Critiquing Mastery and Maintaining Hierarchy in The Taming of the Shrew

Abstract:This article uses Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew as a case study to demonstrate how an early modern English discourse of benevolent domestic rule, evinced in horsemanship manuals, pedagogical treatises, and books of household governance, works to maintain the hierarchical status quo, even as it ostensibly critiques tyranny in domestic mastery. I argue that the play draws on detailed debates within horsemanship to cast Petruchio as a horse courser swindling the other gentlemen in the drama via Katharina's performance. In so doing, it encourages disinterest in the possibility of Katharina's resistance to or participation in Petruchio's scheme.