Dale G.

Priest

KATHERINA'S CONVERSION IN THE TAMING OF THE SHREW:

A THEOLOGICAL HEURISTIC

W
HAT has happened to Katherina in Act V of Shakespeare's The
Taming ofthe 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.' "Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper," she
says to the disobedient wives; "Such duty as the subject owes the prince, /
Even such a woman oweth to her husband" (V.ii.l46, 155-56). Her lecture
clearly reflects and reinforces not only the chain of authority at the center
of the Elizabethan world picture, but the Pauline theology so often cited
to sustain it as well. In this essay I wish to argue, however, for an
ambivalent and parallel reading of Kate's experience, a reading that
illustrates a paradox found elsewhere in the teachings of St. Paul. If
Kate's conversion is the subjugation found in a conservative reading of
Colossians 3.18, it is also the liberation implicit in I Corinthians 7.22:
"For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord."
Petruchio's lordship over Katherine has released her from the prison of
her miserable self and given her the freedom to play.
As one might expect, the critics are divided about the "proper"
reading of The Shrew. It can be said, in general, that the rigorous or
conservative reading of the play is associated with the generic critics,
specifically those who see the play as farce.^ According to this view, most
persuasively argued by H. J. Oliver in his introductory essay to the Oxford
Shakespeare edition of the play, the Induction and the early, hyperbolic
references to Kate as animal or demon prepare an audience to expect a
rough-and-tumble shrew-taming as in a Punch and Judy show (50-51).
This interpretation is countered, however, by readings that variously argue
for the benign or potentially benign effects on Kate of Petruchio's so-
called "taming" of her.' The post-formalist criticism of the last fifteen
years or so has spawned a number of such interpretations, including John
C. Bean's feminist argument that Kate is humanized by her husband and
"discovers love through the discovery of her own identity" (66). From the
"language as power" school comes Tita Baumlin's essay demonstrating
that Petruchio "creates through words a 'brave new world' of marital
harmony" for him and Kate (237). Bridging the gap between these views
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is Marianne Novy's nicely balanced argument that Kate's final speech is

both theatrical perfonnance and evidence of her new command of proper
convention and socially approved language, suggesting an ambivalent
relation in the drama between play and hierarchical social reality (277-
79). Finally, although Sybil Trouchet compares Petruchio's mastery of
Kate to the reclaiming of a soul through baptism, her argument remains
centered in a conservative reading of Petruchio's "awful rule" (1-10).
The Induction to the play, often cut in theatrical productions, forecasts
Kate's conversion experience by way of theological analogy, albeit
farcical. In the Induction, a lord and his attendants find an unconscious
drunkard, Christopher Sly, and decide to take him home and practice on
him by trying to convince him that he is a nobleman just now returning to
himself after fifteen years of insanity. When he sees the sleeping Sly, there
is an unmistakable sense of power in the lord's language as his scheme
takes shape in his mind. It is the god-like power of creation itself. "What's
here? One dead . . . ?" he asks. "See, doth he breathe?" Through the power
of will and the imagination, the lord is about to create, theatrically, a new
creature. To the lord, the unconscious Sly is an inanimate lump, an image
of death. No actor animates, no lines enliven his inert form. The lord,
however, will resurrect him and create a role for him, inspire him, breathe
into him new life on a theatrical level. We note the theological implica-
tions of the lord's title. He is simply "the lord," and like the God of
Genesis, he will create a man "in his own image"; Sly will awake also a
"lord," but obviously a little lower than his creator. The attempt, in fact, is
hopelessly doomed because of Sly's intransigence. Like Kate to come. Sly
is firmly committed to his own closed identity and apparently impervious
to change. Petruchio's lordship over Kate, however, will be motivated by
compelling purpose, and executed with more effective resolve than the
lord of the Induction can summon for his practical joke. Petruchio's power
and persistence will produce a new creature.
To argue for a thoroughgoing parallel between Petruchio and Christ
would be a bit reckless. The former makes it fairly clear that his initial
motive for converting Kate is mercantile, and he does not show humility
very often. Nevertheless, his misunderstood identity and mission, his
messianic zeal, and his penchant for paradox in his methodology and his
teaching—all recommend Petruchio as the lord of the main play. He is a
stranger who appears on the scene with an unclear purpose, and the
community does not know quite what to make of him. When asked who
people thought Jesus was, the apostle Peter gave three different answers
(Mt. 16.13-14). Likewise, when trying to explain the meaning of
Petruchio's tardiness for his own wedding, the community gives three
different answers, each dependent upon what the speaker believes he or

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she knows about the bridegroom: Baptista calls him shamefully unde-
pendable; Tranio calls him honest and well meaning, but detained by
fortune; Katherine calls him crazy (III.ii. 1-25). Kate says more than she
knows, for it is precisely Petruchio's madcap but purposeful vision—
couched in paradox and energized by his power to refashion reality—that
informs his pedagogical pronouncements and his modus operandi in
working the miracle of Kate's conversion.

P ETRUCHio announces his readiness, his vision, and his strategy in a key
soliloquy delivered just before he meets the notorious shrew:

. . . I will attend her here

And woo her with some spirit when she comes.
Say that she rail; why, then I'll tell her plain
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale.
Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear
As morning roses newly washed with dew.
Say she be mute and will not speak a word;
Then I'll commend her volubility
And say she uttereth piercing eloquence.
(Il.i. 168-76)

At the philological level, the speech reflects the sophist's power to

manipulate language and transvalue semantics to suit the needs of the
rhetorician. Such power over language creates "new versions of the world
by eradicating static, preconceived notions and offering the listener the
freedom to choose a new mode of thinking. . . . The sophist accomplishes
his persuasions through a verbal creation of potential situations, rather
than a mimesis or mirroring of present conditions" (Baumlin 244). As
rhetorician, Petruchio posits a linguistic "otherness" to challenge or
convert the expectations derived from traditional usage. Kate's "railing"
becomes "sweet singing" at Petruchio's bidding and for his purpose.
On a deeper, philosophical level, the passage points to the paradoxical
epistemology at the heart of Biblical truth and Christian theology.
Petruchio, the lord of paradox in the play, describes "Katherine the curst"
in terms of the reality she represents by communal or worldly definition,
and simultaneously renames her in terms of the "conformable household
Kate" she "really" is by his definition. Her reality, already converted to its
opposite in his paradoxical mode of perceiving truth, will be her actual or
communal reality when she learns this truth and accepts its liberating
power for herself. Until then, the real Kate is the identity imposed upon
her by community and habitual self. She is a "last" figure whom Petruchio
has and will transvalue or convert into a "first" figure, recalling Jesus'

