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Questions
(1) What three different plots comprise the play? How does at least one of these plots reflect the plot situation found in the classical drama of Plautus and Terence?
(2) Farce has been defined as laughter-provoking, slapstick comedy, usually centering on exaggerated or caricatured people and using a good deal of verbal swordplay and physical clowning. What elements of farce exist in this play?
(3) What kind of a person is Kate? Why does she act so "shrewishly"?
(4) What kind of a woman is Bianca? How does she typically deal with men? How is she different from Kate, and in what respects is she similar?
(5) What is there in Kate's family situation that would help to explain her shrewish behavior? Particularly, what can we learn from her by looking at her relationship with her sister, Bianca?
(6) Compare the suitors in this play. What motives do they have for marrying?
(7) Compare Petruchio and Lucentio as suitors for the two sisters' hands in marriage. How are they different? Are their methods of courtship in any way similar?
(8) What does Lucentio say and do that characterizes him as a typical "starstruck" lover?
(9) Why does Petruchio's method of courting Kate succeed, and why does Kate eventually capitulate to or at least go along with Petruchio's "taming"? What psychological tricks does he play on her? Why does his approach work on her when it probably would not work on her younger sister?
(10) Who has the more obedient wife at the end of the play Petruchio or Lucentio? Are you surprised at Bianca's reaction at the end of the play? Why or why not?
(11) How does the relationship between Bianca and Lucentio throw light or reflect upon the relationship between Kate and Petruchio?
(12) Are we to take seriously Kate's speech at the end of the play, or are we to read it as ironic? What does this speech suggest about the relationship that she and Petruchio have worked out during the course of the play?
(13) Think about the number of times that clothing is mentioned or used for disguising in this play. How might these references to clothing be significant and even symbolic?
(14) Is the "Induction" really related to the rest of the play? If so, how?
(15) Is the play weakened by Shakespeare's ending it without returning to and concluding the "frame story" of Christopher Sly that he started in the "Induction"?
(16) What is the Page's definition of comedy in the Induction? Does the play as a whole conform to his definition? To the other Elizabethan definitions of comedy that we read and discussed?
Films
Links
Resources
If you are interested in reading about what Shakespeare does with conventions of farce and with typical plot situations in the play, these two articles may interest you:
Peter Saccio, "Shrewd and Kindly Farce," Shakespeare Survey, 37 (1984), 33-40 [Ref: PR 2888 .C3] Another brief discussion of the theme of illusion vs. reality in the play is this:
An article that may be of greater interest to you after we have read King Lear is
Papers
Paper assignments that would work well with this play include Opening Scene Analysis
and Play Adaptation.
E. M. W. Tillyard, "The Fairy-Tale Element in The Taming of the Shrew," in Shakespeare, 1564-1964, ed. Bloom [RES: PR 2976 .B75].
E. M. W. Tillyard, "Appearance and Reality," in his Shakespeare's Early Comedies (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1965), pp. 104-07 [RES: PR 2981 .T52]
Stanley Wells, "The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear: A Structural Comparison," Shakespeare Survey, 33 (1980), 55-66 [Ref: PR 2888 .C3].