Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew
The play opens with a prank: a drunken tinker is convinced he is a lord, and a play is staged for his entertainment. That play-within-a-play is the story of Petruchio and Katherina. She is the headstrong, quick-tempered elder daughter of a Padua gentleman, and no man has dared to court her. Her younger sister Bianca is the prize, lovely, compliant, surrounded by suitors, but there's one obstacle. Bianca cannot marry until Katherina does. Enter Petruchio, a fortune-hunting wit who sees Katherina not as a curse but as a challenge. What follows is a battle of wills, as he starves her, contradicts her, and refuses to play by the rules of her game, until something shifts. The ending has shocked audiences for four centuries: Katherina delivers a monologue about a wife's duty to her husband, and the play asks whether we have witnessed genuine transformation, masterful manipulation, or a woman who has simply learned to perform the role society demands. It is a comedy, yes, but one that cuts close to the bone. For readers who enjoy being genuinely unsettled by the works they love, who want to argue with a text long after the final scene.
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“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.””
— William Shakespeare
“Sit by my side, and let the world slip: we shall ne'er be younger.””
— William Shakespeare
“There's small choice in rotten apples.””
— William Shakespeare
“If I be waspish, best beware my sting.””
— William Shakespeare
“Come, come, you wasp; i' faith, you are too angry.Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting.Petruchio: My remedy is then, to pluck it out.Katherine: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies.Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.Katherine: In his tongue.Petruchio: Whose tongue?Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tails: and so farewell.Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, Good Kate; I am a gentleman.””
— William Shakespeare
“Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,And for thy maintenance; commits his bodyTo painful labor, both by sea and land;To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,Whilst thou li’st warm at home, secure and safe;And craves no other tribute at thy handsBut love, fair looks, and true obedience-Too little payment for so great a debt.Such duty as the subject owes the prince,Even such a woman oweth to her husband;And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,And no obedient to his honest will,What is she but a foul contending rebel,And graceless traitor to her loving lord?I asham’d that women are so simple‘To offer war where they should kneel for peace,Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,Should well agree with our external parts?””
— William Shakespeare
“I see a woman may be made a fool, If she had not a spirit to resist.””
— William Shakespeare
“You lie, in faith; for you are call'd plain Kate, And bonny Kate and sometimes Kate the curst; But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate, For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate, Take this of me, Kate of my consolation; Hearing thy mildness praised in every town, Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded, Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs, Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife.””
— William Shakespeare
“No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en.In brief, sir, study what you most affect.””
— William Shakespeare
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Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-taming-of-the-shrew-1a8b1802-9696-43f4-b3ea-37398ee8124a.Shakespeare, W. (n.d.). The Taming of the Shrew. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-taming-of-the-shrew-1a8b1802-9696-43f4-b3ea-37398ee8124aShakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-taming-of-the-shrew-1a8b1802-9696-43f4-b3ea-37398ee8124a.
