Marriage In The Taming Of The Shrew

In the performance of The Taming of The Shrew by William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew focuses on dating and marriage, but, unlike most of the plays he wrote, it takes a great deal of attention to married life after the wedding. The play focus on the concerns of married life would have suggest notably related to English audiences of the Renaissance period. There were people worried with marriage in general, thanks in part to Henry VIII’s separation of England from the Catholic Church in 1534 in order to secure a divorce that the pope had refused to grant him. Henry’s troubles focuses on one important aspect of Elizabethan marriages among the upper class: they were most often arranged for money, land, or power, rather than for love. Unless you were the king of England, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries offered couple of ways out of a miserable marriage.

Lucentio, aside to Tranio “But in the other 's silence do I see Maid 's mild behavior and sobriety. Peace, Tranio” (1.1.71-73) When Tranio sees Bianca for the very first time, he gives voice to the reason why men find Bianca so attractive and suitable for marriage; silence and obedience to her father make her an ideal woman and an attractive candidate for wifehood. Too bad for Lucentio that Bianca turns out to be none of these things. Curtis “By this reck 'ning, he is more shrew than she” (4.1.79). The term shrew is often reserved for railing women. Here, Curtis learns of Petruchio 's behavior and calls him a bigger shrew than Katherina. We know that this is Petruchio 's plan. But, Curtis 's choice of words raises the question of whether or not Petruchio 's masculinity is compromised in any way when he rails like a woman, so to speak. Grumio "A title for a maid of all titles the worst” (1.2.130-131). Grumio 's insistence that being labeled a shrew is the worst fate a woman can suffer is odd; we 're used to hearing that being labeled a whore is the worst reputation for a woman in