Characters in The Taming of the

Objective

What I am going to discuss here is the role of Bianca in the Shakespeare’s play: the Taming of the Shrew. Not only will I describe her part in the play due to the plot, but I will also try to find her symbolical meaning or function.

Introduction

Bianca is the younger daughter of Baptista. She has three suitors but her father doesn’t want her to marry until his eldest daughter, Katharine, is married. Baptista knows that Kate’s behaviour makes it difficult for her to marry. Bianca’s suitors find someone who wants to marry Kate, because of her money, Petruchio. Bianca falls in love with one of the suitors, Lucentio, and marries him. This is the plot in the surface, but with a deeper look we can find more realistic characters with their different faces. So we can observe that Bianca is not as docile as she seems to be.

The role of Bianca in the play

The subplot of Bianca derives from a play by George Gascoigne*, Supposes (1566). This play is also an adaptation from the comedy I Suppositi (1509) by Ariosto*². The plot of these two plays deals mainly with “mistaking”, false “supposes” and about character’s identity and the nature of situations. (The Riverside Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, New Penguin Shakespeare).

Bianca has some of the characteristics of ‘the ingenue’, a stock character (wikipedia). According to wikipedia, the ingénue is “beautiful, gentle, sweet, virginal, and often, naïve”. And she usually “lives with her father”.

*George Gascoigne (c. 1525 – October 7, 1577) was an English poet. He was the eldest son of Sir John Gascoigne of Cardington, Bedfordshire. (www.wikipedia.org)

*²Ludovico Ariosto (September 8, 1474 – July 6, 1533) was an Italian poet, author of the epic poem Orlando furioso (1516), "Orlando Enraged". (www.wikipedia.org)

Harold James Oliver (The Oxford Shakespeare) says that Bianca must be seen, at first, as the conventional heroine sought by the hero of fiction, and in this capacity she will be contrasted with another type of women, at first much less attractive, her sister Kate.

With that as a base, I see that Bianca has been used in clear contrast with Kate. If we didn’t have Bianca’s character the strength of her sister would be much less effective.

But Shakespeare has not simply created a plain character to serve his purpose, he has given Bianca a personality and he has made a realistic character that helps us see in a clearer way that appearances are not always what they seem, they can cheat us and make us commit mistakes.

Analysing Bianca we can observe most of the features of the ‘ingenue’. She must be very beautiful because three men have fallen in love with her. We can infer it from Lucentio’s words:

LUCENTIO.

Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move,

And with her breath she did perfume the air:

Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her. (The Taming of the Shrew, ACT I, SCENE I, 334)

We see from these words that Lucentio has immediately falling in love with Bianca, because they were spoken when he sees her at the first time.

She is also shown as gentle, and is observed in her own words and in Lucentio’s ones:

BIANCA

Sir, to your pleasure humbly I subscribe (The Taming of the Shrew, ACT I, SCENE I, 333)

LUCENTIO [aside to TRANIO].

But in the other’s silence do I see

Maid’s mild behaviour and sobriety. (The Taming of the Shrew, ACT I, SCENE I, 333)

This supposed gentleness that Bianca shows here, and the obedience to her father, is going to be changed at the end of the play. Her later behaviour could have been anticipated by Lucentio’s words:

LUCENTIO [aside to TRANIO]

Hark, Tranio! Thou mayst hear Minerva speak. (The Taming of the Shrew, ACT I, SCENE I, 333)

Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom (which also contradicts the definition of naïve) and craft and war. This is opposed to a gentle and sweet character, and at the end of the play we will be able to see that Bianca is not as sweet and gentle as everyone thinks because she does not answer to her husband call.

As we see throughout the play, it would be more suitable to compare Minerva with Kate, because she is defined as a shrew woman, and because we can see her argue and defend her own opinions.

There is more to analyse in these words:

BIANCA

Sir, to your pleasure humbly I subscribe (The Taming of the Shrew, ACT I, SCENE I, 333)

Bianca shows her loyalty to her father, because the word ‘sir’ refers to him. Is easy to see that Baptista is fonder of her little sister than to Kate, as Kate tells in Act II, Scene II. Kate really obeys her father marrying Petruchio, but Bianca marries Lucentio secretly without telling her father and without his approval.

