Show the drift of Kate's expression of the moral of the Play, and
state your own way of looking at it.
QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION
Did Petruchio and Kate give an impromptu performance of conjugal
felicity, or one decided upon beforehand?
Was Kate quick-witted enough to guess there was money in it, or was
she really, once of a different mind and reformed.
VI
THE FOLK ORIGIN OF THE TAMING
Trace the antiquity of this schooling of a wife, and the resemblances
and contrasts in the chief variants of the story (for help in this see
Sources in "First Folio Edition").
Is there any progress to be discerned in the degree of bodily force
deemed expedient?
Is any such scheme of the marriage-relation compatible with advanced
civilization, or is it peculiar to crude notions of life in a taming
age?
QUERIES FOR DISCUSSION
Is the folk-legend indicative of an inherent relation in marriage of
the male and female natures, or is it merely an expression of
established custom and legalized institution upon gaining for each the
aims and line of conduct desired? If so, is the result of the process
to gain a ground of mutual compromise and accommodation and a division
of labor in joint life which will enable the process itself to fall
into disuse.
Is coercion of others consistent with a high grade of individuality?
Did Petruchio play the Tamer in a "Pickwickian sense" and the whole
thing being a bit of acting, did Kate see through it, finally, and
play her part too?
The use of finesse in the Play (see Introduction to the Play "First
Folio Edition").
Does Shakespeare's way of handling the characters and the process of
taming materially differ from the way prevailing both in the crude
folk tales and in "A Shrew?"
Does he suggest that in both Petruchio's and Kate's case they are
merely bent upon their own individual emotions until closer relation
makes them join forces?
What is the modern bearing of Shakespeare's way of putting the story?
Partnership and co-operation _versus_ autocratic rule: Are the
administrative advantages of the latter consonant with the good will
and continual psychical development furthered by the former?
Does the intellectual advantage rest with the user of force or with
the mind that accommodates itself to force by gaining its ends by
stratagem and other indirect policies?
Is coercion as wise as persuasion which has no such penalties to pay?
LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST
Shakespeare makes us laugh in "Love's Labour's Lost" at the futility
of the attempt of ascetic and academic men to shut out love and women
from their schemes of life and study.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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