The Taming of the Shrew
Act IV

ACT IV

SCENE i

Grumio reports to Curtis of Petruchio’s household staff. (And Petruchio has quite a line-up of servants. Are we still sticking with that notion of money-grubbing desperation?) He describes the miserable journey, during which Katherina has had a particularly difficult time. Regarding her wading through mud, Curtis remarks, “By this reck’ning he is more shrew than she” (IV.i.85-86). Petruchio and Kate arrive, and Petruchio treats his servants abominably. Even Kate tries to reason with him when he strikes a servant: “Patience, I pray you, ’twas a fault unwilling” (IV.i.156). Although Kate is famished, Petruchio rants that the meat is unsatisfactory and throws everything about. She responds, “I pray you, husband, be not so disquiet. / The meat was well, if you were so contented” (IV.i.168-169). These reasonable assurances from her?!

He mentions his dog Troilus (IV.i.150) — a great name for a dog! The reference to a cousin Ferdinand (IV.i.151) seems to be a lingering shred of a previous draft or version of the play, since we never hear of this guy again (Smidt 70), and inexplicably, Hortensio shows up here instead of remaining back in Padua.

The standard interpretation is that marriage is primarily a social relation, with addresses as “my lord,” “husband,” “goodman,” “Madam.” This underlies Petruchio’s central “chattel” speech in the previous Act. One needs audience assent for this comedy to work, audience sympathy for him and his condition, then his treatment of her is humane and restrained — he doesn’t beat her. Otherwise it’s a disturbing process. As Marilyn French points out, “Denial of food and sleep and freedom of movement is outlawed even in most prisons” (83). On the other hand, how many of us, when being young brats, were “sent to bed without supper” and didn’t call in social services or the Red Cross? Petruchio’s craziness is calculated with good motives. In later more sophisticated comedies too, females maybe evade but do not rebel; design focuses on the re-education of males.

But more subtly, Petruchio exploits the age-old antagonism between the sexes. He’s not out to pulverize her will. Kate sees Petruchio abuse Grumio and the serving-man and is horrified, although she used to strike Bianca and throw things around. Petruchio shows her a male version of her behavior — unreasonable and arbitrary — so she must see it objectively. In psychology it’s called “mirroring.” He’s teaching her self-control and caring without breaking her spirit. And it’s working, as Curtis attests: she “Knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak, / And sits as one new risen from a dream” (IV.i.185-186) — another connection to Christopher Sly in the Induction.

There’s no doubt that Petruchio is acting. His musing, “He that knows better how to tame a shrew…?” (IV.i.189) is disarming (Wells 49). The reference to the “haggard” (IV.i.190) comes from falconry and similar use of the specialized term can be found in Othello and in the Edward de Vere (E.O.) poem “Women’s Changeableness” (Ogburn and Ogburn 54; cf. IV.ii.39). But Oxford is maturing beyond his adolescent notions of women and relationships.

SCENE ii

It’s a quick ending for Hortensio once it’s decided that Bianca seems to favor Lucentio. Sputtering in anger — “the former favours / That I have fondly flattered her” (IV.ii.30-31) — he crassly announces he’ll wed anyway: “I will be married to a wealthy widow, / Ere three days pass” (IV.ii.37-38).

A gullable Mantuan Pedant (or Merchant) arrives, and Tranio easily terrorizes him into the plot to play Lucentio’s father. Does this guy know Vincentio? “I know him not, but I have heard of him, / A merchant of incomparable wealth” (IV.ii.98-99). The scene reveals that Shakespeare knew that Florence was a banking center (Draper, qtd. in Jiménez 242).

“[R]ole is dictated by gender and station, by the requirements of the external world. It must therefore be learned, and it never permits full expression of the self” (French 84-85). So disguise alone permits an expansion of the experience of characters in such a rigid determined structure. Tranio makes a better Lucentio than the original; the Pedant a more generous father than Vincentio; Sly a more amusing lord than most. Bianca is disguised in a sweet docile role, Kate as a termagant, Petruchio as a tyrant.

SCENE iii

Katherine gets no mercy, nor food, from Grumio, who strings her along with glimmers of hope and repeatedly dashes them. Petruchio brings in a tailor and a haberdasher for Katherine, but then he continues having tantrums. Kate is taken with a hat, but nothing is good enough for Petruchio, so because of his railing and hissy fits, she ends up with nothing. He’s putting on a show of tantrums and outrageous behavior.

