SOURCE: Schneider, Gary. “The Public, the Private, and the Shaming of the Shrew.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 42, no. 2 (spring 2002): 235-58.

In the following essay, Schneider presents a feminist-materialist assessment of the social world depicted in The Taming of the Shrew, and maintains that in the play, the theater becomes a site of “social control” where Katherina becomes the mouthpiece for patriarchal rhetoric.

Relatively late in the action of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (1592), Tranio tells the pedant of a fictional private quarrel that has been made public, and is, therefore, a potential threat to the pedant's safety in the city of Padua:

'Tis death for anyone in Mantua To come to Padua. Know you not the cause? Your ships are stayed at Venice, and the Duke, For private quarrel 'twixt your Duke and him, Hath published and proclaimed it openly. 'Tis marvel, but that you are...