by Isaac Asimov
Cytherea is an alternate name for Venus, derived from the fact that an important seat of her worship was the island of Cythera, just off the southeastern corner of Greece.
We'll show thee Io. ..
The Lord offers a second choice:
We'll show thee Io as she was a maid
And how she was beguiled and surprised.
—Induction, scene ii, lines 54-55
Io was a daughter of the river god Inachus in the Greek myths, and Jupiter fell in love with her. The myth has nothing to say about how Io was "beguiled and surprised," though Jupiter used guile on other young ladies, notably Europa (see page I-44). The myth concentrates instead on the manner in which Jupiter's jealous wife, Juno, persecuted Io afterward (see page I-86).
… Daphne roaming. ..
A third choice is presented:
Or Daphne roaming through a thorny wood,
Scratching her legs that one shall swear she bleeds,
And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep,
—Induction, scene ii, lines 57-59
Daphne was a nymph sworn to virginity whom Apollo loved. She rejected his advances and fled from him when he tried to seize her. He pursued and would have caught her, but at the last minute, her mother, Gaea (the earth goddess), turned her into a laurel tree.
Little by little, then, Sly is convinced that after all he is a lord. He even begins to speak in blank verse instead of the usual prose. And to cap the climax, a play is presented for his edification, and it is this play which is what we usually think of as The Taming of the Shrew.
… fair Padua…
The play within a play opens with two young men, Lucentio and his servant Tranio, entering. Lucentio summarizes the situation:
Tranio, since for the great desire 1 had
To see fair Padua, nursery of arts,
I am arrived for fruitful Lombardy,
—Act I, scene i, lines 1-3
Padua is a city in northeastern Italy a little over twenty miles west of Venice and noted for its university.
Medieval Italy was, in fact, famous for its universities, for learning had taken new root there while it was still all but dead in the countries beyond the Alps. The first medieval university was established in Bologna, eighty miles southwest of Venice, in 1088. It specialized in the study of Roman law and remained the great center of legal studies for centuries afterward.
Bologna had its quarrels and problems and, on occasion, its schisms. In 1222 a group of its professors and students broke away and established a competing university at Padua, and it was this which made that city the "nursery of arts." It, as well as Bologna, supported a great law school and the two were great rivals.
Padua was an independent city-state through the Middle Ages but in 1405 it was absorbed into the territory of the Venetian republic and was still part of it in Shakespeare's time (and remained so till 1797). Padua was not actually part of Lombardy in the medieval or modern sense. Lombardy is located in northwestern Italy with Milan as its chief city, and even at its closest approach, Lombardy is fifty miles west of Padua.
This, however, is not as bad as it sounds. In the eighth century all of northern Italy was under the control of the Lombards and the term might therefore be used in a poetic sense for northern Italy generally. (Nevertheless, Shakespeare may well have been a little hazy on the fine points of Italian geography. This shows up more clearly elsewhere.)
Pisa…
Lucentio has come to Padua for an education, but he pauses also to announce his birthplace:
Pisa, renowned for grave citizens,
Gave me my being…
—Act I, scene i, lines 10-11
Pisa is located on the western coast of Italy, about 140 miles southwest of Padua. During the Middle Ages it was for a time a great commercial city, the rival of Genoa and Venice. It was at its height between 1050 and 1250, and in 1173 it built what is now its leading feature, a bell tower that, through some flaw in its foundation, settled out of the vertical. It is the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Toward the end of the thirteenth century Pisa was defeated in a long war with Genoa and began a steady decline. In 1406 it was captured by the forces of the city of Florence, forty-five miles to its east, and remained under Florentine domination through Shakespeare's time (and, indeed, until 1860). In fact, Lucentio describes himself as:
Vincentio's son, brought up in Florence,
—Act I, scene i, line 14
Florence, the home city of Dante, was the very epitome of Renaissance culture. It was the Athens of Italy, and one would boast of being brought up there as one might boast of having been brought up in Athens in ancient times or in Paris in modern times.
As Ovid …
Tranio is a little nervous at Lucentio's grandiloquent speech, for he views with some concern the prospect of a close course of study. He says:
Let's be no stoics nor no stocks, I pray,
Or so devote to Aristotle's checks
As [to make] Ovid be an outcast quite abjured.
—Act I, scene i, lines 31-33
Tranio's distaste for Stoics (see page I-305) or for Aristotle (see page I-104) is not so puzzling in a merry young man.
As for Ovid, whom he prefers, his best-known work is his Metamorphoses (see page I-8). However, a more notorious piece of work was his Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), which gave, in witty and amusing style, a course in seduction for young men.
Ovid insisted it was intended to deal only with the relations of young men and women of easy virtue, but it could easily be applied to anyone, of course, and the Emperor Augustus, a very moral man, was outraged at its publication. It was one of the reasons why Ovid was banished to a far corner of the Empire a few years later.
It is undoubtedly The Art of Love of which Tranio is thinking, and he is urging Lucentio not to be so wrapped up in his studies as to forget to have a little fun now and then.
