SOURCE: “Petruchio the Sophist and Language as Creation in The Taming of the Shrew,” in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Vol. 29, No. 2, Spring, 1989, pp. 237-57.

In the essay that follows, Baumlin views Petruchio as a sophistic rhetorician, and observes that Petruchio uses his rhetorical skill to engender a positive change in Katherina. This, Baumlin argues, supports the view that at this early point in Shakespeare's career, the playwright possessed an optimistic conception of language and its positive, transformational power.

“Language most shows the man: speak, that I may see thee!” 

Ben Jonson, Timber

Properly placed among his earliest dramatic works,¹ The Taming of the Shrew displays Shakespeare's most optimistic vision of the positive, creative powers of language. We find here none of the later plays' ambivalence toward the powers and moral complexities of language, for the characterization of Petruchio represents a paradigm of the sophistic rhetorician at a...