SOURCE: Jaster, Margaret Rose. “Controlling Clothes, Manipulating Mates: Petruchio's Griselda.” Shakespeare Studies 29 (2001): 93-108.

In the following essay, Jaster explores Shakespeare's use of apparel in The Taming of the Shrew as a marker of personal identity, manipulated by Petruchio as a means of controlling Katherina.

One of the most hilarious—or hideous—scenes in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew occurs in act 4, when Petruchio, with the aid of Grumio and Hortensio, symbolically addresses Katherina in apparel he chooses for her. Throughout the scene, Petruchio in effect undresses his new wife by contradicting enough of her sartorial desires to the delight of the assembled males, and to Katherina's manifest discomfort. Editors and playgoers have usually relished the banter among the men and Katherina's resultant frustration; they have often been relieved that Petruchio chooses to tame his new wife in so innocuous a manner.¹

But apparel is too potent a...