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Alexandra Sweeney
Shakespeare’s Comedies Seminar
Final Paper
December 11, 2009

The Clothes Don’t Make the (Wo)Man:

Renaissance Sartorial Fashion and Fashioning Identity
in Shakespeare’s Comedy The Tamingof the Shrew

For as long as The Tamingof the Shrewhas been watched or read, it has produced palpable

discomfort and disagreement for its audience. Elizabethan dramatist John Fletcher was so moved by

Shakespeare’s early comedy that he replied with a retributive sequel, The Woman’s Prize, or the Tamer

Tamed, in which Petruchio gets his just desserts for having domesticated Katherine in such a brutal

manner. Fletcher’s play, unlike Shakespeare’s, was quite popular throughout the Renaissance,

affirming that our present struggles with The Tamingof the Shrew are not necessarily a result of

modernity. While the play contains hilarious moments like the clever banter between Katherine and

Petruchio – traces of what will be perfected in later plays like Much Ado about Nothing– we frequently

find that The Tamingof the Shrew’s comic energy and wit cannot be reconciled with its overtly dark

elements. Scenes such as Petruchio’s sartorial burlesque of the wedding in Act 3, his quarrel with the

tailor and denial of Kate’s newdress in Act 4, or Katherine’s destruction of her cap on command

and final monologue in Act 5 make us particularly uneasy given the way in which social signifiers of

personal and cultural identity are violently overthrown and used for public humiliation. Howcan

this be comedy?

In this paper, I will argue that the answer lies in Shakespeare’s Induction to The Tamingof the

Shrew, a frame narrative in which a wealthy lord supplies a drunken beggar with material riches in

order to trick him into believing that he is actually a noble. By attending to the way Shakespeare

relates sartorial fashion and the fashioning of identity in a prologue oddly analogous to the story of

Katherine and Petruchio, and then relating that frame to the inner play, I will illustrate that

Shakespeare sees clothing not so much as the arbiter of central identity, but rather as costuming, an
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artifice with no sacred value. Costuming, in life as on stage, can be used in the performance of easily

adopted or discarded roles. The inner scenes in which Shakespeare references fashion and design are

therefore not so much about shaming Katherine as they are about howpeople frequently only wear,

rather than inhabit, their social identities.

Though most editors and directors consider Shakespeare’s two part Induction to The Taming

of the Shrewa “textual difficulty,” others maintain that this prologue provides the key to

understanding the tone and nature of the comedy, given that, as Frances Dolan notes, it “shapes

howwe viewwhat follows” (Dolan, 6). Since the play-within-the-play is structurally complete

enough to stand on its own, we can safely assume that Shakespeare’s frame must serve a significant

thematic and tonal function. While the Induction plot seems largely estranged from the main

marriage plots of The Tamingof the Shrew, the links between the inner play and the outer narrative

become progressively clearer the more we parse its exchange. There is a distinct parallel, for

example, between the quarrelsome drunkard Christopher Sly, who is taken in by the lord and tricked

into forgetting his true social identity as “a pedlar … a cardmaker … a tinker” (I.2.16-18), and the

shrewish, “curst” (2.1.284) Katherine who is taken in by Petruchio, who seeks to tame his wife’s

unruly ways. It becomes apparent “in both cases [that] the more powerful figure – Petruchio or the

Lord – has the power to ‘suppose’ alteration in his subordinate’s identity through supposing to make

it so, at least temporarily” (Dolan, 7). Just as the Lord, who exerts social authority over the beggar,

has the power to will a change in Sly’s self, so too does Petruchio, who holds social and sexual

authority over his wife, possess legal consent through marriage to fashion his spouse’s identity.

