We Are All Shrews to Be Tamed

The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare, is an entertaining play, uproariously funny at times and thought-provoking at others. The postmodern sensibility reviles this particular story as an offense against feminism. Studied closely through the lens of psychology, the characters unveil a wealth of ideas worth discussing. But what if there is more to it than entertainment, psychology, or social commentary? What if Taming is actually a metaphor for spiritual realities that affect the soul and its relationship—or lack thereof—to God? Could it be that Shakespeare, by some believed to be a closeted Catholic, was also attempting to convey universal truths about the rebellious soul’s journey toward submission to God and union with Him?

The Stage Is Set: Disordered Passions

Our passions were created by God to motivate us to do good. How could we manage to accomplish anything good or great without passion? If a bully strikes your younger brother, you leap to defend him. If you witness a grave injustice, you intervene. This is the result of the movement of passion in our souls. People without any passion live bland, passive, emotionless lives. They never do anything valiant. They remain forever unmoved by pity, sympathy, righteous anger, or love. This is almost like being dead while you are really walking around alive on earth.

Our passions are like a sharp tool. A man who is not careful with a sharp blade will end up cutting himself or someone else. The passions must be used carefully to accomplish the good or they will slip dangerously and make a mess of our lives, possibly harming others as well.

Katherine Minola is in such a situation at the opening of The Taming of the Shrew. Instead of her passions being rightly ordered, they are disordered. Katherine is like the charioteer in Plato’s Phaedrus who has lost control of one or more of his horses. Without exercising control over her passions, Katherine insults and abuses everyone around her; and the one she hurts the most is herself. With her callousness and cruelty, she has turned everyone against her. She has isolated herself from the friendship and love that she, like all of us, really needs from others.

In spiritual terms, Katherine is held captive by the personal vice that she justifies. Like many of us, she has held onto anger, telling herself, “I have a right to be this way because of what has been done to me.” But God doesn’t want us to live by what was done to us. He wants us to live by what was done for us: namely, His loving sacrifice on the Cross of Calvary which has purchased our freedom from eternal death. While it is certainly possible to express anger forcefully, as Christ did upon discovering the profanation of His Father’s temple (John 2:14-17), Scripture makes it clear that wreaking havoc with unbridled wrath is unacceptable.

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying, as fits the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:29-32)

Petruchio is an imperfect hero. Clearly, he struggles with maintaining control of his passions at times. Yet he seems to be aware that he needs to control himself, and it takes far more to push him to the limit. He maintains his cool for as long as he can with his obnoxious servant who shamelessly pushes his buttons. He even holds onto his temper through a seemingly interminable exchange with Kate and does not respond to her physical violence with excessive force that could cause her genuine harm. One gains a sense that his methods for “taming a shrew” may be familiar to him because, at one time, perhaps, he had to learn the same arduous lessons of self-mastery from someone else.

The Meeting

It is clear that Petruchio starts out looking for the richest wife he can find with no further expectations besides. He has no aspirations to obtain a well-matched wife who is as quick, intelligent, and energetic—passionate—as he is. Perhaps he has fewer riches than he gives the impression of having; or perhaps he has a large estate to maintain, many servants to pay, and not enough income—perfectly common problems for a man to have in the 16th century, even if the solution seems somewhat mercenary to us in modern times. Perhaps he has only met false, flattering women or simpering ladies who are beautiful but vapid. Whatever his motivations are, they are turned upside down when he meets Katherine. Somehow, he sees the woman and not only how she acts, which is violent, rude, and obnoxious. He is able to differentiate between the personality, which is “put on,” and the person herself.

There is something about her that is familiar and appealing because, in a way, she is just like him. Is it her self-assuredness? Her authenticity? Her refusal to manipulate or “play the game” of conventional courtship? Is it that she is full of passion, which only needs to be properly ordered to make a whole and wonderful person? As Christ sees the potential in each of us, Petruchio sees who Katherine could be. Resembling St. Paul who, by grace, was turned from the worst persecutor of Christians into one of the greatest of the apostles, or even St. Mary Magdalene who became a devoted follower of Christ after a life of shame, Katherine has inside her the potential to be not the worst of women but, in fact, the best of what a woman can be. At first, she rejects and strikes at Petruchio; but she will, one day, be to him “my sweet Kate.”

The Wedding: Forced Marriage or Rescue Mission?

What do you do with someone who is slowly being poisoned? If the environment is toxic, first you get them out of the place that is making them sick. Katherine’s home life easily qualifies as a “toxic environment.” Her father, Baptista, appears to mean well but fails to shepherd her or his household properly. Her younger sister is a master manipulator, playing the victim and gaining all of Baptista’s sympathy—and all the eligible men’s attention. Kate cannot bring herself to play these games and takes out her frustration in rage.

