966 shakespeare, William
Comparing unruly women to animals in need
of taming was commonplace in Shakespeare’s day.
If a man could not bridle his wife’s tongue and rein
in her shrewish behavior, taming her wild heart to
his command, he was considered effeminate and
suspected to be a cuckold. His shortcomings invited
communal ridicule, including horn jokes and “rid-
ings” that portrayed the husband riding backwards
on a horse while his wife beat him.
Well aware of such dangers, Petruchio simul-
taneously woos and “schools” Kate in the “proper”
relationship of husband and wife, peppering his
courtship discourse with sexually suggestive refer-
ences to horses, wasps, hens, and cats. To Kate’s
“Asses are made to bear and so are you,” he wittily
responds, “Women are made to bear and so are you”
(2.1.195–196). Punning on bearing children, bear-
ing a husband’s weight in bed, and bearing with
a husband’s divinely ordained rule over his wife,
Petruchio implies that a good wife, like a good
horse, submits to being bridled, ridden, and reined
in. Kate retorts by turning herself into the rider and
Petruchio into the horse: “No such jade as you, if me
you mean” (2.1.196). Clearly, Kate does not intend
to be “tamed” by a man she does not find attractive
and virile. Undaunted (perhaps even encouraged),
Petruchio calls Kate a wasp, threatens to pluck out
her “sting,” and debates its location—tongue or tail.
Promising to be gentle—“A combless cock, so Kate
will be my hen” (2.1.222)—he nevertheless insists
his destiny is to bring her “from a wild Kate” to a
tame cat (2.1.270).
The sexual connotations of such animal imagery
persist when the men compare women to hawks
and falcons—valuable, spirited animals that must
be taught to respond to one master. Overhearing
Bianca inviting Lucentio to woo her (“And may you
prove, sir, master of your art!”), the rejected suitor
Hortensio disdains her as a haggard—an untamable
hawk that “casts [her] wandering eyes” on any and
every lure (3.1.84–85; 4.2.39). Hawks were usually
tamed by being deprived of food and sleep. Petru-
chio’s assertion that his hungry and sleep-deprived
“falcon” (Kate) will not be “manned” or “stoop” to
her lure until she “knows her keeper’s call” (4.1.163)
reveals his intention to lure Kate into willing sexual
submission. Instead of consummating the marriage
on their wedding night, he remains craftily aloof
until Kate’s natural sexual desire overcomes her
resistance to being ruled by her husband. The strug-
gle is a protracted one, but in the end, Kate chooses
to build up Petruchio’s credit publicly, thereby prov-
ing that her husband is worth “stooping” for. Hav-
ing demonstrated that she “knows her keeper’s call”
by willingly responding to Petruchio’s “command,”
Kate follows up her public lecture on female submis-
sion by literally stooping—offering to bend down
and place her hand beneath her husband’s foot to
“do him ease.” Her lengthy lecture brims with sexual
innuendo, comparing an unruly woman to a muddy
fountain that a man will not deign to sip or touch;
advising women to suit their behavior to their “soft
conditions” and “external parts”; and cautioning
wives against impotently brandishing their own
“lances,” which are mere “straws.” Bianca and the
Widow, by contrast, fail to anticipate the damage
done to their husbands’ reputations when they refuse
to “stoop” to their husbands’ “lures.” Having been
embarrassed publicly by their froward wives, Lucen-
tio and Hortensio are unlikely to feel particularly
confident of their sexual prowess or their spouses’
sexual fidelity. Such conflict bodes ill for pleasures
of the marriage bed.
Clearly, Petruchio and Kate will have no such
problem. “Why, there’s a wench! Come on and kiss
me, Kate,” crows Petruchio as Kate’s enthusiastic
performance of willing female submission to “honest
will” (male virility) effectively contradicts the horn
jokes and insults bandied about in the play’s final
scene. Leaving the other two couples to languish in
embarrassed silence, the winners triumphantly exit
to effect the long-deferred consummation of their
marriage.
LaRue SloanSHakESPEarE, wiLLiam The
Tempest (1623)
William Shakespeare’s romance The Tempest, writ-
ten in 1611 and published in 1623, is one of his last
plays. Prospero, the exiled former king of Naples,
and his daughter, Miranda, inhabit a nameless
island where only Caliban—a native—and a range
of spirits, including Ariel, reside. Prospero learns