The Induction also sets the tone for the inner play, helping us to remain conscious of the

fictitious nature of the Katherine and Petruchio plot, which is put on by a traveling troop of players

for the purpose of “fram[ing] [Sly’s] mind to mirth and merriment” (I.2.130). This frame provides

the audience with a context in which to viewthe process of manipulating identities. Though we may
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be initially inclined to think of it as a grave undertaking, the Lord’s mirthful spirit and continual

reference to such fashioning of character as a harmless “jest” (I.1.41) or “sport” (I.1.87) reinforce

the notion that attempting to do so is for the purpose of entertainment. Shakespeare’s Induction

also welcomes the possibility that gender and class are simultaneously fixed realities and unfixed

roles. That these roles, these identities can be discarded or adopted through dress and action is

perhaps even more instrumental in making sense of the troublesome sartorial scenes later on in the

play. At the very inception of the play, the Lord postulates to his servants and huntsman about the

relationship between personal apparel and a sense of self as he notes:

Sirs, I will practice on this drunken man.

What think you, if he were conveyed to bed,
Wrapped in sweet clothes, rings put upon his fingers,
A most delicious banquet by his bed,
And brave attendants near him when he wakes –
Would not the beggar then forget himself? (I.1.32-37)

The essential hypothesis put forth by the Lord in these lines is that “the apparel oft proclaims the

man,” as Polonius instructs Laertes in Hamlet (1.3.72). In other words, material attire and

possessions – “sweet clothes,” “rings,” “a most delicious banquet,” “brave attendants” (I.1.34-6) –

are not only outward manifestations of personal identity, but also “form our central being” (Jaster,

105). If we change the one, we temporarily change the other

The Huntsman’s response, “Believe me, lord, I think [the beggar] cannot choose [but to

forget himself]” (I 1.38), directly invokes the Elizabethan understanding that one’s clothing informs

one’s identity in so much as it illustrates “a difference between superiors and inferiors, persons in

authority and under subjection,” (Hull, 177). As Shakespeare certainly witnessed in his day, dress as a

social signifier was a great preoccupation of the Renaissance. Garments were not mere

embellishments, but comprehensive communicators of one’s assumptions about and declarations of

selfhood. The upper classes in particular were concerned with the power apparel could confer, and

devoted much time to keeping up with latest trends in sartorial fashion. In Shakespeare’s age,
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discrepancies in costume were an index of social hierarchy, and so the blurring of these distinctions

– like the one we see carried out upon Sly at the hand of the Lord – were cause for alarm among

authorities. Russ MacDonald tells us,

The social order depended on knowing who belonged in what slot, and in an age when the
complete attire of a gentleman was available to anyone with the cash to purchase of the wit
to steal it, the complications of dress were seen as a threat to that social order. Consequently,
Tudor authorities occasionally sought to enforce the codes regulating dress, known as
sumptuary laws… (MacDonald, 232-3)

Furthering the notion that those of Shakespeare’s age thought people were – and therefore could

become – what they wore, art historian Jennifer Haraguchi likewise notes that dress and

ornamentation, “in addition to their role as markers of wealth, social prominence, personal

affiliations, and general culture … were understood as [relating] to a person’s inner nature” during

this period (Haraguchi, 26). Indeed, we see this intimate connection between apparel and the inner

self in the poetry of the often scandalous sixteenth century Italian poet Pietro Aretino, a figure with

whom Shakespeare would have been familiar. Describing Titian’s portrait of the Dutchess of

Urbino, Aretino’s verse, “Honesty dwells in her attire,” emphasizes the widely accepted relationship

between personal identity and sartorial fashion.

The Lord’s premise for his “practise on this drunken man” (I.1.32) seems to be

Shakespeare’s way of mocking his own society’s serious obsession with sartorial fashion and self-

fashioning. As a master of the theater whose art literally relied on the ability of costume and dress to

communicate character, it is highly probable that Shakespeare was intrigued by the appearance of

such a phenomenon within the milieu of English and European culture. After all, a wardrobe of

superlative costumes was one of the most valuable assets of a theatrical company (MacDonald, 122)

Yet just as surely, the bard must have also recognized the fundamental difference between fashion as

a dictator of identity on stage and apparel as an arbiter of selfhood on the street: the former is a

temporary fantasy, and the latter should be a perpetual reality. While it is one thing to understand
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dress as a manifestation of personal identity, it is certainly a bit more disconcerting to believe that

one’s costume literally prescribes one’s character.