… hear Minerva speak
Tranio need not have worried. Lucentio is, actually, all on the side of Ovid too, and something comes up at once to prove it.
A rich merchant of Padua, Baptista, comes on the scene with his two daughters, Katherina (or, for short, Kate) and Bianca. Trailing him are two other men also, the aged Gremio and the younger Hortensio.
Both Gremio and Hortensio are clamoring for the hand of Bianca, the younger daughter, a gentle girl, who stands with eyes cast down and rarely speaks. (Her very name means "white," as though to emphasize her color-lessness.)
Baptista will have none of this, however. He will not allow Bianca to marry until the elder sister, Kate, is married. The two suitors can have their chance at her. If one marries her the other may woo Bianca.
But it turns out at once that Kate is a furious shrew, whose every word is a threat, whose eyes flash fire, and who is ready at a moment's notice to commit mayhem. The two suitors climb over each other in an attempt to get away from her.
Tranio and Lucentio are watching from the sidelines. Tranio is amazed at the shrewishness of Kate, but Lucentio has eyes only for the gentle Bianca. When Bianca humbly accepts her father's delay of her marriage, Lucentio is ravished with her modest words. He says to Tranio:
Hark, Tranio, thou mayst hear Minerva speak.
—Act I, scene i, line 84
Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom (her very name may be related to mens, meaning "mind") and is the analogue of the Greek Athena.
… love-in-idleness
Baptista and his daughters go off, but not till after the father mentions in passing that he is looking for a music teacher for Bianca.
Gremio and Hortensio look after them in chagrin and decide that the only way they can manage to pursue their suit of Bianca is to find some madman, somehow, who will be willing to marry Katherina. After all, Baptista is enormously rich, so that Katherina (considering her shrewishness and the difficulty of getting rid of her) would command a huge dowry.
They leave too, and Lucentio comes out of his wide-eyed trance to
find himself deeply in love at first sight with Bianca. He says to Tranio:
But see, while idly I stood looking on,
I found the effect of love-in-idleness.
—Act I, scene i, lines 150-51
Love-in-idleness is the pansy, which was thought in Elizabethan nature folklore to have the effect of a love potion (see page I-34). Lucentio decides to be utterly frank about his feelings and plans, for he says to Tranio:
Thou art to me as secret and as dear
As Anna to the Queen of Carthage was,
—Act I, scene i, lines 153-54
Anna was the sister of Dido (see page I-20) and her confidante. Lucentio goes on to say:
… / saw sweet beauty in her face,
Such as the daughter of Agenor had,
That made great Jove to humble him to her hand
When with his knees he kissed the Cretan strand.
—Act I, scene i, lines 166-70
Agenor was a mythical king of Tyre and his daughter was Europa, for whose sake Zeus (Jupiter, or Jove) turned himself into a bull and with her swam to Crete (see page I-44).
Love gives Lucentio an idea. He will impersonate a schoolmaster and get the post teaching Bianca. While he is doing this, his servant, Tranio, can pretend to be Lucentio, performing the educational and social tasks that the real Lucentio ought to be doing (and concerning which his father, Vincentio, back in Pisa, will expect to hear of now and then).
… Would 'twere done
At the end of the first scene, attention is suddenly drawn to Christopher Sly, the tinker, sitting in the balcony. He is dreadfully bored, but doesn't like to say so. When the page, who is pretending to be his wife, asks how he likes it, he says:
'Tis a very excellent piece of work, madam lady.
Would 'twere done!
—Act I, scene i, lines 252-53
But Christopher Sly is done, for we hear no more of him ever. From this point on, the play within a play is the play itself, while Christopher Sly, the Lord who fools him, and all the play-acting servants vanish from the scene.
It's possible that Shakespeare simply forgot about them. Shakespeare had, apparently, borrowed the device from an earlier anonymous play, The Taming of a Shrew ("a" rather than "the"), which used the play within a play technique. It may be, however, that Shakespeare got so interested in the play about the shrew that he grew impatient with the outer frame as merely serving to get in his way and dropped it.
Why, then, did he not go back and cross out the Induction and these few lines at the end of the first scene? In this connection, we must take into account the legend that Shakespeare prided himself on never revising.
Another possibility is that Shakespeare did keep the frame but that the later parts were omitted by accident from the particular copy that survived and was used as the basis for the first collection of his plays.
Verona, for a while.. .
The second scene opens with the entrance of Petruchio, the hero of the play. He says:
Verona, for a while I take my leave
To see my friends in Padua. ..
—Act I, scene ii, lines 1-2
Verona is another city of northern Italy and is located some forty miles west of Padua. In Shakespeare's time, Verona, like Padua, was part of the Venetian republic.
… Florentius" love
Petruchio is accompanied by his servant, Grumio, and together they are on the doorstep of Hortensio's house, Hortensio being one of the friends Petruchio has come to see.
