The Taming of the Shrew (Vol. 31) | Marion D. Perret (essay date 1983)
Marion D. Perret (essay date 1983)
SOURCE: "Petruchio: The Model Wife," in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 23, No. 2, Spring, 1983, pp. 223-35.
[In the following essay, Perret refers to early modern "conduct books" to demonstrate that in his efforts to "tame" Kate, Petruchio temporarily takes on responsibilities that were considered "woman's work. "]
The focus of recent critics of The Taming of the Shrew on Kate's role-playing is too limiting. On the one hand, the theatrical vocabulary encourages them to speak of Kate's transformation as though it were nothing more than an act; on the other, the narrow focus keeps them from recognizing the structural subtlety of the latter half of the play, the importance of Kate's seemingly redundant second capitulation, and the comic point of her famous lecture (V.ii.136-78), which is possible precisely because she takes the lecture's content seriously. We discover the complexity...
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