But does it? We need look no further than Christopher Sly’s behavior in the Induction to

decide whether Shakespeare agrees with the Lord and Huntsman that clothing and personal apparel

affect self-fashioning. That dress certainly has some correlation to class and status beyond that

detailed by sumptuary laws is affirmed when Sly remarks early on in the Induction that he has “more

doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet – nay, sometime

more feet than shoes, or such shoes as [his] toes look through the overleather” (I.2.7-10). Since he is

a lowly “beggar” (I.1.37), Sly’s shabby and scant attire reflects his social reality. But it is interesting to

consider exactly what happens when, at the deceiving hand of the Lord, the poor drunkard dons “a

costly suit” (I.1.55) and learns of “his hounds and horse / And … his lady” (I.1.57-8). Beginning to

fall for the trick, Sly remarks to his attendants:

Am I a lord, and have I such a lady?

Or do I dream? Or have I dreamed till now?
I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak,
I smell sweet savours and I feel soft things.
Upon my life, I am a lord indeed,
And not a tinker, nor Christopher Sly.
Well, bring our lady hither to our sight,
And once again a pot o’th’smallest ale.” (I.2.64-70)

Though Sly has made the telling linguistic transition from prose to verse in these lines and claims to

have forgotten his former self, the audience is able to see very clearly that Sly has not changed a bit

despite his comically ardent proclamation “I am a lord indeed” (I.2.67); he is merely a tinker in an

aristocrat’s clothing. That Sly’s identity has not been fundamentally altered by the Lord’s trick is

intensely highlighted at the end of this quotation by his repeated request for “a pot o’th’smallest ale”

(I.2.70), the weakest and cheapest kind, when the socially apropos drink for a nobleman is sack, an

imported white wine. The servingmen incessantly ply him with good drink, but they simply cannot

change Sly’s taste. This fact combined with his comic insistence on referring to his lady with the
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then uncouth title “Madame wife” (I.2.108) seem to formulate Shakespeare’s figurative reply to

society’s understanding that clothing constitutes one’s identity. The Lord and his servants can dress

Sly up, but they sure can’t take him out. Fashion and attire are presumably theatrical props, used in

performing various social roles, which hold no consecrated meaning in themselves.

Before we apply this close reading to make sense of later sartorial scenes which challenge our

sensibilities, let us first give due consideration to the claim that the playwright similarly puts forth

about the relationship between clothing and identity through the character of Bartholomew, the

Lord’s page who becomes Sly’s cross-dressed “Madame wife.” Convinced that identity is malleable

to some extent, the Lord orders for his boy servant to be “dressed in all suits like a lady” (I.1.102),

remarking, “I knowthe boy will well usurp the grace, / Voice, gait and action of a gentlewoman. / I

long to hear him call the drunkard ‘husband’” (I.1.127-9). Again, we see a sort of carnivalic pleasure

taken in the reversal of personal identity. We also get the impression from the Lord’s use of the

word “usurp” that the nature of a gentlewoman is something that can be appropriated for a time, in

addition to being a fixed concept. Acting like the director of a theatrical production, the Lord’s

notion of masculinity and femininity as both unchanging realities and roles is particularly native to

English playhouses of the Renaissance, seeing as women were banned from acting on stage until

after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Shakespeare was more than familiar with coaching

particularly gifted boy-actors to convincingly don the apparel and affect of a lady through cross-

dressing, which must have inherently prompted the playwright to question the presumed

relationship between garment and identity. The Lord’s later reference to “commanded tears” as “a

woman’s gift” (I.1.119-20) again reinforces this understanding of gender as a crafted part that

individuals choose to play.

While the page manages to give a persuasive performance of femininity, Shakespeare

nevertheless takes care to remind us that the boy’s true identity has not been changed in the least by
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his womanly clothes or docile attitude. As Bartholomewconjures a plausible excuse for not being

able to have sex with his “husband,” Sly, that will not give away his true identity, we are reminded of

the page’s ultimate and unchangeably reality as a male; he reasons: “Pardon me yet for a night or

two, … / For your physicians have expressly charged … / That I should yet absent me from your

bed” (2.115-9). While we may be utterly won over by Bartholomew’s skilled act, this meta-theatrical

moment forces us to acknowledge that it is indeed just an act, a moment of fancy which must

inevitably come to an end when the curtain falls and reality resumes.