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power to elevate, in his kingdom, the lowly and despised (Mt. 23.12; Lk.
18.14). From last in her family, subject to Baptista's authority and
enslaved by his favoritism for Bianca, she will be raised to first in
Petruchio's family. Just as Jesus exalted and lifted to equality and
companionship the most uncouth and vulgar (Peter the fisherman), the
most despised (Matthew the tax collector), and the most dreaded and
feared (Saul the persecutor), Petruchio chooses and exalts the cursed and
outcast Katherine unto equality with himself as his true wife upon her
conversion at the end. "Kiss me, Kate" will then signify the union of true
minds and like spirit.
Immediately following his soliloquy, Petruchio meets the shrew for
the first time and proceeds, according to his stated purpose, to "woo her
with some spirit when she comes." The word "spirit" is especially
appropriate in regard to his vision and strategy, suggesting not only zeal
and commitment but also his power to "suppose," to create alternative
realities that are the simultaneous inverse of literal or apparent circum-
stance—i.e., the spiritual power outlined in the soliloquy. The new spirit
starts with her new name, Kate, suggesting that to him she is already a
converted creature, at least in potentia. When she protests that her name
is not Kate, but Katherine, Petruchio responds with a barrage of
paradoxical inversions making manifest the vision of the soliloquy: "You
lie, in faith, for you are called plain Kate /. . . the prettiest Kate in
Christendom, / Kate of Kate-Hall, my super-dainty Kate / . .. Hearing thy
mildness praised in every town, / . . . Myself am moved to woo thee for
my wife" (Il.i. 185-94). When she begins then to rail and strike him and
call him "witless," he confronts her firmly with this remarkable
profession:
Now, Kate, I am a husband for your tum.
For by this light whereby I see thy beauty.
Thy beauty that doth make me like thee well,
Thou must be married to no man but me;
For I am he am bom to tame you, Kate,
And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate
Conformable as other household Kates.
(II.i.268-78)
The degree to which the speech represents literal truth is offset by the
power of the truth in spirit pronounced here. Is Kate really beautiful? The
answer is yes, for Petruchio "intends" her beautiful, just as he "intends"
that "all is done in reverent care for her" at his country house later, when
he deprives her of food and sleep (IV.ii.l91). According to his vision, she
is beautiful and she is his, as he already anticipates his victory of "peace,
love and quiet life" (V.ii. 108). There is a lesson here about the joyful value

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of relativistic vision and paradoxical perception that Kate is not yet ready
to assimilate, a power firmly in Petruchio's possession: "The Lord sees
not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks
on the heart" (I Sam. 16.7). Petruchio will teach Kate to see "by this
light."

LL good teachers use metaphor to make truth more vivid to their

A students; this is especially true of spirit-led teachers who habitually
see beneath the surface of experience. Petruchio is no exception. The
allusive, metaphorical quality of "this light" that illuminates both Kate's
appearance and Petruchio's vision anticipates a more accessible metaphor
that he will use throughout the rest of the play in his mission to educate or
convert Kate. I refer to his use of clothing as a teaching device. His first
use of this metaphor occurs at the wedding ceremony, when he shows up,
late, dressed as inappropriately as could possibly be conceived. As usual,
there is method in his apparent madness. To Baptista's protest that his
attire is "shame to your estate, / An eyesore to our solemn festival"
(ni.ii.99-100), Petruchio replies, "Therefore have done with words; / To
me she's married, not unto my clothes" (IILii.115-16). This unfeigned
reprimand clearly echoes Jesus' chiding of his audience in the Sermon on
the Mount for their anxiety about what they will eat and wear: "Is not life
more than food, and the body more than clothing? . . . Why are you
anxious about clothing?" (Mt. 6.25-27). Both Petruchio and Jesus are
calling attention to the difference between outside and inside, appearances
and reality, superficial trappings and the interior person. Interestingly,
Petruchio follows this pronouncement with a rare, public revelation of his
own interior self—his most humble and sincere moment except for the
soliloquies: "Could I repair what she will wear in me / As I can change
these poor accoutrements, / 'Twere well for Kate and better for myself
(117-20). His use of the clothing metaphor has reminded him of his own
faults, which he will try to repair after Kate has changed her superficial
wardrobe, as it were, so that the "real" couple can live together happily.
As if suddenly aware that he is "casting pearls before swine," however, he
collects himself and resumes his mission: "But what a fool am I to chat
with you, / When I should bid good morrow to my bride / And seal the
title with a lovely kiss!" (120-22).
At Petruchio's country house, Kate endures an extended, agonizing
ordeal to prepare her for subsequent enlightenment and the assimilation of
her husband's liberating vision. Her painful experience recalls the
instructive admonitions of Jesus' brother James, who, at the beginning of
his epistle, says that trials are to be counted a blessing because they lead
to steadfastness and wisdom (James 1.2-5). Indeed, Kate's great trial

