Taming of the Shrew Critics

Edexcel English Literature A Level Drama

Margie Burns (1986)

Play's unity is established through the frame created by Sly's disappearance and the disappearance of the shrew.

Lucy Bailey

It is a fantastic battle of the sexes

Peter Saccio

She makes her own choice of mate (Bianca, she's just as shrew as Kate)

Lisa Dillon

He gives her freedom to speak. That is not a woman being crushed.

Jonathan Miller (director)

Ridiculous to take a feminist view of this.

George Bernard Shaw

Disgusting to modern sensibility.

David Daniell (marriage)

It is a truly Shakespearian marriage-play.

Edward Hall (director)

Katherine's abuse is played for laughs, when what should be being communicated is Kate's suffering.

Peter Saccio (education)

He educates his daughters to make them more attractive.

The induction lays the foundation for a powerfully subversive subtext...

...altering the play's audience to the representation of women as a "commodity" D PRIEST

"Petruchio seeks...

...to educate Kate in her new role" N KORDA (1996)

Jeanne Addison Roberts (the induction)

'signalling movement from the 'real' world to a domain of instincts, romance and supernatural possibility'

Michael L. Blanc

Petruchio’s forceful wooing of the stubborn and shrewish Katherine suggests that marriage may be a cruel form of punishment

Marilyn French

It is a ‘disguise forced on her by a neglectful father, a sly sister, and an unsympathetic society’

Catherine Bates

If we enjoy the play, then it ‘legitimates the most violent, coercive not to say outrageously sexist behaviour’

‘Shakespeare seems to be highlighting the inequality of the relationship in which the rational, free man subjugates the woman who…

…like a wild animal, has her access to food and sleep controlled’ (Rachel de Wachter )

‘The hunting-related diction which Shakespeare uses throughout the play suggests that he is drawing our attention to an uncomfortable correlation…

… which his male characters make between hunting and the treatment of their social inferiors either due to their class or gender. This apparent caricaturing of these attitudes suggests a critique of patriarchal attitudes rather than an advocacy of the methods used by the Lord and Petruchio’ (Rachel de Wachter )

It could be argued that much of Petruchio’s power…

… stems from his willingness to socially humiliate Katherina (Rachel de Wachter )

‘Shakespeare is asking us to …question the entire project of …

… ‘taming’ another human being, to see it as nothing better than ridiculous and barbaric (Rachel de Wachter )

Lynda E. Boose

‘When Kate realises that there are no other socially available spaces, and when she furthermore realises that Petruchio controls access to all sustenance, material possession, personal comfort and spatial mobility, she will rationally choose to please him and encourage his generosity rather than…continue crossing him

Karen Newman

Petruchio ‘makes (Kate) a Bianca with words, shaping an identity for her which confirms the social expectations of the sex/gender system which informs the play’

Novy

The relationship between the patriarch of and the playfulness of Petruchio and Kate is in defiance of convention, enabling the final denouement, the reconciliation of Petruchio and Kate and the beginning of a very happy marriage

Coppelia Khan

‘The transformation of Christopher Sly from drunken lout to noble lord, a transformation only temporary and skin-deep, suggests that Kate’s switch from independence to subjection may also be deceptive’

David Daniell (on Kate’s final speech)

‘A statement of contemporary doctrine, of male fantasy, or of almost sustained irony’

Germaine Greer (marriage)

‘There is no romanticism in Shakespeare’s view of marriage’

Michael Bogdanov

‘Shakespeare shows women totally abused- like animals- bartered to the highest bidder… there is no question of it, his sympathy is with the women, and his purpose to expose the cruelty of a society that allows these things to happen’

H.Bertens (relates to the way Kate is treated by all characters)

‘distribution of power over the male and female partners mirrors the distribution of power over males and females in society at large’

‘Petrucio…

…is almost a model of intelligence and humanity’ Barton

‘Destroying a woman…

…to satisfy his own vanity’ Miller

‘to some degree fatherless, as well, for Baptista consistently rejects her and favours her obedient sister’

Karen Newman (father figure)

Karen Newman (Bianca’s attractiveness)

‘Kate makes clear the relationship between Bianca’s sweet sobriety and her success with men’

Stanley Wells (Kate- sun is the moon)

‘seems more like a game than a display of the results of a process of brainwashing’

Emily Detmer (hunting)

‘Petruchio makes Kate “stoop” not by beating her but by “alluring” in the same way that he would train a falcon

Emily Detmer- Masculinity

‘Petruchio proves his manliness by embracing what other men fear (marrying a shrew)’

Marvin Felheim and Philip Traci

‘a fortune is the means not only of living well but also of establishing one’s identity’

Raymond A. Houk

‘despite their varied roles and their diverse functions they are fundamentally one’