Taming of the Shrew

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The Taming of the Shrew Shrew--1Free, Mary. “Hortensio’s Role in Closing The Taming of the Shrew’s Induction,” RenaissancePapers 1999 (1999): 43-53.1Laurie E. Maguire, “Cultural Control in The Taming of the Shrew,”Renaissance Drama 26 (1995): 83.2Larry S. Champion, The Evolution of Shakespeare’s Comedy: A Study inDramatic Perspective, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 38. 3David Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, updated 4thed. (NewYork: Longman 1997), 110.Hortensio’s Role in Closing The Taming of the Shrew’s InductionThe minor characters in The Taming of the Shrew receive little critical attention and to anextent rightly so. As Laurie E. Maguire points out, “To say that Shakespeare’s [play] is. . .abouttaming is to state the obvious: the ‘wooing’ of Katherine by Petruchio, perhaps more than anyother main plot in Shakespeare, dominates performance and criticism.”1The minor charactersserve primarily, according to Larry S. Champion, as "comic pointers" to the main plot's action oras dupes to the more clever.2To relegate Hortensio to either of these categories, however,ignores his centrality as motivator of the main plot, and although David Bevington findsHortensio “laughably inept”3--he functions, in fact, as the main plot’s lynchpin. Hortensio isthe first to draw our attention to the shrewish Katherine, and it is he who seizes the opportunity Shrew--2Free, Mary. “Hortensio’s Role in Closing The Taming of the Shrew’s Induction,” RenaissancePapers 1999 (1999): 43-53.4See Martha Andrensen-Thom, “Shrew-Taming and Other Rituals of Aggression:Baiting and Bonding on the Stage and in the Wild,” Women’s Studies 9, no. 2(1982): 121-143; Ann Barton, Introduction to The Taming of the Shrew, in TheRiverside Shakespeare, 2d ed., gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton,1997),138-41; Emily Detmer, “Civilizing Subordination: Domestic Violence inThe
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