“To kill a Wife with Kindness”: Contextualizing Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

Summary

Introduction

FEW of Shakespeare's most widely read works incite as much distaste in modern audiences as The Taming of the Shrew. The play, written around 1592, follows an acquisitive suitor, Petruchio, as he pursues Katherine, a wealthy woman in Padua, Italy. This simple courtship plot is a staple of the Shakespearean comedy and rarely provokes scandal. The Taming of the Shrew, however, is an example of how time can warp comedy into horror. It is often criticized for its misogynistic and outdated depiction of wooing and marriage. Katherine is a “shrew,” or an undesirable woman, and she is considered so for her temperamental and willful tongue. Petruchio, in courting her, performs an intensive procedure to “tame” and domesticate her. This taming ritual denies her sustenance, sleep, and clothing with the intent to make her assume the role of the ideal Elizabethan woman—a wife subservient, submissive, and obedient to the proclivities of her husband's desires.

Modern audiences may be content to label the complex dynamic between Katherine and Petruchio as “problematic and, in turn, unenjoyable,” as Krystie Lee Yandoli writes in her Buzzfeed article “Why I Hate Shakespeare,” but the true nature of their relationship has long been a source of contention among scholars. Helga Ramsey-Kurtz, for example, suggests that Petruchio nurtures Katherine by showing her that even if she does not want to adhere to the recognized conventions of her community, “one is always on a stage” and must perform one's part accordingly. Others, like Emily Detmer, still see Petruchio's “civilized dominance,” meaning dominance without corporeal aggression, as a nonphysical act of domestic terrorism.

It is easy to comprehend why a piece that inspires such diametrically opposed readings is now often condemned by modern scholars and audiences. The play's central plot element—female submission to a domineering male force—is, simply put, unappetizing to a culture as increasingly concerned with women's empowerment as ours is. I suggest, however, in accordance with previous Shakespearean scholarship, that the presentation of gender, marriage, and power in The Taming of the Shrew is not as single-faceted as it might cursorily appear.