ACT II
SCENE i
Katherine has bound Bianca’s hands, perhaps to force her to focus and answer some direct questions about her intentions regarding her suitors; but fair Bianca is an obsequious weasel, pleading wide-eyed innocence while rubbing in an age issue: “what you will command me will I do, / So well I know my duty to my elders” (II.i.6-7). Bianca even offers potentially cast-off suitors: “If you affect him, sister, here I swear / I’ll plead for you myself (II.i.14-15). And she uses the snotty “you’re just jealous” retort, prissied up: “Is it for him you do envy me so?” (II.i.18). Having basically pointed out that Bianca is just callously playing games with the suitors, Katherine pitches a fit, and to her father, who enters and immediately sympathizes with Bianca, correctly claims, “She is your treasure” (II.i.32) — an apt mercenary Paduan metaphor.
Suitors descend on Baptista’s home, including old Gremio to present Lucentio (disguised and using the name Cambio = “change, exchange”) as a tutor, and Petruchio to present the disguised Hortensio — with the assumed name Litio, or Licio = “license,” “born in Mantua” (II.i.60) — as another tutor for Bianca.
But who’s the new guy? Petruchio introduces himself: “Petruchio is my name, Antonio’s son, / A man well known throughout all Italy” (II.i.68-69). Baptista, taken in by Petruchio’s pomposity, acts impressed (though have you ever heard of anyone named Antonio in Italy?! Dear God, who owns every American pizzeria? Tony!) Meanwhile, Gremio presents the disguised Lucentio. Petruchio presents himself as interested in meeting the “fair and virtuous” Katherina (II.i.43). Baptista is baffled by the prospect of a suitor for Katherine.
Petruchio uses the Paduan worship of business to his advantage:
Signior Baptista, my business asketh haste,
And every day I cannot come to woo.
You knew my father well, and in him me,
Left soly heir to all his lands and goods,
Which I have bettered rather than decreas’d.
(II.i.114-118)
Again, despite his earlier pronouncements, is there reason to doubt his wealth? The cut to the chase regarding dowry makes it seem crass (II.i.120), but that’s the way these Paduans operate! So Katherine is almost a done deal, literally, already.
However enjoyable the story concerning Bianca’s wooing, with all the disguises and intricacies, it’s simply not as compelling as the relationship between Kate and Petruchio.
The marriage seems essentially arranged already (II.i.126-127), but Petruchio is amused when Hortensio returns with a lute bashed into his skull: “And through the instrument my pate made way” (II.i.154). Petruchio is impressed that Katherina battered Hortensio with his own lute (II.i.160-161).
Petruchio’s big plan (II.i.169f) indicates that he will be acting pathologically positive in the face of Kate’s shrewishness. “It can be played with a swagger, but in Miller’s television production John Cleese, taking advantage of the intimacy offered by the medium, delivered it with sober thoughtfulness, as if he were deeply conscious that much of his future happiness depended on the success of the strategy” (Wells 48). “As Zeffirelli sees it, the comedy is not primarily about a taming, but about the release of Dionysian energies” (Jorgens, qtd. in Crowl 54). In psychological terms, how is Petruchio’s plan supposed to work exactly?
Does Kate, as Petruchio says, fall in love at first sight? Does he? It is easy to find commentary insisting that it is indeed “love at first sight” between these two (e.g., Bloom 29). Is that your impression from the text? Is this love at all? And in dramaturgical terms, what do we consider love: how does love we observe in the arts differ from the actual experience, if it even exists at all outside of art?!
Kate is probably dying for affection, which he supplies, if rather insanely at first, in a mutual, delightful, racy battle of wits. She hits him once; he tells her, “I swear I’ll cuff you, if you strike again” (II.i.220). He is outrageously brash, and he refuses to give up on her. “There is a poet within him that her beauty has elicited” (Goddard, I 70). Then in public, Petruchio offers with overbearing insistence a pronouncement on the way it really is between them, and he denies the fact of her protests. Her shrewishness simply does not matter (II.i.269-271). “When a small child is irritable and cross, the thing to do is not to reason, still less to pity or pamper, or even to be just kind and understanding in the ordinary sense” (Goddard, I 70). To explain Kate’s behavior, Petruchio claims that part of their bargain is “That she shall still be curst in company” (II.i.305) — even though this is no explanation! But he is able to snow the Paduans easily again. In any case, “these two characters not only are well matched but are actually enjoying themselves” (Garber 63). Kate says she’ll see Petruchio hanged before she ever agree to marry him (II.i.302) — though she will show up for the wedding on Sunday in the next act.
E.T. Clark suggests that the play was first produced at court in 1578-79 and that Oxford, instead of depicting his half-sister Katherine (who tried to have him declared illegitimate so as to inherit), has “caricatured the marriage of his sister, Lady Mary Vere, and Peregrine Bertie, ‘the brave Lord Willoughby'” (Clark 102; Anderson 130; Farina 75), which took place the year before, after a period of disapproval by Oxford (Clark 104). The play, then, originally called A Morrall of the Marryage of Mynde and Measure, was created “with Lady Mary Vere the chief prototype of Katharina, who had a strong Mynde, and Peregrine Bertie predominantly that of Petruchio, determined to subdue it to Measure” (Ogburn and Ogburn 158). Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby is a ludicrous name worthy of a Woodhouse story, but the guy apparently was no little Lord Fauntleroy after all; rather, he was “flamboyant,” like his image at Grimsthorpe Castle, “providing us with a demeanor not unlike that of Richard Burton as Petruchio in the Zeffirelli film version” (Farina 76). Five hundred gallons of wine were served at Peregrine Bertie’s wedding (Anderson 130). Lady Mary was notorious for her verbally abusive behavior, “her quick temper and harsh tongue” (Anderson 131). Peregrine’s mother reported that Mary had fumed that she, the Duchess, was out to kill her (Anderson 131). Thomas Cecil witnessed a quarrel between the spouses and reported: “I think my lady Mary will be beaten with the rod which heretofore she prepared for others” (Clark 103; Ogburn and Ogburn 138; Anderson 131). So The Taming of the Shrew is “a comedy that recounted the wooing and wedding of these two obstinate and most unlikely lovers” (Anderson 130). The pair become Maria and Sir Toby in Twelfth Night also (Anderson 131). And Katherine was also Lady Suffolk’s name (Ogburn and Ogburn 138).
But touches of matters closer to home for de Vere may also play a part. Petruchio’s reference to Kate-Hall (II.i.188) resembles Kat-Hall, another name for Burghley’s estate, Theobalds (pronounced Tibbals) (Ogburn and Ogburn 159).
The Paduans continue to show themselves as mercenary, as in Baptista’s reaction to the approaching wedding: “Faith, gentlemen, now I play a merchant’s part / And venture madly on a desperate mart” (II.i.326-327). Gremio’s claim is spurious and pathetic (II.i.334). Baptista’s dealings about Bianca are hypocritical: “‘Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both / That can assure my daughter greatest dower / Shall have my Bianca’s love” (II.i.342-344). This new rule leads to a battle of “stuff” between the suitors as they advertise their possessions. Tranio (disguised as Lucentio) wins the battle but ponders how to drum up an imposter father, “Vincentio,” for the required reassurances to Baptista.
The Taming of the Shrew, Act by Act
The Taming of the Shrew Act II
The Taming of the Shrew Act III
The Taming of the Shrew Act IV