Director Melia Bensussen, who headed a highly original yet textually faithful production of

The Tamingof the Shrewin October of 2009 with the Shakespeare Actors’ Project, wonderfully

captured and amplified the effect of this moment by allowing her Bartholomew(Ross Bennett

Hurwitz) to transition from page and “wife” in the Induction to a cross-dressed Bianca in the inner

play. Outfitted with a stylish wig and modern feminine clothing that clung to his tall and slender

figure, Hurwitz delivered such an exceptionally convincing performance as a slinky minx that the

truth of his masculine identity effortlessly gave way to his staged identity as a woman in the minds of

the audience for the whole play. Just as Shakespeare alerts our lapsed perception of appearance

versus reality in Bartholomew’s plea to be absent from Sly’s bed, Bensussen returns us rapidly to the

world of reality by having Bianca casually remove the feminine hairstyle with a flip of his hand and

slide up to the bar for a beer at the end of the play, reassuming his true identity as a male. After a

moment of shock, we are restored to the final realization that despite their ability to make outer

appearances more convincing, accessories and clothing are merely props with no true power to alter

one’s personal identity.

Looking forward from the Induction to the Katherine and Petruchio plot of the inner play,

we are wont to wonder – and rightly so – if in the end of The Tamingof the ShrewKatherine is doing

little more in her final speech to charm Petruchio than Bartholomewdoes in the Induction to charm
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Sly. Part of our overall discomfort with the play as readers and viewers often stems from our

precarious uncertainty as to whether Kate’s selfhood has actually been transformed, or whether she

has learned to convincingly adopt the guise of a submissive gentlewoman as a role. Yet if we

consider what we are supposed to make of the oddly analogous “transformations” in the Induction,

we realize that the manipulator of identity – the Lord, in that case, Petruchio in this one – retains a

constant knowledge of the fact that the fundamental identity of the subject is not actually any

different than it was before he intervened. Sly is still a tinker (even if he might bear some

resemblance to an aristocrat) and Bartholomewis still a boy (though it doesn’t take much makeup or

to girly accoutrement make him look like the other gender); it only appears otherwise to everyone

who is not aware of the joke! So too, the analogy would argue, is Katherine still her resistant self.

Nevertheless, we must understand the fundamental difference Shakespeare institutes

between Bartholomew’s “transformation” and Sly’s manipulated identity in the Induction.

Undoubtedly, we feel that Bartholomewis more convincing as a woman than Sly is as an aristocrat.

Where Sly’s speech, mannerisms, and desires still correspond to his lower class self and not a lord,

Bartholomewmanages to be “in all suits like a lady” (I.1.102)

(with a pun on “suits” as both “garments” and “respects”)arguably because he is conscious of

playing that role. Bartholomewhas been verbally told by the Lord to become a woman for the sake

of the jest, an explicit verbal cue that Sly never receives. Bartholomewis more convincing in his

alternate identity not because he has been altered in some real way, but because he, unlike Sly, is on

the inside of the trick. Bartholomewis not so much being transformed by the clothes he dons as he

is being cooperative in appreciating the advantages and fun of playing along.

With this understanding of the relationship between clothing and fashioning identity as it is

put forth in the Induction, we may nowreturn to the troublesome tailor scene and reevaluate it. As

critic Margaret Jaster acknowledges, many audiences find this particular scene in Shakespeare’s
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comedy The Tamingof the Shrewto be highly distressing for the way in which “Petruchio in effect

undresses his newwife by contradicting enough of her sartorial desires to the delight of the

assembled males and to Katherine’s manifest discomfort” (Jaster, 93). In her reading, the tailor scene

is about Shakespeare’s belief that “reshaping the body is imperative before one can shape the mind”

and that “Petruchio … strip[s] Katherine of her social position … [in] an attempt to demonstrate to

all that Katherine’s identity and will are nowsubject to her husband. … Shakespeare’s character

suggests that clothing forms the essential being” (104-105). Were The Tamingof the Shrewto be read

sans Induction, then perhaps Jaster’s understanding of the text would be valid, but one cannot

successfully apprehend the tone and theme of the frame narrative – that is to say, read the play as a

whole – and still interpret the tailor scene in this manner. She has largely missed Shakespeare’s

thesis, which is precisely that clothing does not actually form the essential being.

