Katherine and Bianca of The Taming of the Shrew

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Katherine and Bianca of The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew brings out the comedic side of Shakespeare

where irony and puns carry the play throughout. In my paper, I will

concentrate on one the irony of the play, the introduction of the two

sisters. These two sisters begin off with the elder, Katherine, viewed as

a shrew, and Bianca as the angelic younger of the two. However, as the

play proceeds, we begin to see the true sides of the two sisters and their

roles totally turn around. I will try to analyze the method in which

Shakespeare introduces the two sisters and how he hints their true identity

and the events for the rest of the play during the first two acts.

Although even her father calls her a shrew, Katherine has a deeper

character than the epithet would imply. From the beginning we see that she

is continually placed second in her father's affections, and despised by

all others. Bianca on the other hand, is identified as the favorite,

playing the long-suffering angel, increasing Baptisa's distinction between

the two. As Katherine recognizes her sister's strategy, her reaction is as

one can imagine how another would react suffering this type of bias for so

many years. She is hurt and she seeks revenge. This is seen in Act II,

Scene I, when Katherine sums up her own state: "I will go sit and weep/

Till I can find occasion of revenge" (35-36). It is an immature response,

but the only one she knows, and it serves the dual purpose of cloaking her

hurt. The transformation, which she undergoes near the end of the play, is

not one of character, but one of attitude. At the end of the play, we find

out that her negative attitude becomes a positive one.

The shrew is not a shrew at all beneath the surface.

The play begins introducing Katherine with her father's words of

shame towards her when he offers his eldest daughter to the two suitors of

Bianca. The audience is then given their first impression of Katherine

from the Gremio, a suitor of Bianca, right after her father's words when he

says: "To cart her, rather.

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