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Christopher Sly is the principal character in the play’s Induction. The Induction is a brief, two scene-long framing narrative in which a wealthy lord decides to trick Sly, a drunken tinker, into thinking that he is really a lord. The Induction is classified as a framing narrative because the lord instructs a group of players to perform for Sly’s entertainment, and their play constitutes the rest of The Taming of the Shrew. It is worth mentioning that The Taming of the Shrew is the only Shakespeare play to implement such a device.
Sly’s duping is comical at first, as readers and audiences laugh at both Sly's bafflement and the lengths to which the lord is willing to go in order to carry out the ruse. However, as the play progresses, it becomes clear that Christopher Sly’s character has a deeper, more thematic purpose. His transformation from a drunken tinker to a wealthy lord reinforces the idea that a person’s environment, and the way that they are treated, determines one’s behavior. The lord and his servants treat Sly like a lord—they put him in a nice bed, they give him fine clothes and jewelry, they offer him expensive food and drink, and they even present a page (dressed as a woman) who they claim is his wealthy wife. As a result, Sly eventually begins to question his reality and genuinely asks himself whether he is indeed a lord. Here, Shakespeare argues that humans are susceptible to their surroundings. Sly’s transformation can be compared to Katherine’s, as she appears to be beaten into submission after she is “tamed” by Petruchio’s wild methods. Like Sly, Katherine loses her sense of self the longer that she spends in Petruchio’s dominating presence.
Sly and Katherine are also linked because powerful men are able to assert their dominance to control them. Sly is innocently sleeping when the lord decides to manipulate Sly for his own amusement. He decides to do so with no regard for Sly’s well-being and without considering the ramifications that such a cruel trick might have on a person. In a similar vein, Petruchio feels that he can do whatever he wants to Katherine because she is his property for him to do with as he pleases. By linking Katherine with Sly, it’s made clear that she is as much a plaything of Petruchio as Sly is of the lord.
