The Taming of the Shrew: Writer's Methods and Techniques (OCR A Level English Literature): Revision Note

Writer’s methods and techniques

The best responses don’t limit their analysis to individual words and phrases. Examiners are really looking for analysis of Shakespeare’s overall aims, so try to take a “whole-text” approach and consider the effects of the writer’s methods and techniques. Each of the below topics does just that:

• Form

• Structure

• Language

It is worth noting that editions of the play vary. Spellings of characters’ names can vary between editions, for example Petruchio/Petruccio, and Act 3 is sometimes split into three scenes rather than two.

Form

The Taming of the Shrew is a Shakespearean comedy. It is important that the examiner knows from your essay that you understand the conventions of comedy and aspects of it which inform your analysis of the play. It is also worth exploring the elements of this play as a romantic comedy. This produces a more conceptualised answer which takes into account the methods and purpose of Shakespeare as a playwright.

Conventions of form in Shakespearean comedies

• Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, typical of his comedies, includes rural settings: 

  • The induction is set in a village in England: Shakespeare uses rural imagery describing hunting and falconry

  • Sly, thrown out of an ale-house and tricked by hunters, references “Wincot" and “Burton-heath”, places in Warwickshire

  • Petruchio’s rural homestead, reached by muddy roads, is a place where Katherina is isolated, away from her wealthy life in Padua

• Shakespearean comedy plots include a love dilemma or triangle which takes the protagonist on a journey of mistakes and misunderstandings:

  • Shakespeare raises questions about courtly love in his depiction of the problematic and fickle nature of Elizabethan courtship 

  • The first love dilemma begins when Baptista informs Bianca’s suitors that Katherina must be married first, which highlights contemporary marital norms

  • The play creates a love triangle between Bianca and three suitors (Lucentio, Hortensio, and Gremio), revealing the competitive nature of courtly love

  • A second love dilemma involves Katherina and Petruchio: this dilemma illustrates gender norms and aspects of a misogynist patriarchy

• Dramatic irony evokes laughter at characters’ ignorance and mocks societal norms:

  • In the induction, dramatic irony creates humour as audiences hear the noblemen discuss the trick they plan to play on the drunken tinker Sly 

  • Comedy is created when Bianca and Baptista are fooled by suitors acting as tutors; this presents the complexities of courtly love

  • Additionally, a soliloquy alerts the audience that Petruchio plots to misbehave and mistreat Katherina in a bid to tame her wild spirit

• Juxtaposition creates a sense of disorder which serves to illustrate characters who challenge Elizabethan social norms:

  • For instance, Petruchio and Katherina’s battle of wits subverts gender norms

  • Scenes shift from conversations amongst servants to scenes between servants and their masters, which underscores power imbalances

  • For example, when Grumio (Petruchio’s servant) complains to the other staff about his master, the next scene depicts his subservience to Petruchio 

• Shakespearean comedies include a comic villain who plans to derail the happiness of the hero or heroine: in The Taming of the Shrew, this comic villain could be seen as Petruchio:

  • Petruchio’s strange attire at his wedding humiliates Katherina and confuses the other characters to comedic effect 

  • His abuse of Katherina and his outmanoeuvring of Baptista is farcical

• Typical themes of human folly, trickery and gullibility are shown through slapstick comedy and bawdy innuendo: 

  • In Act 2, slapstick humour is created when Katherina hits the tutor Licio with a lute (offstage) and, later, hits Petruchio

  • Katherina and Petruchio’s courtship is made up of insults and sexual innuendo:  Katherina jokes Petruchio will not find her “sting” and he replies it is in the “tail”

  • Petruchio creates farcical chaos in his country home by hitting his servants and throwing food in his endeavour to subdue Katherina’s spirit

• Shakespeare’s comedies include characters such as clowns, fools and others in disguise:

  • In the induction, Sly is given a disguise of fine clothes while his ‘wife’ is a page named Barthol’mew dressed as a woman

  • Bianca’s suitors impersonate tutors in order to get close to her, and the servant Tranio impersonates Lucentio

  • A passing pedant, disguised as Lucentio’s father, Vincentio, creates chaos when he encounters the real Vincentio and nearly has him arrested

• Shakespeare’s comedies end with weddings and comic resolution; misunderstandings are clarified and a sense of catharsis affords relief:

  • Although the weddings take place during the play, and impersonator Lucentio is revealed to Bianca in Act 3, marriage celebrations occur in the final act

  • Petruchio’s trickery of Katherina comes to a conclusion in Act 5 when Katherina delivers a monologue in which she submits to Petruchio

• Shakespeare’s resolutions, however, often include dubious marriages that imply an uncertain future:

  • Katherina’s monologue surprises the other guests and leaves audiences unclear if she has truly changed

  • While through the play, Bianca convinces Lucentio she is demure and obedient, in the denouement, her true nature is revealed

  • She calls her husband Lucentio a fool for attempting to command her: “The more fool you for laying on my duty”

Structure

The structure of a comedy

Shakespeare inherited comic structure from Roman New Comedy. The main features are: 

• Unity of time, place and action:

  • In The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare disregards the unities to create a complex plot that includes an induction and subplots

  • The action takes place in three different places across several days (perhaps weeks)

• Domestic plots drawn from ordinary life:

  • The induction depicts the everyday life of a village in Warwickshire: a drunken tinker falls asleep and a group of hunters pass by the ale-house

  • The play proper turns on courtship, dowry negotiation and inheritance among the merchant class of Padua and Pisa

  • Characters include scholars from Pisa, tutors to upper-class women, and merchants travelling from city to city

• A plot built on trickery:

  • The subplot derives from George Gascoigne’s Supposes:

    • Tranio is a version of the clever slave who out-thinks his master, and Gremio is a wealthy old man who wants a young wife

  • The induction and main play hyperbolises relationships between masters and servants, as well as the nobility and lower class, to satirise rigid social hierarchies

  • Katherina and Petruchio’s romance is a satirical presentation of gender roles

  • Shakespeare exaggerates patriarchal norms to the point of absurdity through the dialogue and actions of suitors to “sacred” Bianca and “devilish” Katherina 

Shakespearean comedies generally follow the same five-part structure:

• The exposition establishes the situation; often conflict is foreshadowed:

  • The play opens with the induction

  • The Taming of the Shrew features conflict between Katherina and her father

  • It initiates the conflict and rivalry with Bianca’s suitors and Katherina

• In the rising action, the implicit conflict is developed as the characters plot to trick others:

  • Lucentio and Hortensio both separately plan to deceive Baptista

  • Petruchio’s odd courtship confuses Katherina and the other male characters

• The turning point occurs at the climax of the play, often signalled with chaos:

  • Katherina’s humiliation and ordeal in Petruchio’s home is hyperbolic

  • In Act 4, Scene 5, Katherina finally submits to Petruchio’s version of reality: “be it moon, or sun, or what you please”; this is the moment the taming succeeds

• In the falling action and denouement the play’s misunderstandings are revealed:

  • Katherina’s submission to her husband is contrasted with Bianca’s disobedience

  • Roles are reversed: Lucentio’s marriage to Bianca seems fraught with disagreement, while Katherina and Petruchio’s marriage appears intimate

Language

Although you will always analyse Shakespeare’s use of language in any essay on The Taming of the Shrew, try to see “language” in a broader sense than just the words that Shakespeare uses. Analysing language also includes the form and patterns of his language. Moreover, try to take a “whole-text” approach to consider why Shakespeare presents — through language choice — the ideas he wants to explore across the play. Below you will find notes on:

• Poetry and prose

• Symbolism

Poetry and prose

Shakespeare shifts his characters’ dialogue from prose to verse to indicate the mood of a scene, as well as the characters’ social status. In The Taming of the Shrew, much of the dialogue is in iambic pentameter. Lower status or comic characters tend to speak in prose, whereas those with power and status speak in verse.

