In what ways is ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ an appropriate title for the play?
In the play, ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, characters contribute greatly to the development of the storyline. As one of the main characters Katherina’s shrewish behaviour adds the comical aspect at the beginning of the play and by the end has been diminished with the help of Petruchio’s taming techniques. Shakespeare uses the difference in personality between Petruchio and Katherina to create a sense of tension, but also comedy.
When Petruchio learns of the wealth he would receive if he were to marry Katherina he is excited by the prospect of a challenge.
“Do you tell me of a woman’s tongue, that gives not half so great a blow to hear as will a chestnut in a farmer’s fire?”.(1.2.206-208)
At first he does not understand why the other men avoid her to such an extent but it is only during their first meeting that he encounters her full temperament. Both characters use ‘quick fire’ lines to create a sense of speed in the way they act as though they were trying to outsmart each other.
Petruchio believes he has the intelligence to outwit Katherina and change her within a limited amount of time and it is not long before she changes her ways and begins to act more like women were expected to at this time.
“I know she is an irksome brawling scold. If that be all masters, I hear no harm”. (1.2.186-187).
This shows that although Petruchio knows about Katherina’s previous reputation of being badly behaved he feels that, because she is a woman, it will be a simple task for him to ‘tame’ her. He also knows that if they were to become married it would be even easier because she would be held under wedding vows in which she would have said, ‘to honour and obey’.
From the very first scene Shakespeare sets up the audience to be prepared for the main theme in the play, ‘taming’. There is the apparent parallel between Petruchio taming Katherina and Sly being tricked into thinking he was a Lord.
“I am Christophero Sly, call not me ‘honour’ nor ‘lordship’”. (Induction.2.5-6).
In Katherina’s first appearance Shakespeare portrays her as somewhat of a rebel. She does as she pleases and will not be told any different, especially not by her father. In an attempt to settle her down he suggests that Bianca, her younger sister, cannot marry until Katherina is.
“Not to bestow my youngest daughte...
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...ide is still showing through slightly. It could be said that this controlling but polite side to her personality comes from her father.
“My daughter Katherina is to be married; now on the Sunday following shall Bianca be bride to you.” (2.1.387-389).
He uses his authority over the sisters to say that Bianca is not to marry until Katherina has, but was simple and firm in the way that he said it, not to cause feud between the two girls.
It seems that ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ is an appropriate title for the play, but maybe more so ‘The Taming of the Shrews’. As the play develops Bianca appears to be as disobedient as Katherina, just in different ways. This leads to Bianca finally being a less suitable wife because she has no one such as Petruchio to ‘tame’ her. Baptista feels Bianca is the perfect example of a woman therefore not giving her the chance to be ‘tamed’. This consequently lets her run further astray as the play continues rather than maturing like her sister, who in the end is thought of as the perfect woman.
Bibliography:
Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York, Washington Square Press, 1992. Print.
Even the researchers themselves began to lose sight of the reality of the situation. Zimbardo, who acted as the prison warden, overlooked the abusive behavior of the prison guards until graduate student Christina Maslach voiced objections to the conditions in the simulated prison and the morality of continuing the experiment. "Only a few people were able to resist the situational temptations to yield to power and dominance while maintaining some semblance of morality and decency; obviously I was not among that noble class," Zimbardo later wrote in his book The Lucifer Effect (Zimbardo, 2007). According to Zimbardo and his colleagues, the Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrates the powerful role that the situation can play in human behavior. Because the guards were placed in a position of power, they began to behave in ways they would not normally act in their everyday lives or in other situations. The prisoners, placed in a situation where they had no real control, became passive and
Shakespeare’s Katharina, of The Taming of the Shrew and Beatrice, of Much Ado About Nothing, are very similar characters. Each is plagued with unrequited love, and depressed by their inability to woo the suitor of their choosing. Neither will accept the passive female role expected by society. Yet, both women seem to accept their role as wife by the conclusion. Upon further examination, one will find that Beatrice is a much more complex character. One would have to agree with the critic who said, "Katharina is a character sketched in bold, rapid stokes, with none of Beatrice's sophistication, verbal brilliance, or emotional depth."
As one of the newest, hottest diet trends to circulate around the United States, the Paleo Diet is essentially a high-protein, low-carb diet based on the speculated diets of our caveman ancestors. With its emphasis on poultry, lean meats, whole fruits and vegetables, as well as nuts but not grains, legumes, dairy, or anything refined or processed, the theory behind the diet is simple. As quoted by an online review by U.S. News & World Report: “if the cavemen didn’t eat it, you shouldn’t either.” Since our hunter-gatherer fore-bearers never had to eat the highly-processed, antibiotic-and-hormone-heavy food we eat today, they were much healthier, lived more active lives, and never suffered from the “disease of civilization” so many people in the U.S. and around the world deal with today.
Philip Zimbardo (1971) conducted an experiment that will be remembered for its shocking realization of how much a situation can control our personality. Nice people can turn into horrible people, and psychologically healthy people can lash out and become unstable. Even though Zimbardo’s experiment (1971) was cut short, it showed the world that evil places can take a huge toll on otherwise genuinely good people.