There is no “out” for her until Petruchio shows up and figuratively lays down his life—binding himself to her in indissoluble sacramental marriage—with the intention of radically changing her from a victim into a woman who has control of herself, which is true freedom. Instead of a tragic consignment to a terrible fate, Katherine’s marriage to Petruchio could be considered more of a rescue mission or an intervention attempt, not only to save her from marriage to one of the ill-suited men in her neighborhood but to save her from the prison she has made for herself already: a prison of misery, bad temper, and constant rage. Her own prison is her future—unless she is shown a way to tame her passions and bring them into submission.

Petruchio’s bizarre and carnival behavior at his own wedding makes little sense until one realizes that his apparent insanity is actually a form of honesty. Petruchio’s particular shortcomings are that he is brash, capricious, and occasionally bad-tempered. The fact that he shows up to his own wedding exaggerating these characteristics shows that he knows this about himself.

He will not lie to Kate by appearing tidily dressed and coiffed, acting the perfect gentleman for the wedding guests, when his daily home life with her will inevitably reveal his shortcomings before long. Which of us is perfectly easy to live with? We all miss the mark on occasion, and Petruchio has no illusions about his own foibles. He is showing Kate who he is, with all his warts and imperfections, just as she did for him back when he chose her, despite her flaws.

The New Home

Katherine has been angry, intimidating, and volatile, throwing massive tantrums when she doesn’t get what she wants. On the journey to her new home, and even before, Petruchio has begun to work on Katherine by acting out for her benefit how she behaves and how she makes everyone around her feel. No one has ever shown her anything like this before, and she experiences, for the first time, how exhausting, overwhelming, and disorienting it is to live with someone who loses control and abandons themselves to their passions. Her transformation begins when she first attempts to intercede for Grumio and the other servants who are on the receiving end of Petruchio’s theatrical wrath.

Incrementally, her passions are beginning to be rightly ordered. She sees the injustice that is being done and that the servants are in no way deserving of mistreatment. Justice—giving people their due—is something she now considers for the first time.

One of the deepest insights into Katherine’s shrewish behavior comes during the scene with the Tailor. She says to Petruchio:

My tongue will tell the anger of my heart
Or else my heart concealing it will break,
And, rather than it shall, I will be free
Even to the uttermost, as I please, in words.

Until this moment, Katherine feared that controlling herself would result in losing herself. She acts under the impression that her only means of exercising liberty or self-preservation is to vent her authentic feelings—no matter what they are—on everyone else around her. No one at home had cared to find out her innermost feelings or wishes before; simultaneously, they had fallen all over themselves to please and placate Bianca, her spoiled sister. Before Petruchio’s arrival, Katherine had no prospects but to become a spinster or wind up in a loveless marriage. She longed in vain to be “free” from a life so bleak. The only way for her to feel free was for her to unleash her passions: to speak her mind to the detriment of everyone else.

All of this changes later with the assurance that she has the love, the good will, and the care of Petruchio, whose name, like St. Peter, means “rock”. Secure in his regard, she no longer feels compelled to bully everyone—what she felt was “standing up for herself.” She can rest in the peace and knowledge that she is loved; her steadfast “rock,” who loves her, is looking out for her best interests. He will not allow her to be shamed. She can thus remain calm and in control of herself.

Like Katherine, a soul that is imprisoned by vice is not free. It is only through the merciful love of Christ that such a soul can be released from the torture that is compulsive, sinful behavior. Sometimes it is arduous and painful to be healed from sin or addiction. But the resulting peace and freedom is always worth the suffering it takes to be healed.

The Fast

Kate’s words, “What, did he marry me to famish me?” echo the mistrust and ingratitude of the Israelites rescued by God Himself from captivity in Egypt upon first feeling hunger and thirst in the desert. As it was supposed to do for the Israelites, Kate’s brief fast engenders in her soul the first movements of that virtue so essential to holiness: humility. As the Lenten fast does for Christians, Kate’s fast allows her to experience her own weakness, her own incapacity, and to begin to grow toward holiness, or wholeness.

A truly repentant soul must be ready and open to being reshaped by God. Was Shakespeare inspired by Scripture? Even the details and timeline of Petruchio’s efforts appear to match up to that mentioned in Hosea 6:

Come, and let us return to the Lord: For He hath taken us, and He will heal us: He will strike, and He will cure us. He will revive us after two days: on the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight. (vv. 1-2)

Note that Petruchio says to her, “We will fast for company.” In other words, he is not going to eat while she starves; they will both fast together. His attitude appears to be like St. Paul’s, as in 1 Corinthians 9:27, “I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.”

