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Discuss how Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew explores performance, identity and
selfhood
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1 This signature structure proved to be popular with their audiences, and
eventually helped launch one of the Renaissance’s most ingenious playwrights, William Shakespeare,
to rise to recognition and infamy
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Before iconic dramatists
such as Shakespeare, Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe emerged into publication, English
drama appeared to have consisted of quasi-allegorical plays preaching the dour lessons of
continence and strict obedience typical of the early Tudor period
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This allowed
room for Elizabethans to enjoy a sudden plenitude of dramatic riches undreamed of by their midcentury forefathers
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4 Gosson implies here how England’s religious independence impacted onto new writers,
who felt it right to unearth the once buried sense of self constrained by religion, and creatively
portrayed it onto the Elizabethan stage
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Characters displayed certain
flexibility within their performance of identity and with it, their transformation of selfhood followed
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(For future duration, this play will be referred to as The Shrew
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Maguire, ‘Private Life: Shakespeare and Selfhood’ in Studying Shakespeare: A Guide to the Plays (Oxford:
Blackwell Publishing, 2004) p
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7
3
Christopher Haigh, The England Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) p
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7
5
Smith, Amy L
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4 (2002) in Academic Search Complete

1

how the central heroine Katherina’s selfhood is manipulated and whether this metamorphoses is
genuine
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The Shrew’s heroine Katherina is consistently compared to wild animals, a ‘wildcat’, a ‘wasp’6; and
the ‘devil’, ‘a fiend of hell’
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If she is silent, he will praise her ‘piercing eloquence’8 and if she
rejects him, he will act ‘as thought she bid me stay by her a week’9
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10 This imagery is deliberately crafted to compare her unruly and outspoken behaviour to
creatures that must be tamed and domesticated, which Petruccio willingly accepts to attempt
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Here lies the crux of this play’s ambiguity, as Katherina is not entirely tamed
according to typical shrew-taming practises that lead to the extinction of identity and it is never
officially declared in the final resolve
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11
It can be argued that Katherina’s selfhood cannot be defined by her shrew trademark, as the
language used to describe her could be argued as a typical display of patriarchal dominance within
the domestic threshold, as being labelled a shrew was a punishable crime, alienating a woman with
this term who spoke against a dominant figure was a clever way of keeping order
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ebscohost
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aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=10227684&site=ehost-live> [accessed 24 October
2013] p
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by Barbara Hodgdon (London:
Methuen Drama, 2010) 2
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23-26 – Further references will be given in the text using the short form The Shrew and the act,
scene and line numbers
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1
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1
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1
...
1
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2
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12 A shrew, then, can be argued as not just a talkative woman;
but a woman refusing to submit to a man’s authority and aggressively asserting her independence
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Their father Baptista intervenes, shaming Katherina of her ‘insolence’ and ‘devilish spirit’
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14 Yet this is not
an easy objective for him as Katherina’s wild reputation passionately precedes her to Petruccio’s
dismay
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15 Despite her typically shrewish behaviour, Coppélia Kahn argues that
Katherina does very little to earn her wild and diabolic epithets; the mere fact of her speech – twelve
lines in 1
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16 However, one could argue that not just her language, but
her performance alone was enough to mark her as a shrew, as her behaviour opposed the domestic
conduct that many households ruled upon in the 16th to 17th Centuries
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18 This domestic conduct would expect Katherina’s
role as a woman and wife to act as her husband’s ‘fellow helper’, with her own authority given but
to primarily rule under her husband
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20 Katherina is indeed predisposed to be subservient to this patriarchal authority, but
because of her nature she is resistant to perform the identity that her duties expect her to show
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Dolan, ‘Shrews and Shrew Taming’ in The Taming of the Shrew – Texts and Contexts (Boston: Bedford Books of
St
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9
13
The Shrew, 1
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88
14

The Shrew, 2
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185

15

The Shrew, 2
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221
Coppélia Kahn, ‘Coming of Age: Marriage and Manhood in Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew’ in Man's
Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) p
...
Dolan ‘The Household: Authority and Violence’ in The Taming of the Shrew – Texts and Contexts (Boston:
Bedford Books of St
...
200
16

18

The Taming of the Shrew – Texts and Contexts, p
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by
Francis E
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Martin’s Press, 1996) p
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1
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Through his manipulative language, his character renames
Katherina ‘Kate’ - ‘Good morrow, Kate, for that is your name, I hear’21
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22 Here, Shakespeare deploys how a manipulative passage can be comedic, as
Petruccio essentially pushes a new identity upon ‘Kate’ through his devilishly persuasive tongue
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Yet it would appear that this identity governed by Petruccio
fluctuates, as in Act Five he asks Katherina to display her new identity as his obedient wife but
addresses her as the label associated with the once shrew-ish, independent identity he supposedly
extinguished – ‘Katherine, I charge thee tell these headstrong women/What duty they do owe their
lords and their husbands’
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Kate’s utterances ‘Why are our bodies soft, and
weak, and smooth’ and her reflection - ‘But now I see our lances are but straws’ publicly
acknowledges the hierarchal distinction she concludes between gender
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25
The reversal of ideals demonstrated here, appears to be a recurring motif with Petruccio, who also
displays role reversal within his household during his time taming Katherina
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Marion D
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26 However, his masculinity is never called into question, partly because it
has firmly been established before this scene due to his soliloquy laden with the domineering falcon

21

The Shrew, 2
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181
The Shrew, 2
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184-86
23
The Shrew, 5
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136-37
24
The Shrew, 5
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171-79
25
Wayne A
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3, (Feb, 1995), 294-327, in JSTOR ...
org/stable/438782> [accessed 27 October
2013] p
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Perret, ‘Petruchio: The Model Wife’, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 23
...
jstor
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226
22

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imagery ‘My falcon now is sharp and passing empty’, ‘Another way I have to man my haggard’ –
hawk trainers of the time were men, not women and which furthers his dominant intention over
Katherina
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28 This exercise of typically female duties departs from standard Elizabethan
procedure that encouraged a husband to instruct his wife how to put things in good order, but it was
not suggested that the husband illustrate his hierarchy by doing her work
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30 Hodgdon also
recognises how the shifts in conceptions of and ideologies grounding gender and sex relations are
presented in Petruccio and Kate’s relationship
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31 It is then implied that Shakespeare
wrote this purposefully, as homage to the domestic conventions that helped construct the
household identity by reverse roles that were over familiar to a Renaissance audience, and thus
exposing the hypocrisy within gender dynamics at the time
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Shakespeare was renowned for scripting his characters that impersonate others to deceive and gull
those who are vulnerable, or will benefit them somehow
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His reality is altered
by playacting: ‘we will play our part/ As he shall think by our true diligence/ He is no less than what
we say he is’
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Convinced by his
material surroundings, ‘I smell sweet savors, and I feel soft things’ and by the servant’s reiteration of
his title, Sly quickly rejects his previous self: ‘Upon my life, I am a lord indeed’, and adopts the new
identity fabricated for him ‘My men should call me ‘lord’; I am your goodman
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It would seem

27

The Shrew, 4
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179-82
The Shrew, 4
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186-89
29
Marion D
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227
30
Ibid, p
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36
32
The Shrew, Ind
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72
33
The Shrew, Ind
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69-102
28

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that theatre has the power to change one’s reality, and the dramatic effectiveness of characters
playacting within a play contributes to the overall enjoyment for the spectator
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Although these transformations are indeed similar, they are not identical due to the
ambiguity to whether Katherina’s transformation is permanent or not and whether it is genuine
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34
Interestingly, Shakespeare does not complete Sly’s character development and he disappears from
the play entirely
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35 The final act portrays Sly awaking from a dream, remembering his
metamorphosis to be unreal from which he has learned ‘how to tame a shrew
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Therefore, Theatre has the power to overtake life
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On reflection, Shakespeare’s skill for transforming identity on stage allowed him to mirror the
human behaviour within the governed household and through his cleverly designed characters the
societal tensions of Elizabethan identity and gender dynamics could be reflected onstage for
entertainment
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Despite her
apparent submission to Petruccio, the true entertainment lies in how she is manipulated and to
whether the audience believes she has indeed been converted
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The Shrew offers a

34

The Shrew, Ind
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113
Francis E
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by Francis E
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Martin’s Press, 1996) p
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by Francis E
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Martin’s Press, 1996) 5
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180, p
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37
Laurie E
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49
35

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reality of marriage that was applicable to the time period it was written in, and if we compare it to
post-1960 drama that is also well known to highlight the realities of domestic spheres, the contrast
between conventions is of course striking
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’ This statement is arguably true, suggesting that selfhood can be
transient and subject to environment, although it is the fine line between whether the reader
believes a characters’ transformation that makes this play so intriguing
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It is evident, from historical conventions within the
typical Elizabethan domestic environment explored in this essay that the early modern mindset was
just as complex as present day minds and personal values regarding relationships that brought
pressure to perform a certain identity that society encourages a person to embody
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Bibliography
7

Haigh, Christopher The England Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)

Hodgdon, Barbara ‘Katherina Bound; Or, Play(K)ating the Strictures of Everyday Life’, Special Topic:
Performance, 107
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jstor
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4 (Winter, 2011), 315-337 in Academic Search
Complete
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com/login
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‘Coming of Age: Marriage and Manhood in Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the
Shrew’ Man's Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1981) 82-118
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1 (Spring, 1975), 88-102 in JSTOR ...
org/stable/3194204> [accessed 23rd
October 2013]

Maguire, Laurie E
...
, ‘Petruchio: The Model Wife’, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 23
...
jstor
...
by Barbara
Hodgdon (London: Methuen Drama, 2010)

Shakespeare, William The Taming of the Shrew Texts and Contexts ed
...
Dolan (Boston:
Bedford Books of St
...
‘Performing Marriage with a difference: Wooing, Wedding, and Bedding in The Taming
of the Shrew’ in Comparative Drama, 36
...
ebscohost
...
aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=10227684&site=ehost-live>
[accessed 24th October 2013]
8

Wiggins, Martin Shakespeare and the Drama of his Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)

Wilders, John The BBC TV Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew (London: The British Broadcasting
Corporation, 1980)

Rebhorn, Wayne A
...
3, (Feb, 1995), 294-327, in JSTOR
...
org/stable/438782> [accessed 27th October 2013]

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Title: Essay of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew
Description: An essay that explores performance, identity and selfhood in William Shakespeare's play 'The Taming of the Shrew'. It is written to a University year Undergraduate level, complete with MHRA referencing, footnotes and a bibliography. It was awarded a 2.1 level grade. Ideal for anyone studying the play in either Theatre Studies or English Literature.

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