Over the past 400 or so years since Shakespeare wrote _The Taming of the Shrew_, many writers, painters, musicians and directors have adapted and reformed this play of control and subjugation into timeless pieces of art. In _10 Things I Hate About You_ and Kiss Me Kate from two very different times in the twentieth century, and paintings of Katherina and Bianca from the late nineteenth century, the creators of these adaptations have chosen to focus on the role of the two main female characters in the play. The ideas surrounding these women have changed through the years, from Katherina and Bianca simply being young women who deviated from the norm of Shakespeare’s time to women who embody feminist ideals and stereotypes of the more modern world.
...se two tectonic plates generated intense friction and pressure that generated enough heat to melt rocks. The descent of denser oceanic Farallon Plate into the asthenosphere produced magma that was made from basalt or andesite. Which is dark colored rocks with little silica. The buoyant magma pushed through the silica-rich continental crust, partially melting the crust that it moved though, and becoming more granitic in composition. About 100 million years ago, the granitic magma pooled at depths of only 2 to 5 miles beneath the surface (United States of America). The granitic terrain that makes up the Sierra, was once thought to have only local variations but was produced from one large mass of rock. It has been discovered however that hundreds of intrusions caused the variations in the granite that is displayed in Yosemite and in the Sierra Nevada range (Huber).
Zimbardo has contributed to psychology in major ways. One of the most important ways that he has contributed was by doing an experiment called the Stanford Prison Simulation. He and his colleagues started this Simulation to “investigate why prisons tend to become abusive, degrading violent environments” (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973; Zimbardo, Haney, & Banks, 1973). “Zimbardo wan...
A long time ago, a drunken man fell asleep outside an alehouse. This man, Christopher Sly, was discovered by a mischievous lord who took him into his home. The witty lord then convinced Sly that he was a lord, as well. The lord then put on a play for him. The play, The Taming of the Shrew, was about the two young daughters of Baptista. The youngest daughter, Bianca, wished to wed but her father, Baptista, would not allow this until his eldest daughter, Katherina, was married. Under normal circumstances, it would be easy to find a husband for Katherina with all her beauty, but all her beauty was covered by her shrewd personality. By this time Bianca's suitors were growing very impatient, so they decide to team up and find a husband for Katherina. In jest they mentioned their plan to a friend, Petruchio, who surprisingly agreed to marry Katherina. All her beauty and wealth were enough for him. Katherina reluctantly was wed to Petruchio and she was taken to his home to be tamed. With Katherina out of the way, Bianca was now allowed to marry Lucentio, who offered her father the highest dowry for her. In the final scenes of the play, Katherina proves that she is tamed by winning an obedience contest at a dinner party. Katherina is now even more in accordance with her wifely duties than Bianca. A fare is a type of comedy based on a ridiculous situation. The Taming of the Shrew, an eminent example of a farce, is the first of three farces written by Shakespeare.
What does a modern audience learn about marriages and the rules of men and women in Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew?’
Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. Edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine,
In this play as any other, Shakespeare proves to be a visionary. Petruchio achieves his goal through witty persuasion rather than resorting to beating his wife like many a man before him has done. Though Shakespeare does not go as far as some feminists would like him to, Shakespeare does much for the fight of equality of the sexes. Katherine’s as strong, or stronger than any woman in Shakespeare’s plays. The amazing thing is that she achieves this without ulterior motives such as lady Macbeth. She is an honest, bright independent woman. She is not underscored by her subservience to petruchio in public, for "the sun breaks through the darkest cloud" and so do Katherine’s assets break though the public visage of subordination to her husband.
In the taming of the shrew, the play focused on two women in particular, Baptista's daughters, Bianca and Katherine. These women lived in this environment that gave men power for all their lives...
William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is an interesting story that demonstrates the patriarchal ideas of how a marriage is suppose to be according to society, what is acceptable of a woman's role in a relationship. It's a story that has many things to show for it's been remade, and remade, even slightly altered to better relate to the teenage audience.
The guards were reported to have been “disappointed” in having to leave, while the prisoners left with severe psychological damage. The Stanford Prison Experiment is known as one of the most controversial tests in all of psychology. Researchers were fascinated with the results and the study provided an unbelievable amount of information regarding human behavior; however, it raised a lot of issues to the public dealing with the morality of the situation. People were very alarmed by Zimbardo’s willingness to put young students in such a harsh situation while he sat back and observed, not even stepping in to calm the guards when things got too intense. The prisoners were subjected to long-term mental problems, which Zimbardo had to know was a possibility from the start, but the experiment happened
The universal nature of the themes in The Taming of the Shrew, beg analysis and social critique. This comedic farce, by William Shakespeare, creates an elegant depiction of a modern life and romantic love with all of its masks and pretensions. It is easy to assume the perspective of a psychotherapist while witnessing the drama of Katherine and Petruchio’s love affair unfolding. Concepts like “emotional repression” and “therapeutic catharsis” neatly fit the “taming” scenario. In fact, this play offers many new insights into what it takes to create an enduring, viable marriage—if one understands it from a very contemporary, psychotherapeutic or even spiritual point of view. If one is distracted by the recent feminist perspectives of this play, it is easy to miss the integrity and practicality expressed in Katherine’s final exhortation to women on how to love their men: