SOURCE: “Petruchio: The Model Wife,” in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 23, No. 2, Spring, 1983, pp. 223-35.

In the essay that follows, Perret is concerned with the methods by which Petruchio “tames” Katherina in The Taming of the Shrew, demonstrating that Petruchio teaches by example how a wife should behave by taking on the work traditionally assigned to women.

The focus of recent critics of The Taming of the Shrew on Kate's role-playing¹ is too limiting. On the one hand, the theatrical vocabulary encourages them to speak of Kate's transformation as though it were nothing more than an act;² on the other, the narrow focus keeps them from recognizing the structural subtlety of the latter half of the play, the importance of Kate's seemingly redundant second capitulation, and the comic point of her famous lecture (V.ii.136-78),³ which is possible precisely because she takes the lecture's content seriously...