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emerges as a kind of purgatorial experience whereby she is cleansed of all

superficial or worldly concerns. Petruchio's depriving her of food, drink,
and sleep is an analogue to fasting in secret, the New Testament prelude
to spiritual regeneration (Mt. 6.17-18). When he sees that the time is right,
Petruchio begins his final lesson to prepare her for conversion, and again
he uses the clothing metaphor as his primary teaching device. Exercising
his antic disposition to the fullest, he flies into a fit of mock rage when the
tailor delivers the cap and gown Petruchio had ordered for his wife. Kate
likes the articles and wants very much to keep them, but her husband raves
that they are incorrectly made and must be taken back. Our key to the
theatrical nature of the outburst is the poor, unwitting tailor's protest that
the garments have been sewn exactly to Petruchio's specifications. We can
be sure that they are, indeed, correct; Petruchio is again staging an
instructive performance. He understands that to a person like Kate, clothes
represent reality, an extension of the self. She sees them, wants them, and
feels they must be hers—a childish urge to enhance and gratify her self,
her essence. Thus Petruchio will not let her have them—again, to shock
her into recognizing her own immaturity portrayed before her. He wants
her to realize that clothing, like the fixed and rigid identity she wears and
clings to with such fervor, are mere appearance; neither must be mistaken
for reality or happiness.
Her purgatory at the country house almost over, Kate and her husband
make ready to retum to her father's house, but there is time for one last
lesson and one last use of the clothing figure. He tells her gently, I
suggest:

Well, come, my Kate. We will unto your father's.

Even in these honest mean habiliments.
Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor.
For 'tis the mind that makes the body rich;
. . . Neither art thou the worse
For this poor furniture and mean array.
If thou account'st it shame, lay it on me.
And therefore frolic.
(IV.iii. 166-79)

Like Jesus at the end of his parables, Petruchio makes clear the meaning
of his metaphor in explicit terms. Humble clothing, paradoxically,
indicates richness of spirit. It is her mind that can make her wealthy, not
her garments. So they will travel home in "mean array." If Kate does not
quite yet accept the apparent shame, she can "lay it on" Petruchio,
suggesting Jesus' voluntary bearing of his disciples' burdens, including
their failure to understand him completely (Mt. 11.28-30). When she

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consents to go with him, the final journey to conversion is underway.

Their destination is "your father's," or "our father's," as he says when
they are out on the road (IV.v.l). The "return unto the father" motif here
resonates with obvious theological overtones that include the poverty-
stricken, poorly dressed prodigal son returning home (Lk. 15.11-32), and
Jesus' ascension to his father's right hand following his resurrection (Mk.
16.19). Kate's resurrection, as it were, is itself now at hand, whereupon
she may "frolic" for the first time in her life.

T HE final step, then, in the transformation of Katherine the curs't into

frolicking Kate occurs on the trip back to Padua when she sees the
light, both literally and figuratively, in a scene that recalls St. Paul's
conversion on the road to Damascus in the ninth chapter of Acts. Both
scenes are epiphanies, moments of discovery signified by the oxymoronic
interplay of dazzling light and blindness, and both result in a convert with
a new name. Let us look at the exchange in detail:

Pet: Come on i' God's name, once more toward our father's.
Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!
Kath: The moon! The sun. It is not moonlight now.
Pet: I say it is the moon that shines so bright.
Kath: I know it is the sun that shines so bright.
Pet: Now, by my mother's son, and that's myself.
It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,. . .
Kath: Forward, I pray, since we have come so far.
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please.
An if you please to call it a rush candle.
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.
Pet: I say it is the moon.
Kath: I know it is the moon.
Pet: Nay, then you lie. It is the blessed sun.
Kath: Then, God be blessed, it is the blessed sun. . . .
What you will have it nam'd, even that it is.
And so it shall be for Katherine. . . .
Pet: Why, how now, Kate, I hope thou art not mad.
(IV. V. 1-42)