While Kate requires the fast to grow in virtue, Petruchio fasts as a knight and a priest—or an exorcist—would do before embarking on an important mission, spiritual or otherwise. What is Petruchio’s mission? As St. Paul instructs, “Preach the word; be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2). There are echoes of this technique in Petruchio’s attempt to teach Katherine the basic manners of relating to others: learn to give thanks, give over the constant arguing and contradiction, and remain in control of one’s passions.

It is likely that this is a lesson which Petruchio has had to learn over the course of his own life, as he himself struggles with outbursts of temper. This only makes him more human and realistic as a character. We do not expect him to be perfect. After all, the only perfect man who ever existed was Christ. Though we are all sinners, Petruchio included, we can try to imitate Christ by at least aiming at perfection and loving the one in front of us who appears to be unlovable.

The Submission

Petruchio demands that Kate call something other than what it is: the sun is “the moon.” Initially, this makes no sense at all. Why should Kate’s recuperation from shrew to decent woman involve affirming something she does not believe? The key to understanding this episode lies in recalling seemingly contradictory truths of our Faith. Christ is God—yet He was a man who walked the earth. That looks like bread on the altar—yet it is really Christ’s flesh. Mary was the mother of Jesus—yet she was a virgin.

Doesn’t a Christian experience ridicule for believing such seemingly contradictory things? But God tells us that they are all true, and we have faith in Him because we know He loves us. Petruchio is asking Kate to have radical trust in him and his love for her, even though her own eyes belie her. The same is what Christ asks of each one of us. Having the faith, the humility, and the surrender to be able to do this unites us perfectly with Him.

Petruchio wants unity with Katherine, and this is why he asks of her this radical trust. Once she has given him that trust, he no longer asks her to believe things that do not make sense—or rather, the things he asks of her end up making sense after all. Though Petruchio is not Christ, nor is he strictly Christlike, he seems to function in the story as a “Christ-type”—a character who functions to give Katherine a new life as Christ acted to redeem mankind.

Katherine’s Final Monologue

Petruchio insists that Katherine publicly rebuke Bianca and the Widow for their lack of respect and regard for their husbands. Psalm 141 says, “Let a righteous man strike me—that is a kindness;/Let him rebuke me—that is oil on my head” (v. 5). Fraternal correction is a gift if given in the right spirit. Does Petruchio wish to harm or humiliate these ladies for their obstinacy? Or is he trying to help them? Could he be giving Katherine an opportunity to prove wrong all those who have chronically categorized her as a lost cause?

The language of Katherine’s final monologue is profoundly scriptural. Note that Katherine never describes a husband with words like “tyrant,” “overlord,” “overseer,” “dominator,” or other words associated with despotic rule. She says, “Thy husband is thy Lord, thy life, thy keeper/ Thy head, thy sovereign, one who cares for thee, / And for thy maintenance commits his body to painful labor both by sea and land.” Who is our Lord? It is Christ. Who is our life? Jesus told us He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Christ is the Head of the Church. He is the Sovereign Priest. He is the Good Shepherd: our keeper.

A keeper, similar to a shepherd, is one who cares for and protects us—and as God told Cain in reference to Abel, we are all our brother’s keeper. Who committed His body to painful labor in the Passion? It was and is Christ. By sea and land—Christ carried out His mission to preach on land and even on the sea from a boat, healing people in the towns and quelling the waves to show His apostles His true Divinity. The speech is not so much a prescription for how to have a perfect marriage or be the model wife as it is a reasonable, logical expression of what the soul owes to Christ in return for the good He has done for us. As Christ is spouse to each one of us, so the marital conceit applies to our relationship with Him.

What of the widely bandied remark that a wife should place her hands below her husband’s foot? For some, the image conjures the idea of a woman’s hands being crushed beneath the weight of her tyrannical husband. Not if careful attention has been paid to the preceding images of the husband, who lays his life and body on the line to keep his wife at home, “secure and safe,” craving in return only “love, fair looks, and true obedience.” Is not this all that Christ asks of us in return for Redemption?

The wife’s hands beneath the husband’s foot might instead refer to our own hands clasped in prayer, supplication, and worship beneath the bleeding feet of Christ as He hangs on the Cross. The image of the “palm” of the hand below the feet of Christ could even recall the casting of palm branches under the feet of Christ at His entrance into Jerusalem.

If we are to take it in a more direct sense, can wives figuratively place their hands below their husbands’ feet in order to lift them up that they might reach Heaven? Or even in order to buoy them up and restore them from the inevitable battering they receive as they fight the good fight in the world? These are worthwhile things to consider for those who would like to have an excellent marriage—and a more perfect union with Christ.