There is a contretemps at once, one designed to show that Petruchio is as great a shrew in his way as Katherina is in hers. He orders Grumio to knock at the gate, but Grumio takes him to mean to strike Petruchio himself, and refuses. There is a loud clamor, at which Hortensio opens the door.
Petruchio and Hortensio embrace each other and the former explains that he has come to Padua to seek his fortune. Hortensio at once has the notion of suggesting that Petruchio marry Katherina but, remembering her shrewishness, hesitates to play so foul a trick on a friend.
Petruchio, however, urges him on. He is after money and that is the only requirement he has. Aside from that:
Be she as foul as was Florentius' love,
As old as Sibyl, and as curst and shrewd
As Socrates' Xanthippe or a worse,
She moves me not …
—Act I, scene ii, lines 68-71
Florentius is the name of a knight in Confessio Amantis by John Gower (see page I-181). The plot is one in which a knight is forced to marry a horrible old hag who has helped him in time of need and who requires the marriage as recompense. The reward to the knight for keeping his word is that the hag turns into a beautiful maiden after the marriage.
"Sibyl" is from the Greek sibylla, their name for a priestess attached to a shrine or temple who had the ability to utter prophecies. Such a woman would fall into real or pretended fits (which may have been drug-induced) and would utter incoherent sounds which a priest would then interpret in the form of carefully ambiguous sentences.
Sibyls were supposed to attain great ages, for after all, an old woman, with her great experience, might more plausibly be expected to have arcane knowledge than a young one. Besides, prior to the nineteenth century, births of common people were not registered and individuals who lived to their seventies were rare. A wrinkled old crone was an unusual and somewhat frightening sight and it was easy to believe she had strange powers (of a sibyl in ancient times, of a witch in later times) and had lived for a century and more.
A mythic explanation is that Sibylla, beloved by Apollo, offered to give herself to him in return for the gift of prophecy and for as many years of life as the grams of sand which she could hold in her hand. When Apollo granted the wish and Sibylla reneged on her own promise, the angry god pointed out that the girl had asked for years of life and not for youth and allowed her to grow older and older and older.
As for Xanthippe, she was Socrates' wife, and the tales told of her show her to have been a scolding shrew. To be sure, any impartial person would have to admit she had some justification, since Socrates neglected his family to wander about the market place, talking philosophy and teaching rich noblemen without pay, so that his family was always in want. Nevertheless, people aren't impartial. Since Socrates is thought of as the wisest of men and as a kind of pagan saint, Xanthippe is frowned upon for complaining.
Fair Leda's daughter.. .
The complications grow. Petruchio insists he will woo and win Katherina for her money, quite without regard for her shrewishness. Whereupon it occurs to Hortensio (as earlier it had occurred, independently, to Lucentio) to disguise himself as a teacher and be brought to the house under the patronage of Petruchio. If Petruchio offers to woo Katherina, surely the delighted Baptista will accept his protege for the post of teacher and Hortensio would then be on the inside track with Bianca.
At this point, though, in comes Gremio, with no one other than the disguised Lucentio. Gremio is going to sponsor the disguised Lucentio for the post of teacher, planning to have the man plead Gremio's cause with Bianca. Then in comes Tranio, in fancy clothes, disguised as his master, Lucentio. He too is heading for Baptista's house to woo Bianca.
When Gremio and Hortensio object, the disguised Tranio says grandly:
Fair Leda's daughter had a thousand wooers;
Then well one more may fair Bianca have.
And so she shall. Lucentio shall make one,
Though Paris came in hope to speed alone.
—Act I, scene ii, lines 243-46
Leda was a queen of Sparta with whom Jupiter fell in love. He visited her in the shape of a swan with the result that eventually Leda laid an egg, out of which Helen was hatched. Helen, as the very epitome of womanly beauty, naturally had many wooers (see page I-90), but was eventually snatched away by Paris.
There are thus four men now after Bianca. There is 1) Gremio; 2) Hortensio, soon to be disguised as a teacher; 3) Lucentio, already disguised as a teacher;
and 4) Tranio, disguised as Lucentio.
All understand though mat everything depends on how Petruchio fares with Katherina, and Gremio says, gloomily, that that task is liable to be harder than Hercules' twelve labors put together.
… dance barefoot.. .
In Baptista's house, meanwhile, Katherina the Shrew is cruelly baiting her younger sister, Bianca, whose hands she has bound. Katherina is demanding to know which of Bianca's many suitors the younger girl likes best, and one may easily suppose that Kate is annoyed at the ease with which Bianca gains love, while she herself remains with no one.
This is made the clearer when Baptista comes in, rescues Bianca, and scolds Katherina. Katherina at once accuses Baptista of favoritism:
Nay, now I see
She is your treasure, she must have a husband;
I must dance barefoot on her wedding day,
And, for your love to her, lead apes in hell.
—Act II, scene i, lines 31-34
To dance barefoot on the wedding day symbolizes the humiliation of an older unmarried sister on the occasion of a younger sister's marriage. Leading apes in hell is the traditional fate of women who die spinsters.