This tailor scene in Act 4 is not about Petruchio’s attempt at shaming Katherine, but rather

at teaching her the truth about wearing one’s identity. At the beginning of the scene, Petruchio

remarks that he and Kate will return to his father’s house in “silken coats and caps, and golden

rings,/ With ruffs and cuffs and farthingales and things, / With scarves and fans and double change

of brav’ry, / With amber bracelets, beads and all this knav’ry” (4.3.55-9). As Jaster notes, it is the

right of newly weds to “demonstrate their elevated marital status through sartorial display” (Jasper,

104), so this parading around in finery that Petruchio describes would be seen by his contemporaries

as a normal proclamation of social standing through dress. However, the phrase “all this knav’ry”

(59) hints to the audience that Petruchio thinks very little of the idea that one’s costume can be used

to prescribe one’s character. In fact, he tells us at the end of the scene, “’tis the mind that makes the

body rich” (4.3.166). This comment, combined with the evident parallels between Petruchio and the

Lord as “initiators of the trick,” lets us in on his own understanding that just because he can dress

Katherine up in wifely garb doesn’t mean that he can take her out as his wife. That is to say, until
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she is likewise in on the “joke” of playing the role of subservient wife, Katherine will not play her

part convincingly regardless of what her clothes seem to dictate.

If we need further evidence of the fact that Petruchio rejects clothing as an arbiter of central

identity, we need only to spend some time looking at his earlier sartorial burlesque of the wedding

scene in Act 3. Instead of wearing the finery appropriate for a bridegroom, Petruchio tries to make a

statement to Katherine by showing up in what Tranio deems “unreverent robes” (3.2.102) and “mad

attire” (3.2.114): “a newhat and an old jerkin; / a pair of old breeches trice turned; a pair of boots

that have been / candle cases, one buckled, another laced; an old rusty sword tane / out of the town

armoury, with a broken hilt and chapeless” (3.2.41-4). Ostensibly, this apparel is not what society

deems appropriate for the occasion or Petruchio’s social standing. Yet in dressing this way, he

rejects the popular notion that sartorial fashion is sacred and somehowdictating his character. While

Katherine’s father, the patriarchal Baptista is outraged by Petruchio’s vestiments which are a “shame

to [his] estate” (3.2.90), we see Petruchio’s unwavering insistence that his attire is an arbitrary matter

as he notes, “To me [Katherine’s] married, not unto my clothes” (3.2.107).

We see that Katherine, on the other hand, still subscribes to the more fashionable notion

that you are what you wear. When Petruchio berates the cap the haberdasher has made for Kate, she

replies, “I’ll have no bigger. This doth fit the time, / And gentlewomen wear such caps as these,” as

if to imply that the newapparel Petruchio has ordered for her will transform her social identity

(4.3.69-70). Trying to let Katherine in on his jest as Bartholomewis in on the Lord’s jest, Petruchio

tells Kate, “When you are gentle you shall have one too, / And not till then” (4.3.71-2). Katherine’s

subsequent impassioned speech in which she vehemently declares her right to be “free / Even to the

uttermost” shows us that Kate is like Sly from the Induction in that she has not yet sorted out the

true nature of Petruchio’s trick. Sly welcomes the “transformation” and Katherine rejects it, but the
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problem with both characters is the same: they fail to see (as Bartholomewdoes) that there is no

true “transformation” involved, only the art of playing a part.

