The Taming of the ShrewAct III

ACT III

SCENE i

Bianca is a manipulator as the two “tutors” battle for private time. She is arrogant in her attitude: “I’ll not be tied to hours, nor ‘pointed times, / But learn my lessons as I please myself” (III.i.19-20). (Translation: “Class at 9:30 am? I don’t think so!”) She shows some subtlety in her ability to play the nasty game of courtship, stringing along “Cambio” (Lucentio in disguise) in the sotto voce portions of their Latin lesson where she picks up his technique for slipping in personal messages. Consider the effects of this ruse in playing hard-to-get:

“Hic ibat Simois,” I know you not, “hic est Sigeia tellus,” I trust you not, Hic steterat Priami,” take heed he not hear us, “regia,” presume not, “celsa senis,” despair not. (III.i.42-45)

This is the verbal equivalent to passing notes in 8th-grade class, and its effect is designed to keep “Cambio” trying harder. “Litio” (Hortensio in disguise) foists a “love complaint” upon Bianca, adopting the stanza form Shakespeare uses in Venus and Adonis, and intended to be a sort of mnemonic device using the diatonic scale: Ut (before it became the less gutturel Do), Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La. (With Gamma as the lowest octave, starting with Ut, running one’s scales becomes “running the gamut.”) Bianca is conventionally appropriate in her haughtiness.

SCENE ii

Although Kate is surprisingly ready to go, Petruchio is late for his wedding. Lady Suffolk’s opinion of “madbrain” Edward de Vere, expressed in a letter to Burghley, seems to make its way into the discussion (III.ii.7-11). And matters of postponing a wedding are also relevant (III.ii.97-98), as it seems de Vere did not show up for the first attempt to unite him in matrimony with Anne Cecil (Ogburn and Ogburn 160). After an annoying chop-logic exchange between Baptista and Biondello, Petruchio arrives ludicrously dressed and riding the equine equivalent of a ’73 lime-green Pinto. He claims to wonder why everyone is looking at him oddly, as if at “Some comet or unusual prodigy” (III.ii.95): this may be an allusion to a comet that blazed over the Elizabethan night sky from November through January in 1578-79 (Clark 109; Anderson 130).

Petruchio says all the right things not to explain anything to this batch of Paduans: e.g., “To me she’s married, not unto my clothes” (III.ii.116). He makes a spectacle of himself first, and as we’ll hear, of the ceremony. Thus, “Katherine is subjected to just the sort of embarrassment and annoyance that her father must have felt numerous times” (Carey 198).

The crazy ceremony is narrated by Gremio (not shown at the church), whose attitude about education is conveyed in his haste at getting away from the spectacle: “As willingly as e’er I came from school” (III.ii.149). Petruchio’s physical violence was directed towards the clergyman, not Kate. “We are left in no doubt that this is all part of an act that Petruccio [sic] is putting on, just as the Lord and his gentlemen had put on an act to transmogrify Christopher Sly” (Wells 48). Later Petruchio throws food and dishes at servants, not at Kate. Bloom reports that an English manual on wife-beating (“such exercise was not recommended”) is included in one annotated edition of the play — but is this appropriate? Kate hits Petruchio “and he does not retaliate,” not vice versa (Bloom 33).

Petruchio announces a hasty departure before the reception, again alluding reverentially to unspoken “business.” He usurps several of the honors one should be paying the bride instead of the groom:

Make it no wonder; if you knew my business,
You would entreat me rather go than stay.
And, honest company, I thank you all
That have beheld me give away myself [Who is actually “given away” in a wedding?]
To this most patient, sweet, and virtuous wife.
Dine with my father, drink a health to me, [True, “father-in-law,” but who should we be drinking to?]
For I must hence, and farewell to you all.
(III.ii.191-197)

After drawing this kind of attention to himself, he shifts suddenly into an insane “histrionic” defense of Kate (Bloom 31), calling her his property:

I will be master of what is mine own.
She is my goods, my chattels, she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing….
(III.ii.229-232)

Petruchio drags off Kate, to the amazement of the others. “This histrionic departure, with Petruchio and Grumio brandishing drawn swords, is a symbolic carrying-off” (Bloom 31). To supply the missing places at the banquet table, Baptista appoints “Lucentio” (Tranio in disguise) and Bianca (III.ii.247-250) — probably the first time Bianca has had to function as a stand-in for her sister!