Abstract
When Petruchio humiliates Katherine on their wedding day, her father Baptista identifies the feminine bearing of the central term in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew (1623): ‘[S]uch an injury would vex a saint, / Much more a shrew of thy impatient humor’ (Shrew, III.ii.28–9).1 Later, Baptista once again suggests that in this Padua, at the very least, the appellation ‘shrew’ only applies to women: ‘Now, in good sadness, son Petruchio, / I think thou hast the veriest shrew of all’ (Shrew, V.ii.63–4). Indeed, Baptista’s jesting attempt to comfort his new son-in-law expresses the common assumption that ‘shrew’ is universally feminine. To be fair, in the lead up to Baptista’s comment, the women’s interactions offer evidence that would make ‘shrew’ an exclusively feminine category. The widow calls Katherine a ‘shrew,’ and the edgy banter that follows is only broken up by a husbandly intervention that recasts the wives’ countering as friendly homosocial competition between men:
PETRUCHIO: ‘To her, Kate!’
HORTENSIO: ‘To her, widow!’
(Shrew, V.ii.33–4)
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Crocker, H.A. (2010). Engendering Shrews: Medieval to Early Modern. In: Wootton, D., Holderness, G. (eds) Gender and Power in Shrew-Taming Narratives, 1500–1700. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277489_4
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