Kate’s Final Speech from the Taming of the Shrew
The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare is a comedic play about men and women in Elizabethan society who are playing parts and are pretending to be everything but what they really are in order to marry and continue the current social order.
The two major females Kate and Bianca, represent the proper role of a woman and the improper shrew of a woman. These were really the primary choices for an Elizabethan woman. Bianca is everything an Elizabethan woman should be. She is modest, chaste, fragile, beautiful, and obedient.
A woman is beauty itself and “no scornful glances” (137) should be given to your husband. They “blot thy beauty.” It “confounds thy fame.” It is not amiable.” (136–141). A woman was beauty, submission, and loyalty. She was property, a possession belonging to one man or another through out her life.
Or according to the standards of the day, that’s what she should be. She should “Kneel for peace.” With bodies “soft, weak, (and) smooth,” (165) women are “bound to serve, love, and obey” (164). Bianca is all of these things, or at least she gives the appearance that she is all of these things. Bianca is an amiable proper woman. Kate is not.
Kate is everything a proper woman shouldn’t be. She has chosen a role so far from proper that she is considered to be a shrew…
