The Taming of the Shrew

“What, would you make me mad? Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly’s son of Burton Heath, by birth a peddler, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bearherd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not! If she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying’st knave in Christendom. What, I am not bestraught!”

The Christopher Sly frame story encourages the audience to keep the theatricality of the play proper in mind. Even Sly’s “wife”—a page boy in disguise—reminds the audience that all the ladies they’re about to see are portrayed by men too (as men played the roles of women in Shakespeare’s time). Shakespeare even makes jokes at his own expense through Sly, who seems to be a country bumpkin from the area around Shakespeare’s hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon. In short, everything in this frame story suggests that those who watch The Taming of the Shrew should take it lightly and perhaps a little skeptically—and they should watch out for tricks.

“Let’s be no stoics nor no stocks, I pray, / Or so devote to Aristotle’s checks / As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured.”

When Tranio cautions Lucentio not to get so caught up in Aristotle that he misses out on Ovid, he’s foreshadowing the rest of the play in more than one way. The Roman poet Ovid was known as the author of The Art of Love (the other course of study Tranio is recommending to his master here) as well as Metamorphoses, stories of transformation. Both love and surprising transformations become themes throughout the play.