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Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
Marriage as an Economic Institution
As a romantic comedy, the play focuses principally on
the romantic relationships between men and women as they develop
from initial interest into marriage. In this respect, the play is
a typical romantic comedy. However, unlike other Shakespearean comedies, The
Taming of the Shrew does not conclude its examination of
love and marriage with the wedding. Rather, it offers a significant
glimpse into the future lives of married couples, one that serves
to round out its exploration of the social dimension of love.
Unlike in Romeo and Juliet, inner emotional desire plays
only a secondary role in The Taming of the Shrew’s
exploration of love. Instead, The Taming of the Shrew emphasizes
the economic aspects of marriage—specifically, how economic considerations
determine who marries whom. The play tends to explore romantic relationships
from a social perspective, addressing the institutions of courtship
and marriage rather than the inner passions of lovers. Moreover,
the play focuses on how courtship affects not just the lovers themselves,
but also their parents, their servants, and their friends. In general,
while the husband and the wife conduct the marriage relationship
after the wedding, the courtship relationship is negotiated between
the future husband and the father of the future wife. As such, marriage
becomes a transaction involving the transfer of money. Lucentio
wins Bianca’s heart, but he is given permission to marry her only
after he is able to convince Baptista that he is fabulously rich.
Had Hortensio offered more money, he would have married Bianca,
regardless of whether she loved Lucentio. The Effect of Social Roles on
Individual Happiness
Each person in the play occupies a specific social position
that carries with it certain expectations about how that person
should behave. A character’s social position is defined by such
things as his or her wealth, age, gender, profession, parentage,
and education; the rules governing how each of them should behave
are harshly enforced by family, friends, and society as a whole.
For instance, Lucentio occupies the social role of a wealthy young
student, Tranio that of a servant, and Bianca and Katherine the
roles of upper-class young maidens-in-waiting. At the very least,
they are supposed to occupy these roles—but, as the play shows,
in reality, Kate wants nothing to do with her social role, and her
shrewishness results directly from her frustration concerning her
position. Because she does not live up to the behavioral expectations
of her society, she faces the cold disapproval of that society,
and, due to her alienation, she becomes miserably unhappy. Kate
is only one of the many characters in The Taming of the
Shrew who attempt to circumvent or deny their socially
defined roles, however: Lucentio transforms himself into a working-class
Latin tutor, Tranio transforms himself into a wealthy young aristocrat,
Christopher Sly is transformed from a tinker into a lord, and so
forth.
Compared with Katherine’s more serious anguish about
her role, the other characters’ attempts to circumvent social expectations seem
like harmless fun. However, the play illustrates that each transformation
must be undone before conventional life can resume at the end of
the play. Ultimately, society’s happiness depends upon everyone
playing his or her prescribed roles. Through the motif of disguise,
the play entertains the idea that a person’s apparel determines
his or her social position, but it ultimately affirms that this
is not the case. A servant may put on the clothes of a lord, but
he remains a servant, one who must return to his place, as we see
with Tranio. Likewise, Lucentio must reveal his subterfuge to his
father and to Baptista before moving forward with Bianca. Kate’s
development over the course of the play is basically determined
by her gradual adaptation to her new social role as wife. She complies
with Petruccio’s humiliating regimen of taming because she knows
on some level that, whether she likes the role of wife or not, she
will be happier accepting her social obligations than living as
she has been at odds with everyone connected to her. In fact, the
primary excitement in The Taming of the Shrew stems
from its permeable social boundaries, crisscrossed continually by
those who employ a disguise or a clever lie. In the end, however,
the conventional order reestablishes itself, and those characters
who harmonize with that order achieve personal happiness. Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Disguise
Disguise figures prominently in The Taming of
the Shrew: Sly dresses as a lord, Lucentio dresses as a
Latin tutor, Tranio dresses as Lucentio, Hortensio dresses as a
music tutor, and the pedant dresses as Vincentio. These disguises
enable the characters to transgress barriers in social position
and class, and, for a time, each of them is successful. The play
thus poses the question of whether clothes make the man—that is,
whether a person can change his or her role by putting on new clothes.
The ultimate answer is no, of course. In The Taming of the
Shrew, society involves a web of antecedents that are always
able to uncover one’s true nature, no matter how differently one
wishes to portray oneself. Tranio, disguised as Lucentio, needs
only to bump into Vincentio, and his true identity surfaces. As Petruccio
implies on his wedding day, a garment is simply a garment, and the
person beneath remains the same no matter what disguise is worn. Domestication
The motif of domestication is broadcasted in the play’s
title by the word “taming.” A great part of the action consists
of Petruccio’s attempts to cure Katherine of her antisocial hostility.
Katherine is thus frequently referred to as a wild animal that must
be domesticated. Petruccio considers himself, and the other men
consider him, to be a tamer who must train his wife, and most of
the men secretly suspect at first that her wild nature will prove
too much for him. After the wedding, Petruccio and Katherine’s relationship
becomes increasingly defined by the rhetoric of domestication. Petruccio speaks
of training her like a “falcon” and plans to “kill a wife with kindness.”
Hortensio even conceives of Petruccio’s house as a place where other
men may learn how to domesticate women, calling it a “taming-school.” Fathers and Their Children
The several father/child relationships in the play—Baptista/Bianca, Baptista/Katherine,
Vincentio/Lucentio—focus on parents dealing with children of marriageable
age and concerned with making good matches for them. Even the sham
father/son relationship between the disguised pedant and the disguised
Tranio portrays a father attempting to make a match for his son,
as the pedant attempts to negotiate Tranio’s marriage to Bianca.
Through the recurrence of this motif, Shakespeare shows the broader
social ramifications of the institution of marriage. Marriage does
not merely concern the future bride and groom, but many other people
as well, especially parents, who, in a sense, transfer their responsibility
for their children onto the new spouses. Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Petruccio’s Wedding Costume
The ridiculous outfit Petruccio wears to his wedding with
Kate symbolizes his control over her. Simply by wearing the costume,
he is able to humiliate her. It may be shameful for Kate to be matched
to someone in such attire, but she knows she has no choice if she
does not wish to become an old maid. She consents to let the ceremony proceed,
even with Petruccio dressed like a clown, and thus yields to his
authority before the wedding even begins.
The outfit also symbolizes the transient nature of clothing. Petruccio
declares that Kate is marrying him, not his clothes, indicating
that the man beneath the attire is not the same as the attire itself.
Thus, Lucentio, dressed as a tutor, cannot escape the fact that he
must return to his true identity. By the same token, when Kate plays
the role of a dutiful wife, she remains, essentially, Kate. The Haberdasher’s Cap and Tailor’s Gown
The cap and gown that Petruccio denies Katherine, despite
the fact that she finds them truly appealing, symbolizes yet again
his power over her. The outfit functions as a kind of bait used
to help convince Kate to recognize and comply with Petruccio’s wishes.
Only he has the power to satisfy her needs and desires, and this
lesson encourages her to satisfy him in return. |
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