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Shakespeare: Taming of the Shrew
lower is Lucentio. He changes his role from a lord to becoming a teacher. This shows that someone can move either up or down in roles, and if someone moves down then there should be nothing wrong with moving up to take there place, witch is exactly what happened between Lucentio and Tranio.
The most interesting change of roles is Kate. Kate is a very stubborn girl and nobody wants anything to do with her but one man takes the risk, this is Petruccio. She is forced to marry Petruccio, so her younger sister Bianca could get married. When Katherine lived with her father, she had a lot more freedom to say what she wanted and do what she wanted. Now she is married to a man that will not put up with her aggressive attitudes and planes to tame her into a new women. However, when Kate gets married, she loses these freedoms. It is complicated to see if Kate was really tamed or if she was just playing along in a game with Petruccio, either way she has changed roles. Petruccio’s forces her to obey him and if she dose not she is not able to eat or sleep. He says this in the end of Act Four, Scene Two, "My falcon now is sharp and passing empty, And until she stoop she must not be full-gorged" (4.1.76,180). And, "Another way I have to man my haggard, to make her come and know her keepers call is to watch her as we watch these kites" (4.2.76,183). These comments show that he is starving her, and not letting her sleep until she gives into him. Even though Kate may not want to do these things she must
if she wants to eat and sleep, and from this she changes her role and becomes tamed as seen in her closing speech where she is the only woman to obey her husband’s orders.
Petruchio also shows a change in this play. He goes into this relationship with Kate only looking for the money, and makes Kate a goal for him to make her a new person. He is not looking for love at all, but when Petruchio sees Kate for the first time he changed his ways of thinking. Now he is not taming Kate for the money anymore, but he begins to tame her for his own good so that she will fall in love with him, and he really sees a loving and beautiful side of Kate. At the end of the play it is seen that Kate and Petruchio fall for each other and have a great relationship together.
Shakespeare uses the change of role as a big theme in this play and many of his characters change throughout the play. He shows that there is nothing wrong with these changes through the plays characters such as Sly changing from a beggar to a lord Tranio and Lucentio switching roles, Kate becoming tamed into a new person, and many other example of change [next page]