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Scene Study prepares you to perform key scenes for your theater class or audition. We've got all the information you need for a great performance.
Excerpt from Act 2, Scene 1 Dialogue: Katherine, Bianca, Baptista
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Understanding the Given Circumstances
- This scene takes place in the home of Baptista, a wealthy nobleman of Padua.
- Bianca is Katherine’s younger sister. Baptista is their father. Bianca is the favored child.
- Bianca wants to be married and has several suitors. However, Baptista has decreed that Katherine must marry before Bianca does. Katherine seems to have contradictory impulses toward marriage, though. She is not eager to marry a suitor she considers unworthy, but she is not necessarily opposed to finding a partner and moving out of her father’s home.
- Katherine has a reputation in Padua for being violent, shrewish, and therefore unmarriageable. In Act 1, suitors openly display infatuation for Bianca and insult Katherine to her face.
Blocking and Movement
In theater, blocking is the process of planning the actors’ physical movements and positions. Be sure to show respect and establish trust when working with scene partners. As you prepare to block this scene, ask yourself the following questions:
- When the scene opens, Bianca’s hands are bound. What are they bound with? How tightly are they bound? How does this restrict her movement?
- Anyone who is or has a younger sibling will recognize the tactic of “playing up” one’s injuries at the hands of an older sibling as a tactic for sympathy. How much is Bianca dramatizing the trauma of being tied up for the benefit of her father? Are her tears real or a display?
- At one point, Katherine strikes Bianca. Is this act of violence comic? Painful? What effect does it have on Katherine? What effect does it have on Bianca?
- Baptista tells Bianca to go into another room and do some needlework, but she does not immediately do so. Why not? Then Katherine “flies at” her. How does Baptista stop this violence from escalating?
- Baptista has the last line of the scene. He is alone. To whom is he speaking?
Status Between Characters
Who is in control of this scene? Who has the power? At first glance, it appears that Katherine, the violent “shrew” of the play, dominates Bianca and even terrifies their father. A closer reading of the scene, however, may complicate the readers’ assumptions about who wields the most influence. The physical violence is an obvious exercise of power, but some parts of the speech indicate that Bianca might have more power over Katherine than is immediately apparent. To discover how and where these subtle power shifts occur, consider these questions, and perhaps add a few of your own:
- Why does Katherine want to know who Bianca’s favorite suitor is? What does that tell you about Bianca’s status?
- Why doesn’t Bianca tell her sister whom she loves?
- How do power dynamics shift once Baptista enters the room?
- Katherine speaks about dancing barefoot at Bianca’s wedding and being humiliated by being passed over both in her father’s love and in courtship. What is Baptista’s response to this?