Blank verse

• Blank verse consists of unrhymed lines of ten syllables, although it does not always exactly fit that pattern: it does not rhyme, but lines have a regular rhythm

• Typically in Shakespeare plays, the use of verse represents a character’s emotions, often employed during an intimate speech or soliloquy:

  • Lucentio and Tranio both speak in verse: although Tranio is a servant, he is presented as sophisticated so he can impersonate the scholar Lucentio

• Iambic pentameter is noticeable in the banter between Katherina and Petruchio:

  • For example, in Katherina’s line: “If I be waspish, best beware my sting”

  • Dialogue between Katherina and Petruchio is also an example of stichomythia (alternating, short and sharp lines) which creates quick-witted banter

Rhymed verse

• Rhymed verse consists of sets of rhyming couplets, highlighting emotion or wit:

  • Couplets also mark scene endings

• Petruchio sometimes employs rhymed verse to emphasise his wit and sophistication: “Villain, I say, knock me at this gate, / And rap me well or I’ll knock your knave’s pate”

• In Act 1, Scene 1 Lucentio uses rhyming couplets to describe Bianca:

  • For example: “That made great Jove to humble him to her hand / When with his knees he kissed the Cretan strand”

Prose

• Prose, without metrical organisation and set continuously rather than in verse lines, is used for dialogue of a comedic or a lower class character:

  • In the induction, Christopher Sly uses prose to indicate his comic and lower-class characterisation, while the real lord speaks in verse

  • Shakespeare emphasises Sly’s confusion as he begins to alternate between verse and prose when he begins to think he is a lord

  • An example of his verse is evident in lines when he begins to believe he is noble: “I smell sweet savours, and I feel soft things. / Upon my life, I am a lord indeed”

• To recreate the relaxed nature of conversations without the presence of their masters, Petruchio’s servants, Grumio and Curtis, speak in prose in Act 4, Scene 1:

  • However, once Petruchio enters, Grumio begins speaking in verse

Symbolism

Clothing 

• Clothing is used as symbolism for the transient and performative nature of social status:

  • For instance, Christopher Sly is dressed in fine clothes with rings on his fingers to convince him he is a lord; he acquires verse at the same time as the fine clothes

  • In Act 4, Scene 3, Petruchio denies Katherina the chance to wear a fine cap, such as the ones “gentlewomen wear”, in order to humble her

• Some stage directions describe Petruchio “fantastically dressed” for his wedding:

  • When he is described by Baptista as an “eyesore”, Petruchio explains “To me she’s married, not unto my clothes”

  • It may be that Petruchio mocks not only the idea of courtly love, but the “solemn festival” of marriage that Baptista describes

• Clothing may be interpreted in terms of the sumptuary laws of the time:

  • Certain materials and colours signified status to maintain a rigid social order

  • For example, Lucentio instructs Tranio to take his “coloured hat and cloak” so as to impersonate his master

Animals 

• Folk tales and ballads about taming unruly wives were popular during the Renaissance

• The play’s title itself refers to a “shrew”, a name given to Katherina to describe her as sharp and bad-tempered:

  • Insults referring to animals are levelled at Katherina throughout the play: Gremio calls her a “wildcat” and Petruchio calls her a “slow-winged turtle” and a “wasp”

  • While Petruchio refers to Katherina as his “horse”, “ox” and “ass”, suggesting she is his property, he may suggest, too, that she is necessary to his household 

  • He follows this list with a warning to his servants not to touch her and calls her his “falcon”, a creature known for being wild and untamed, but made obedient

Sources

• Shakespeare, W. (1998) The Taming of the Shrew, Oxford Complete Works [SME Digital Texts Library edition]

• Shakespeare, W. (1951) The Taming of the Shrew, in P. Alexander (ed.) The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: The Alexander Text. London: Collins [edition printed in OCR exam papers]

• Ross, C. (2004) Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and the Tradition of Screwball Comedy. Purdue e-Pubs. Available at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1209&context=clcweb (opens in a new tab) (Accessed 20 July 2026). 

• Shakespeare, W. (2026) Learning | The Taming of the Shrew. Royal Shakespeare Company. Available at: https://www.rsc.org.uk/the-taming-of-the-shrew/learning (opens in a new tab) (Accessed 20 July 2026).