Like the tinker, Katherine looks foolish vehemently declaring her personal independence

over the meaningless cap as she yells, “I am no child, no babe,” and continues, “I will be free /

Even to the uttermost, as I please, in words,” because of the inherent irony in her language (4.3.74,

79-80). She maintains that she can’t be told what to do or howto behave, and yet her desire for the

cap is rooted in the fact that it is “fit [to] the time” (4.3.69); she wants it because she wants to follow

the popular trend in dress. Indeed, we see in this moment that Kate is not nearly as “free” (4.3.79) as

she thinks, since she has unwittingly allowed societal expectation and sartorial fashion to shape her

sense of self. Shakespeare keeps playing with the notion of being controlled by one’s dress as

Petruchio turns Katherine’s accusation of manipulation towards the tailor, saying, “Why, true, he

means to make a puppet of thee” (4.3.104). While Petruchio is playing with Katherine here in

continually turning her words around and re-directing her statements, he nevertheless seems to

make a critical point about Elizabethan society’s relationship to fashion; the preoccupation with

outward dress was so overwhelming that it actually had agency in controlling people’s actions and

identity. Petruchio seems to be suggesting that if Kate is going to accuse anyone of influencing her

sense of self, she should turn to the tailor before her husband, since apparel holds even more

control over Kate’s identity than Petruchio. Moreover, we must note that Petruchio is not actually

hostile in this scene but rather plays with Katherine. That he asks Hortensio to “see the tailor paid”

(4.3.158) indicates to us that the kind of manipulation Petruchio engages in with his wife is the same

type of jest or sport seen in the Induction between the Lord and Sly, and that he is not aiming to

harm.

By the time that Katherine consents to admitting that her hat is a “bauble” and throws it

under her foot in Act 5, Scene 2, her perspective on her husband, clothing, and her own identity has
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obviously changed. Many critics, like Jaster, maintain that this act of submission proves that

“Katherine’s identity and will are nowsubject to her husband” (Jaster, 104). Indeed, many film and

stage adaptations have likewise interpreted this sartorial scene in the same spirit. As Anne

Thompson notes, this reading of Katherine as sincerely transformed was perpetuated by “Edith

Evans[’s] performance, who played Katherina in modern dress in 1937, and again when Peggy

Ashcroft played her in 1960” (Thompson, 21). Howfitting that an actor might transform our

perception of a self! Yet in light of the themes put forth in the Induction, it seems unlikely that

Katherine has been “broken” by Petruchio, so to speak. It seems that a more appropriate

understanding of this “transformation,” cultivated by the attitudes put forth by Shakespeare in the

frame of the play, would be that Kate has finally managed to recognize Petruchio’s jest and moved

inside the joke. Petruchio’s wife has gone from being as ignorant a pawn as Sly, to being as informed

an actor as Bartholomew.

Turning to the text to explore the point at which Katherine comes to the realization that

Petruchio is not trying to fundamentally change her identity so much as he is attempting to teach her

to play her part in the grand jest that is married life, we see that it occurs in Act 4, Scene 5 as

Petruchio and Katherine journey to Baptista’s house. Initiating a word game, Petruchio tries to call

Katherine’s attention to the concept of wifehood as a role, and marriage as an act:

PETRUCHIO: Good Lord, howbright and goodly shines the moon!

KATHERNE: The moon? The sun! It is not moonlight now.
PETRUCHIO: I say it is the moon that shines so bright.
KATHERINE: I knowit is the sun that shines so bright.
PETRUCHIO: Now, by my mother’s son – and that’s myself –
It shall be moon or star of what I list
Or e’er I journey to your father’s house.
…
HORTENSIO: Say as he says, or we shall never go.
KATHERINE: Forward, I pray, since we have come so far.
And it be moon or sun or what you please;
And if you please to call it rush-candle,
Henceforth I vowit shall be so for me. (4.5.2-15)
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Upon first hearing these lines, we are confused along with Katherine, as we both stand on the

outside of this particular jest. While Petruchio’s first statement, “Good Lord, howbright and goodly

shines the moon” (2), is alienating in its outlandishness, its riddling nature would have been

accentuated even more for Shakespeare’s original audience, as Elizabethan theater took place

outdoors during the day, and Petruchio could literally have gestured towards the sun in the sky. They

would have been inclined to argue alongside Katherine that, “It is the sun! It is not moonlight now”

