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

Katherine and Bianca of The Taming of the Shrew The Taming of the Shrew brings out the comedic side of Shakespeare where irony and puns carry the play throughout. In my paper, I will concentrate on one the irony of the play, the introduction of the two sisters. These two sisters begin off with the elder, Katherine, viewed as a shrew, and Bianca as the angelic 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 method 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 character than the epithet would imply. From the beginning we see that she is continually placed second in her father's affections, and despised by all others. Bianca on the other hand, is identified as the favorite, playing the long-suffering angel, increasing Baptisa's distinction between the two. As Katherine recognizes her sister's strategy, her reaction 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 Act II, Scene I, when Katherine sums up her own state: "I will go sit and weep/ Till I can find occasion of revenge" (35-36). It is an immature response, but the only one she knows, and it serves the dual purpose 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 positive one. The shrew is not a shrew at all beneath the surface. The play begins introducing Katherine with her father's words of shame towards her when he offers his eldest daughter to the two suitors of Bianca. The audience is then given their first impression of Katherine from the Gremio, a suitor of Bianca, right after her father's words when he says: "To cart her, rather.