What Petruchio means, in his usual paradoxical mode here, is, "I am
pleased, Kate, that thou art mad at last." In the exchange we note the
frequency of the words "God" and "blessed," and the reference to "our
father's." Petruchio's "now by my mother's son, and that's myself,"
perhaps recalls Christ's announcement of his divine origin and powers.
Kate's statement of submission, furthermore, seems to have the ring of a
religious confession ("Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me"). With this

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confession she is converted to her lord's subjunctive "doctrine," released

from the prison of her old, fixed identity to enjoy the freedom and
spontaneity that animate Petruchio himself. She has learned (recalling
Biblical paradox) that to find herself she must lose herself and has
forsworn her oath to resist Petruchio's efforts to convert her. Thus when
they meet Vincentio on the road, she playfully participates with her
husband in the transformation game of pretending the old man is a "young
budding virgin"; and when Petruchio returns him into old Vincentio, Kate
responds:

Pardon, old father, my mistaking eyes

That have been so bedazzled with the sun
That everything I look on seemeth green.
Now I perceive thou art a reverend father;
Pardon, I pray thee, for my mad mistaking.
(45-49)

The conservative proponents of farce will read Kate's acquiescence here

as "weary resignation" (Oliver 56). Surely Kate's deliverance into
something finer and happier than she has known is a better reading,
however, especially since Shakespeare has cultivated our interest in these
people as human beings rather than as the mechanical puppets of a typical
Renaissance farce. Furthermore, the text encourages us to find metaphor-
ical meaning in Kate's blindness and subsequent vision. Petruchio's
miracle reminds us of Jesus' giving sight to the blind man in St. John's
gospel: "I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and
that those who see may become blind" (Jn. 9.39). The result, for
Katherine, is that all is now "green," signifying regeneration. She is free
to enjoy her husband's happy madness at last.
We return, in closing, to where we began—Kate's chiding speech to
Bianca and Hortensio's widow in the final scene. The banquet scenario
recalls the famous banquet parable in Luke 14, where the host invites
upstanding guests who all make excuses, whereupon he invites the "poor
and the blind" to the feast instead. In the play, the respectable ladies are
instructed by their husbands to come forth, but they both make excuses.
Biondello tells Lucentio that Bianca "is busy, and cannot come" (V.ii.81);
and he reports to Hortensio that his wife "will not come, (for) she bids you
come to her" (92). Then the call goes out for the supposed shrew—the
poor outcast and least likely invitee—and she, of course, accepts the
invitation without excuse, to the wonderment of all. As in the parable, the
two respectable invitees "will not taste the banquet," whereas the poor
Katherine wins the reward—the one hundred crowns wagered by the
husbands. Kate has won the victory. Ultimately, the degree to which she

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is serious about the particulars of her closing speech to the disobedient

wives is impossible to determine. But I feel that the proponents of
thoroughgoing farce, as well as G. B. Shaw and those who find the speech
"disgusting to modem sensibility" (Wilson 180) both overlook the
possibility—strongly encouraged by the theological implications of her
conversion—that she is playing the role designed to win the game. In any
case, she is behaving in a manner that would have been impossible before
her conversion. I sense the liberation of her mind and spirit here. Kate is
now able to experience the joys of responsible freedom rather than the
misery and bondage of the self-centered will.

Notes
1) Fineman, for instance, observes that the discursive modes of Katherine and
Petruchio are subversive inversions of traditional patterns endorsed by patriarchal society;
yet the subversive patterns manage to resecure, at the end, the very order to which they
seem to be opposed. He wonders, in fact, if it is possible for canonical literature to voice
a language that does not speak, sooner or later, for the order and authority of man (138 ff.).
2) See Alexander; Brunvand; Heilman; Weiss.
3) In addition to those studies cited in the text, see Berry; Bradbrook; Dusinberre;
Gottlieb; Huston; Seronsy.

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Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1980. 65-78.
Berry, Ralph. Shakespeare's Comedies. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972.
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