Katherine and Bianca of The Taming of the Shrew :: Taming Shrew Essays

Katherine and Bianca of The Taming of the shrewmouse           The Taming of the Shrew brings out the comedic side of Shakespeare where irony and puns carry the looseness throughout.  In my paper, I will concentrate on one the irony of the play, the introduction of the twain sisters.  These cardinal sisters begin off with the elder, Katherine, viewed as a shrew, and Bianca as the sweet younger of the two.  However, as the play proceeds, we begin to see the true sides of the two sisters and their roles totally turn around.  I will try to analyze the regularity in which Shakespeare introduces the two sisters and how he hints their true identity and the events for the rest of the play during the first two acts.           Although even her father calls her a shrew, Katherine has a deeper parting than the epithet would imply.  From the beginning we see that she is continually placed secon d in her fathers affections, and despised by all others.  Bianca on the other hand, is identified as the favorite, playing the long- ugly angel, increasing Baptisas distinction between the two.  As Katherine recognizes her sisters strategy, her reception is as one can imagine how another would react suffering this type of bias for so many years.  She is hurt and she seeks revenge.  This is seen in scrap II, Scene I, when Katherine sums up her own state I will go sit and weep/ Till I can find antecedent of revenge (35-36).  It is an immature response, but the only one she knows, and it serves the dual employment of cloaking her hurt.  The transformation, which she undergoes near the end of the play, is not one of character, but one of attitude.  At the end of the play, we find out that her negative attitude becomes a exacting one.     The shrew is not a shrew at all below the surface.           The pla y begins introducing Katherine with her fathers words of shame towards her when he offers his eldest daughter to the two petitioners of Bianca.  The audience is then given their first impression of Katherine from the Gremio, a suitor of Bianca, right after her fathers words when he says To cart her, rather.