(3). Yet contemporary audiences were also most likely alerted to the true context of Petruchio’s

words through his subsequent punning on “sun” (3, 5) and “son” (6), which modern audiences are

unable to pick up on for lack of knowledge about Renaissance popular culture. In his declaration,

“by my mother’s son – and that’s myself” (6), Petruchio is drawing a parallel between himself as a

male figure and the sun as a celestial body, which is a direct invocation of the Renaissance analogy

for an ideal marriage.

The astrological metaphor of husband as the sun, and wife as the moon, was routinely used

to explain howa couple should envision their marital partnership in the sixteenth century. As the

sixteenth century Richard Brathwaite wrote in his treatise A Good Wife, “The Wife, in her Husband’s

absence shines in the family, like the fair Moon among the lesser stars” (Dolan, 30). Petruchio’s

quizzical and objectively erroneous statement “Good Lord, howbright and goodly shines the

moon!” is actually a complement to Katherine and an invitation to join him in the jest of marital

role-playing. Realizing from Petruchio’s game that “husband” and “wife” are roles to be played out

for a public audience in the drama of married life, Katherine sees that she must play along like

Bartholomewin the Induction in order to move “forward” (12) in their life together. As Katherine

responds, “And the moon changes even as your mind. / What you will have it named, even that it is,

/ And so it shall be so for Katherine” (4.5.20-22), her words indicate that she nowunderstands the

importance of taking cues from her husband. Just as this exchange is puzzling for modern readers
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until we appreciate the cultural analogy, so too is Petruchio’s behavior confusing to Katherine before

she understands that the design of his trick is not to fundamentally alter who she is, but to get her to

play a part. After this turning point towards mutuality, Katherine addresses Petruchio as “love”

(5.1.123), and we get the distinct impression that the two have come to terms with one another.

Thus, to read Katherine’s gesture of stepping on her hat as a begrudging submission is, I

think, as out of place as reading her last speech about feminine subservience as a serious enterprise

rather than a rhetorical trick delivered with a straight face. In her lengthy address, Katherine asserts

that a woman’s proper place is in service to her husband, using adjectives such as “lord… king…

governor” (5.2.138) as well as “head … [and] sovereign” (5.2.147) to characterize the proper

dominance of masculinity, noting that “Suche duty as to the subject owes the prince / Even such a

woman oweth to her husband” (5.2.159-60). Though analogies between governance of the

commonwealth and of the household were widely employed during this era to stress the obedience

of dependents and suggest that the man must rule responsibly, many audiences cringe upon hearing

such acquiescent and patriarchy-affirming language come out of the once fiery and independent

Katherine’s mouth. Critics as well as scholars frequently cite this particular speech in support of

their understanding that Petruchio has succeeded in taming the volatile and shrewish aspects out of

Kate’s feminine identity. Yet based on the themes of the Induction and Kate’s earlier realization

about her identity as prompted by Petruchio in Act 4, I would argue that this scene is not betraying a

fundamental revolution in Kate’s character, illustrating that “she is changed, as she had never been”

(5.2.115), but rather a sort of Bartholomew-inspired encore performance of deception on Kate’s

part, aimed at convincing not Petruchio, but rather the rest of society (ourselves included) that she

has indeed become a properly demure lady.

While some directors, such as Sam Taylor in his 1929 film adaptation and Gale Edwards in

her 1995 production at the Royal Shakespeare Theater, choose to play this scene with a wink and a
 Sweeney 15

nudge on Katherine’s behalf, I think that the way in which this technique blatantly flags Katherine’s

rhetorical irony actually undercuts the desired effect, which is to contrast Katherine and Petruchio’s

unity with the strife between the other unhappy husbands and wives in the final scene. Any outward

gesture to the audience suggesting that Katherine doesn’t believe in her words would put us too

much on the inside of the final joke that the couple play on their friends, which is arguably meant to

be shared only by Petruchio and his wife. Besides, the fact that Katherine speaks of her

subordination while simultaneously giving an ambitious and commanding verbal performance

before an audience of men and women is already enough to confirm its nature as a rhetorical device.