Bianca is only submissive apparently; her real character is hidden behind a mask, the mask of a fragile, sweet and obedient girl. But when she is with her two suitors (disguised as teachers), she shows her cunning and we know that the sweet Bianca was a role that she knew very well how to play in order to achieve her desires. As H. J. Oliver (The Oxford Shakespeare) says, Bianca manages Hortensio and Lucentio to her own satisfaction; she insists that she wants to please herself. Here we find the proof that she is not what she pretended to be earlier in the play.

So we have seen that Bianca does not suit completely to the stock character definition of the ‘ingenue’.

In the plot of the The Taming of the Shrew, we see that at the end of the play Bianca is not obedient to her husband, but Kate, that is considered from the beginning an impossible woman, is tamed at the end turns out to be more obedient than her sister. We can see here in this contrast of behaviours and changes, that first impressions are not always true. We have to look deeper. The translation of Bianca’s name is ‘white’ (behindthename.com), so it’s a term usually identified with purity, beauty and other qualities desirable in a woman. But this happens to many people, they are attractive at the beginning but when you know them better you realise that things are not what they seem. We can observe this in the relation Bianca has with her father Baptista. In a conversation with Katharina, Bianca tells her sister that she knows her duty to her elders (in Act II,, Scene II, 337), but we perfectly know that she does not care about her father’s opinion when she marries Lucentio.

In the scene of the banquet, at the end of the play, we see that Bianca has become the shrew, because she does not obey her husband. We would say that Bianca is a woman accustomed to always get what she wants, and at the end of the play she already has Lucentio, whom she is in love with, so she does not need to be nice anymore and she can show her real character.

Kate’s change at the end is emphasized and gets more importance in relation to Bianca’s change, that’s the contrary. It can be said that Kate goes from not tamed to tamed and we can say that Bianca goes from tamed to not tamed. But this would be too simple. At the end Kate seems to be in love with Petruchio, but Bianca has just thrown her mask away. Lucentio and her have not have a real relationship, they have not been sincere, or at least Bianca has not. Otherwise, Kate and Petruchio know each other’s personality from the beginning. They seem a “more promising and stable couple” (G. B. Hibbard, New Penguin Shakespeare).

Conclusion

To conclude I will say that, though Bianca is not as primary as other characters in the play, and she does not speak many lines, she is as important because she makes possible the establishing of a contrast between Katharine and her. If we weren’t allowed to see the changes produced in Bianca, the change in Katharine would not be so shocking. So it’s important to see the contrast between the two sisters. Furthermore the character of Bianca is interesting because it’s not a simple stock character, she has her personality. In real life we can see this frequently, people are not what they seem, they can talk with sweet words and captivate you with gentle actions, but they can also have a second nature, a real side that’s totally the contrary. That’s what Bianca is.

Resources

- Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1996.

- Wikipedia.org. “Ingenue (stock character)”, 23 March 2007,

< http://www.wikipedia.org >. Path: ingénue stock character.

- Wikipedia.org. “The Taming of the Shrew”. 23 March 2007.

< http://www.wikipedia.org >. Path: taming of the shrew.

- Wikipedia.org. “George Gascoigne”, 11 April 2007,

< http://www.wikipedia.org>. Path: George Gascoigne.

- Wikipedia.org. “Ludovico Ariosto”, 11 April 2007,

< http://www.wikipedia.org >. Path: Ludovico Ariosto.

-Behindthename.com. “Bianca name”, 11 April 2007, <http://www.behindthename.com>. Path: Bianca name.

- Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. Great Britain: Richard Clay (New Penguin Shakespeare), 1968

- Shakespeare, William, The Taming of the Shrew. United States: Houghton Mifflin Company (The Riverside Shakespeare), 1974.

- Shakespeare, William, The Taming of the Shrew. United States: Oxford University Press, 1982.

- Shakespeare, William, The Taming of the Shrew. Great Britain: University Press, Cambridge (The New Cambridge Shakespeare), 1984 – 1995

Academic Year 2006/2007

Universidad de Valencia Press

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