Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Dale G. Priest

Critical Essay by Dale G. Priest

SOURCE: “Katherina's Conversion in The Taming of the Shrew: A Theological Heuristic,” in Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, Vol. XLVII, No. 1, Fall, 1994, pp. 31-40.

In the following essay, Priest discusses the conversion of Kate, and draws parallels between Petruchio—who transforms the unworthy, thus freeing and enriching them—and Christ.

What has happened to Katherina in Act V of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew? The most conservative possible reading of the play finds in the five words of its title the literal and formulaic answer to the question: Katherine the Kite, the wild and willful animal, has been domesticated, subdued, tamed. Even revisionist and deconstructionist critics have trouble refashioning the conclusion into a version that does not, finally, reassert the patriarchal order made explicit in Kate's final speech.¹ “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,” she says to the disobedient wives; “Such duty as the subject...
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