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Thesis: Berry puzzles over the Induction, but condemns it as quite unnecessary, then briefly characterizes Bianca as a minx whose function is to be a foil to Katherine, and moves on "the major action of the play, Petruchio's taming of Katherina" (63). Berry says that from the moment they meet one another, Petruchio and Katherine both understand that they are playing a game, and that the rest of the transactions between them are merely negotiations about the rules of the game. In the end, according to Berry, Katherine discovers that the way to play Petruchio's game is by matching his hyperbole with her own. Thus her famous final speech is a performance: [W]e really cannot take that speech at face value. Much of this comedy is an unspoken dialogue between Katherina and Petruchio; and we have to take her speech in the context of the whole play, not as a set-piece on the woman's place. We should read Katherina's final speech as the parallel, and answer, to Petruchio's rhetoric. The mode of speech adopted by each is hyperbole. We need not argue the content, but a modified version of the hyperbole—the notion that males adopt a formal lead, and initiative, in matters involving both sexes—still exists, if only in ritual form, in our day. In other words Katherina, like her husband, is merely overstating an essential truth. Psychologically, her homily to the Widow and Bianca is perfectly apt. Katherina, laying it on with a trowel, is cooperating fully with her husband to despoil the neighbors. This is a husband-wife team that has settled, to its own satisfaction, the rules of its games, and now preaches them unctuously to its friends. (70) Evaluation: I agree with everything that Berry says, but it seems to me that he leaves a lot out. For instance, he says that by the end of their first encounter, "Katherina likes [Petruchio] well enough" (66), but he says nothing about why she likes him, or about how she came to like him.
Bottom Line: Persuasive and readable, but hurried. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Taming of the Shrew Navigator Home | Selected Bibliography |