Bensussen’s 2009 production of Tamingwith the Actors’ Shakespeare Project seemed to

dramatize this scene perfectly, as Katherine (Sarah Newhouse) delivers her final lines with

convincing sincerity, quickly proceeds to gather up the cash that the other men had lost in wagering

bets on their wives’ obedience earlier in the scene, and exits the stage hand in hand with Petruchio

(Benjamin Evett). That Katherine’s final subservient actions and speech were merely a performance

to earn some money with her partner in crime is underscored by the brilliant framing of the

character of Petruchio. In the Induction, Bensussen has her Sly actually take on the character of

Petruchio once the Lord’s players began their entertainment, so that the persona of Petruchio is

actually a role played by Sly, which was in turn a role played by the Evett, the real actor. Before the

couple departs, Evett effectively closes the frame by donning the same jacket and baseball cap that

he first wore as the drunken beggar in the Induction. The last scene thus emphasizes identity as a

performance, and artfully illustrates that by the end of the play, Kate has come into line with

Petruchio’s understanding that clothing is not an arbiter of central identity as society so often

postulates, but rather a prop, used in the performance of easily adopted or discarded roles, which

holds no sacred value. With this closure, we feel even more certain that the cap that Katherine

throws under her foot is just a cap, not the essential thing which makes her a gentlewoman.
 Sweeney 16

Ostensibly, Shakespeare’s The Tamingof the Shrewis by design a highly ambiguous text that

leaves a great deal of possibility open to the reader’s discretion, and even more to the director. Much

of what we feel and think about The Tamingof the Shrewhas to do with our perspective and what we

choose to emphasize or deemphasize. Furthermore, believing that there is a single “right” way to

read this play is to misunderstand howShakespeare masters his craft. While we can certainly judge

various readings of the play as being more or less tenable, the play itself has little to say about howit

ought to be taken. That is why it is essential for us to take into account all of its parts, regardless of

whether we happen to think they’re integral. As literary scholars, it is our task with a play like The

Tamingof the Shrewnot to create just a coherent understanding of the text from the selective bits and

pieces which support our ideas, but rather to embrace the work as a whole and explore its

possibilities. While critics continue to call The Shrewa problem, a bad play, or a farce, the fact that it

has given us so much difficulty reinforces the notion that it contains something worth examining.
 Sweeney 17

Bibliography

Dolan, Frances E. “Introduction.” William Shakespeare: The Tamingof the Shrew: Texts and Contexts.
Frances E. Dolan, ed. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martins Press, 1996. pp. 1-38.

Haraguchi, Jennifer. “Debating Women’s Fashion in Renaissance Venice.” A Well Fashioned Image:
Clothingand Costume in European Art, 1500 – 1850. Elizabeth Rodini and Elissa B. Weaver, ed.
Chicago: The David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art at Chicago University, 2002.
pp. 23-34.

Hull, Suzanne W. “Face and Fashion.” Women Accordingto Men: The World of Tudor-Stuart Women.
Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 1996. pp. 177-199.

Jaster, Margaret Rose. “Controlling Clothes, Manipulating Mates: Petruchio’s Griselda.” Shakespeare
Studies Vol. 29 (2001). Leeds Barroll, ed. London: Associated University Press, 2001.
p. 93-108.

MacDonald, Russ. The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare: An Introduction with Documents. 2nd ed. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2001.

Shakespeare, William. The NewCambridge Shakespeare: The Tamingof the Shrew. Ann Thompson, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Shakespeare, William. “The Taming of The Shrew.” The Norton Shakespeare. Stephen Greenblatt, ed.
London: Norton, 2008.

Thompson, Ann. “Introduction.” The NewCambridge Shakespeare: The Tamingof the Shrew. Ann
Thompson, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. pp. 1-41.