Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: How do you read the sparring match between Petruchio and Katherine in Act 2? Is it meant to be angry and threatening? Or light-hearted and flirtatious? Is he cynical, or sincerely intrigued? Is she grossly offended, or flattered? How do you “hear” this exchange? Consider lines such as, “Yet you are withered./’Tis with cares./I care not” (93).
Q2: The sisters Katherine and Bianca are clearly echoed in the later sisterly pair, Hero and Beatrice, but with a distinct difference. How do they contrast with the later pair, and what seems to be the defining nature of their relationship? Why might we also argue that as the father of two daughters, Shakespeare might have been drawing them from life?
Q3: At the end of Act 3, Gremio suggests that “Petruchio is Kated” (133). Does this mean that Petruchio is actually, against his better judgment, falling in love with her? And is she with him? Are we rooting for them to fall in love like Beatrice and Benedict? Or is this match doomed from the start (as Bianca suggests—“being mad herself, she’s madly mated”)?
Q4: Though Bianca is in the shadow of her older sister, she is hardly a push-over herself. How does she respond to the attempts of her lovers (Lucentio and Hortensio) to woo her in Act 3? Where do we hear some of Katherine’s wit, and scorn, in her replies? Why isn’t she seen as a “shrew” for turning them down?
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