Petruchio proposes that they visit Kate’s father, and again says all the right things about mere clothes. When he declares the time to be “seven a’ clock” (IV.iii.187) and she points out that it’s around two instead, he pitches another fit: “It shall be what a’ clock I say it is” (IV.iii.195).

SCENE iv

The Pedant, disguised as Lucentio’s father Vincentio, is presented to Baptista. Bianca will be Lucentio’s wife, but not the Lucentio Baptista thinks. One servant knows what’s taking place between the real Lucentio and Bianca: “Take you assurance of her, cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum” (IV.iv.91) = in Latin, “with the sole right to print,” referring to a monopoly of publication, and by extension here, “stamping one’s own image on [a woman] by getting her with child” (Hodgdon 277).

SCENE v

Kate must have agreed that it was 7:00, because she and Petruchio are traveling to Padua. He makes declarations, then changes his mind and expects Kate to comply:

Petruchio. I say it is the moon.
Kate. I know it is the moon.
Petruchio. Nay then you lie; it is the blessed sun.
Kate. Then God be blest, it is the blessed sun.
But sun it is not, when you say it is not;
And the moon changes even as your mind.”
(IV.v.16-20)

So Kate learns to submit to Petruchio’s arbitrary will? Is it his “will”? She has learned that “Direct confrontation … is not the way to deal with him” (Garber 64). Is she “tamed,” or rather is able to adopt a façade of civility. Where was that part where she broke down because her spirit was finally crushed?

In the romance genre that this play and others establish, or in the debased version, the heroine must be crushed and humiliated. Take one example from Time of the Temptress, a 1970s Harlequin Romance by Violet Winspear: “‘M-my clothes,’ she wimpered. ‘A monkey took them'” (62). This doesn’t happen here. Or the teen movie adaptation of this play, the wretched 10 Things I Hate About You, where “Kat” cries openly while reading her poem publicly (which by my count either has 14 things she hates about him, or if she’s using semi-colons maybe 8). There is no parallel in the play.

Is Kate the big sell-out for saying fine, it’s seven o’clock? It matters supremely whether she says fine, it’s the moon? Admittedly, it might be interesting if we could all always be truth-tellers all the time. But are you a big sell-out when asked, “How are you?” and you say, “Fine. How are you?” Are you to be condemned when you attend a neighborhood gathering and do not tell some of these people what you really think of them and their stupid kids?

But the moon talk is also “a spirited reply in its acknowledgement of absurdity” (Wells 50). Kate is newly articulate now, and a sly dig is involved about the moon and Petruchio’s mind since it is women’s minds that are proverbially compared with changeableness (Wells 51), and lunar matters are related to lunacy. She’s subtly saying he’s insane! In any case, Kate is allowed to visit her family in Padua. “The next episode reveals Kate not merely concurring with her husband in patent absurdity but entering with full imaginative commitment into what now seems more like a game than a display of the results of a process of brainwashing” (Wells 51). “From this moment on, Kate firmly rules while endlessly protesting her obedience to the delighted Petruchio, a marvelous Shakespearean reversal of Petruchio’s earlier strategy of proclaiming Kate’s mildness even as she raged on” (Bloom 32).

An old man, another traveller, approaches. Petruchio indicates that Kate should treat him as if he were a young beautiful maiden. He turns these tables too and then points out, “This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, withered, / And not a maiden” (IV.v.43-44). Kate plays along with this flip: “Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes / That have been so bedazzled with the sun” (IV.v.46-47). (In the Zeffirelli film, Liz Taylor hilariously pauses: “bedazzled by the [looks at Burton] sun?”) The two are now playing together! “This marks the beginning of Petruchio and Kate’s mutual collaboration” (Garber 65). We learn that this old man is the real Vincentio, also on the way to Padua, so the plot thickens.


The Taming of the Shrew, Act by Act

The Taming of the Shrew Intro

The Taming of the Shrew Act I

The Taming of the Shrew Act II

The Taming of the Shrew Act III

The Taming of the Shrew Act IV

The Taming of the Shrew Act V