Act II, Scene 1 Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. What color is Kate’s hair?
2. Why has Kate bound Bianca’s hands?
3. Who offers Baptista gifts?
4. Why do the men believe that Petruchio has successfully wooed Kate when she rejects him publicly?
5. How does Baptista resolve the strife between Gremio and Tranio, who both seek the hand of Bianca?
6. What does Gremio offer to give Bianca?
7. How does Tranio’s offer compare to Gremio’s?
8. When are Katharina and Bianca to be married?
9. How does Gremio react to Baptista favoring Tranio’s offer?
10. What does Tranio mean when he says that a “child shall get a sire”(408)?
Answers
1. She is probably a brunette, as Petruchio refers to her as a hazel-twig, and
brown in hue.
2. She is interrogating Bianca about which suitor she prefers.
3. Strictly speaking, only Tranio does. He presents Baptista with a lute and some books. Both Petruchio and Gremio offer the services of teachers.
4. Petruchio has invented a clever story. The couple will be mean in public and mild in private. The men have a conflict of interest and are bound to believe Petruchio’s story.
5. Baptista will choose the suitor who is best able to provide for his daughter.
6. Gremio can only offer his land and what little he has in his house, so he takes pains to enumerate all his minor possessions.
7. Tranio’s offer far surpasses Gremio’s. Tranio could give many properties and their rents to Bianca if she outlives her husband.
8. Katharina and Petruchio will marry on the upcoming Sunday, while Bianca and presumably Tranio will be married on the following Sunday, one week later.
9. Gremio suffers from sour grapes. He implies that Bianca is not worth all the money that Tranio has promised her, and that Tranio’s father was a fool to have entrusted so much wealth to his son.
10. On the one hand, he refers to himself as a child, a young man, who must find an old man to play the part of father for “his” upcoming marriage. On the other hand, this line suggests the age-old problem of conception out of wedlock and a man forced to marry.
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