Summing up of the article Coming of age: marriage and manhood in Romeo and Juliet and the Taming of the Shrew by Coppélia Kahn

KAHN, Coppélia. Coming of age: marriage and manhood in Romeo and Juliet and the taming of the shrew. In: Man’s estate: masculine identity in Shakespeare. London: University of California Press, 1981. p.104-118.

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By Profª. Drª. Bárbara de Fátima.

Shakespeare described his male character, Petruchio, the tamer of his wife, Kate, giving him the precious tools to achieve his main intentions: money, power, ambition. He spends the whole play trying to tame her using non-human techniques, mechanisms which cannot be applied even to irrational animals. Everything is against Kate. Her father accepts her marriage to Petruchio because he has financial interests. Kate is, before marriage, a product of parental irresponsibility and stupidity. She is unkind, bad-tempered, sharp-tongued, and non-affective. Here, she represents the outlaw feminine principle. Petruchio is violent, tyrant (mechanical taskmaster and he has the financial power). But at the end of the play Kate becomes a product of marital power and love, that is, docile, polite, and kind. Here she represents the inlaw feminine principle. Petruchio was conquered by his wife’s love and submission. 

  

According to the play, we notice that Kate is a free woman, neither speaking about the chains of marriage nor the punishment that Petruchio brings up to her. Her freedom comes from the linguistic feature; her emancipation becomes greater and greater through the language spoken by her, the tone which is used a symbol to her ironical performance. It brings to her husband’s admiration and love.

She dominated her husband using her language, her inner feelings showed through her speech and her words called Petruchio’s attention to her as a human being. It sounds to him as subordination, but it isn’t. Her speech shows authority and wisdom, qualities which are supposed to be masculine. It sounds as the changing of rebel to conformist, but it isn’t. 

The fantasy which is present in Petruchio’s mind blinds him to see what really is in Kates’s mind; he becomes from victorious tamer to a complacent master. Petruchio’s performance describes the presence of the feminine’s weakness’ myth: only the woman has the power to subordinate a man, by transforming him her tamer.