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Historic Aspects

When writing the play The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare relied on different literary works from the past, as well as historical events that had happened before. Shakespeare wrote the play within the genre of shrew literature, which was popular in medieval and Renaissance times, appearing in almost every form of literature. Most of the themes that appear on the play where based on past references. Specifically in the Act 2 of The Taming of the Shrew, only a few elements where found that influenced the reason of the authors writing, whereas the elements where used to compare Katherine with the respective ones.

This comparison was observed first around the middle of the act, where after Petruchio and Katherine had stopped abusing each other verbally and Kate started to leave. In the moment she starts to turn, Petruchio stops her and starts speaking of how gentle she was and compared Katherine with Diana, the Roman goddess of hunting and virginity. Diana, when studied, relates a lot with the behavior and character of Katherine, starting with the fact they both disliked men. The Roman goddess, known as the child of nature, embodies to her role of hunting protecting and killing the animals that tried to take away her dignity; this can be compared to the way Kate kept fighting with Petruchio in Act 2 in order to state her opinion towards him and to let him know her true personality and thoughts. Also, the goddess known as the virgin remains uncorrupted, maintaining her energy, symbolizing the desire to create brand ideas and methods of working. This last description of Diana also related to Katherine’s way of being, because Kate strongly held to her opinions no matter what Petruchio tried to impose and she always worked in her own way, as she did when she tied Bianca’s’ hands to force information out of her sister’s mouth instead of simply asking.

Another element found is when Petruchio is describing Katherine again as someone good and gentle and he compares her with Grissel, the patient wife in Decameron by Boccaccio and in “Clerk’s Tale” by Chaucer. Grissel was a woman who’s patience was tested removing one by one everything she posed and yet after being left with nothing, she always remained patient. Petruchio states that Katherine will become another Grissel and that nothing will ruin her patience, a part of her personality that is seen is not correctly functioning, because he wants to demonstrate to his Baptista, Kate’s father, she has agreed with him to marry each other. In the same speech mention before, where Petruchio is describing Kate to Baptista, another element of historical reference is perceived, when Petruchio compares her to Lucrece, a Roman woman who killed herself after she was raped. Here Petruchio mentions Lucrece to describe how Katherine will be related to sexual allusions and that she will never be involved in such panorama. As William Shakespeare has done before in his other literary works in The Taming of the Shrew he based his work with elements form the past to use them as historical references in order to demonstrate the reader a better description of what he is referring to. On Act 2, the author uses 3 different references form the past when describing Katherine, as a way to describe his character behavior and way of being.