From Shrew to Subject: Petruchio’s Humanist Education of Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew

Abstract

From Shrew to Subject: Petruchio’s Humanist Education of Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew Elizabeth Hutcheon (bio) In act 3, scene 1, of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Bianca mediates between her two battling tutors: Why, gentlemen, you do me double wrong To strive for that which resteth in my choice. I am no breeching scholar in the schools, I’ll not be tied to hours nor ’pointed times, But learn my lessons as I please myself.1 This speech highlights the central tensions in the play that surround the issue of education. Here we see a female student exerting control over her male “schoolmasters” by demanding to set her own curriculum. Her mention of the “breeching scholar in the schools” marks her awareness of such a scholar, despite her claim to be different: while she certainly is not a schoolboy, she is still a student in a system of humanist pedagogy. [End Page 315] Bianca’s invocation of the schoolboy here invites us to examine the play’s seeming obsession with pedagogy in the context of Elizabethan humanist education. Shakespeare substitutes the female student in the domestic sphere for the male student in the more traditional schoolroom in order to explore what the role of humanist pedagogy in a domestic setting might be. He abstracts humanist pedagogy from its usual context, the school, and from its usual subject, the schoolboy, and applies it instead to the potential formation of good wives—Katherine and Bianca—in the domestic sphere of the private home. By examining Shakespeare’s interrogation of humanism as an effective form of training, I will argue that Petruchio’s use of humanist methodology achieves a degree of success that has gone unrecognized by critics. The domestic sphere in this play functions as a critical space in which different modes of training, both humanist and otherwise, can be tested. The success of humanist methodologies in the domestic sphere not only highlights their effectiveness as a mode of discipline and education, but also reveals humanism’s fundamental lack of gendered priorities. That is to say, if Petruchio makes Katherine subject to his will, she is so as the citizen is subject to the monarch, not as women are subject to men. A system originally developed for the education of boys works equally well to educate women. The Taming of the Shrew is a text deeply invested in the idea of education—scenes of pedagogy fill the play, from Katherine’s attack on the music teacher to Bianca and Lucentio’s love lessons to Petruchio’s taming of Katherine. The characters in the play are also associated with education: Lucentio comes to Padua in search of a university education, Petruchio is already educated, Bianca is “Minerva,” and Katherine is “brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman” (1.1.84, 1.2.86). The play’s idea of a “gentlewoman” involves being educated in classical texts. While this kind of education was not particularly common for women in the Renaissance, The Taming of the Shrew presents it as normal. Bianca, for example, appears to occupy the position of the ideal woman—silent, chaste (we assume), and obedient. However, she is also associated in the play with the idea of education. When asked to leave the stage, she willingly does so, saying, “My books and instruments shall be my company, / On them to look and practise by myself ” (1.1.82–83). There is no apparent disjunction here between proper female behavior and the practice of reading. We know [End Page 316] that Bianca is reading Greek and Latin texts—Gremio and Tranio have provided them for her (2.1.80–81, 99). This high level of education was rare for middle-class women in the period the play was written—only a few women of high rank, such as Elizabeth I and Lady Jane Grey, had such extensive skills.2 Shakespeare’s unusual presentation of women’s education here highlights the fact that the student of humanism could be of either gender. The critical focus on the issues of patriarchy and gender formation in The Taming of the Shrew has eclipsed the play’s equally striking...