The Taming of the Shrew Act 5 Scene 2

Act 5, Scene 2 The Taming of the Shrew

Summary

At a wedding banquet for Lucentio and Bianca, the three couples—Petruchio/Katherine, Lucentio/Bianca, and Hortensio/the Widow—gather. The women engage in witty banter, with Bianca and the Widow showing independent, sharp tongues. Petruchio, teased about being married to a shrew, proposes a wager: each husband will send for his wife; the one whose wife obeys most promptly wins.

Bianca and the Widow both refuse to come when summoned. Katherine, however, comes immediately. Petruchio then orders her to fetch the other wives, which she does. To cap his victory, he commands Katherine to lecture the two "disobedient" wives on their duty. Katherine delivers a long, eloquent speech extolling a wife's absolute submission to her husband as her lord, king, and governor, describing a woman's rebellion as ugly and treasonous. She ends by offering to place her hand under Petruchio's foot. Petruchio, triumphant, kisses her and leads her to bed, having won the wager and public acclaim for taming the shrew.

Analysis

1. The Ultimate Performance: Public Demonstration

The entire scene is a public staging of Petruchio's triumph. The wager is not about private affection but about public, performative obedience. Katherine's transformation is displayed for the entire community that once scorned her. Her obedience becomes a spectacle, the final act in Petruchio's theatrical production, proving his mastery to society.

2. Katherine's Speech: Submission or Subversion?

This is the most debated moment in Shakespeare. Interpretations range from:

• Genuine Transformation: Katherine has been psychologically broken and internalized patriarchal doctrine. Her speech is a sincere manifesto of her new, submissive identity.
• Ironic Performance: Katherine is performing obedience so perfectly it becomes a caricature. The speech's extreme length and rhetorical polish suggest a conscious performance, not a broken spirit. She has learned the rules of the game so well she can now "win" within it by giving Petruchio the public victory he craves, possibly securing peace and influence in return.
• Strategic Survival: Having understood that direct rebellion leads to suffering, she adopts the language of power to gain a measure of security and status. By becoming the chief exponent of obedience, she gains a new, powerful voice.

3. The Un-Tamed Wives: Bianca and the Widow

The other wives serve as foils, complicating any simple reading of the ending.

• Bianca: The seemingly "ideal" daughter is revealed as a disobedient wife. Her secret rebellion has turned into open defiance ("The more fool you for laying on my duty").
• The Widow: She is openly sharp and resistant. Hortensio's failure contrasts with Petruchio's success, suggesting his "taming school" methods work, but also revealing that not all women are tamed.
  This creates a ironic reversal: the "shrew" ends the play as the model wife, while the "ideal" women are the new shrews. This undermines any clear moral, suggesting the problem of female will is cyclical, not solved.

4. Commerce and Marriage

The scene is framed by wagers and monetary rewards (Baptista adds twenty thousand crowns to Petruchio's winnings). Marriage, even in its final "tamed" state, is still tied to financial transaction and competition among men. Petruchio's victory is both social and economic.

5. Power Dynamics: Who Truly Wins?

Petruchio wins the wager, public acclaim, and a seemingly compliant wife. However:

• Katherine commands the stage with her long, memorable speech; he has only short, commanding interjections.
• She becomes the authority figure lecturing the other women, granted a platform by him but using it with her own powerful rhetoric.
• Their exit to bed ("Come, Kate, we'll to bed") can be read as the ultimate patriarchal claim, or as a suggestion of mutual, private intimacy now that the public performance is over. Her final compliance might be the price of a truce, not a surrender.

6. The Induction's Echo: The End of the Play

The frame of Christopher Sly is typically cut from this scene in modern editions, but its original presence is crucial. The play ends, and the actors exit, leaving Sly to wake up back in his rags, rejected by the "wife." This breaks the illusion and reminds us that we have just watched a performance, a fiction. It forces the audience to question the "reality" of Katherine's taming. Was it any more real than Sly's belief he was a lord? This meta-theatrical layer makes the final scene even more ambiguous—is it a prescription for marriage, or a satirical presentation of a male fantasy?

7. A Problematic "Comedy"

The ending is deliberately uncomfortable. The laughter is uneasy. Shakespeare presents a "happy ending" that satisfies the comic structure (marriage, resolution) but leaves deep questions about power, consent, and identity. The play refuses to clearly endorse or condemn Petruchio's methods, forcing the audience to grapple with its meaning.

In essence, Act 5, Scene 2 is a brilliant, troubling conclusion. It provides the comic satisfaction of a resolved plot and a transformed heroine, yet simultaneously undermines that satisfaction through irony, reversal, and the unsettling spectacle of Katherine's speech. It is less a moral lesson and more an intricate puzzle about performance, power, and the stories we tell ourselves about marriage and gender. Whether Katherine is broken, brilliant, or both, her final performance ensures that she, not Petruchio, is the character who dominates the play's lasting memory.