Analysis Of Controlling Katherine The Cruelty, Abuse,...

Controlling Katherine: The Cruelty, Abuse, and Manipulation of Petruchio’s Language Part of why Shakespeare’s plays have enjoyed popularity and critical acclaim through the years is their status as â€Å"a handy repository of exempla, cautionary tales, and wonderfully vivid scenes and characters† (Hume 64). One of Shakespeare’s plays that both can serve as cautionary tale and contains vibrant scenes and characters is The Taming of the Shrew, particularly evident in the tempestuous duo of Katherine and Petruchio. While audiences tend to see the play through the lens of romantic comedy, there is another side to Petruchio that necessitates close reading. Analysis of Petruchio’s unscrupulous, harsh, and offensive language and staged productions†¦show more content†¦He calls her the â€Å"prettiest Kate in Christendom,† indicating she can be â€Å"pretty† only if she is as he identifies her to be, Kate, not Katherine. He calls her â€Å"Kate of Kate-Hall†: she is so notorious in her cursedness that her home g ains its reputation not from her father, its owner, but from her. She is â€Å"his super-dainty Kate, / For dainties are all Kates†; he uses diminutive words to relabel her as delicate and all delicate things as like her. The insult in his language is further visually apparent to audiences in performances. In his role as Petruchio in the Globe Theatre stage performance of The Taming of the Shrew, Day uses body language to intensify the cruelty of his language. He and Katherine circle each other as if they are about to fight, he wide-eyed and gesturing with his hands to emphasize his meaning. He even dances a few ridiculous looking steps when he calls her â€Å"super-dainty,† demonstrating that he does not mean the diminutive words to be complimentary; rather, he intends mockery. Perhaps merely renaming Katherine in this way does not seem cruel, manipulative, or abusive, but by denying her the choice of her own identity and ascribing to her the characteristics he wishes her to have (in addition to Day’s caricaturizing these qualities in performance), he prevents her from being who she wants to be and forces her to be who he wants her to be. Not only does Petruchio deny Katherine the basic right to call herself what she wants to rather