symbol Sun and Moon
Petruchio insists the sun is the moon, and Kate, after days without food or sleep, agrees with him. She calls the sun "a rush-candle" and the moon "a fair and lovely maid." Later, when they encounter the real Vincentio on the road, Petruchio again reverses reality, calling the old man a "young budding virgin." Kate instantly follows, naming him "fair and fresh and sweet." The sun/moon inversion is the play's central emblem for how language and will can reshape perception. What looks like submission is actually Kate learning to play a shared game where two people agree on rules that defy reality itself.
motif Disguise and Identity
Every character who disguises themselves—Lucentio as a tutor, Tranio as a master, Hortensio as a music teacher, the pedant as Vincentio—gains temporary power and access denied to their true identity. Lucentio sheds his scholar's clothes to become "Cambio." Tranio tells the servant Biondello: "Cambio is changed into Lucentio," marking the moment the disguise becomes complete. These swaps work but are fragile; they collapse when the real Vincentio arrives. The motif suggests that social identity is both desperately important—it determines whom you can marry and what you can do—and radically unstable. A costume can overturn hierarchy, if only temporarily.
motif Hunger and Appetite
Petruchio starves Kate, withholds meat and wine, insists that burnt food is delicious and raw food is spoilt. Kate, after days without eating, begs Grumio for any food—"neat's foot," tripe, beef with mustard—and he refuses each in turn. Food becomes a site of control: Petruchio masters Kate by controlling her access to sustenance. But the motif also reveals the limits of that control. Kate's hunger is real, her body's needs insistent. No amount of verbal submission can satisfy genuine appetite. By play's end, when Petruchio finally allows her to eat, her compliance feels earned rather than broken.
motif Performance and Sincerity
The frame story with Sly is never closed—we never learn if he wakes up or if the experience changes him. This refusal of closure mirrors the ambiguity surrounding Kate's transformation. She delivers a forty-line speech on wifely obedience that the play refuses to clearly judge: is she sincere, strategic, or both? The banter between Kate and Petruchio is exhilarating precisely because it's performed—witty contradiction, verbal sparring, sexual innuendo. By the play's end, performance and reality become indistinguishable. Kate and Petruchio exit together, conspiratorial, laughing at other men's expense. Whether she's genuinely changed or learned to play a better game, the distinction stops mattering.
Say that she rail, why then I'll tell her plain / She sings as sweetly as a nightingale:
If she yells at me, I'll just tell her straight out That she sings as sweetly as a nightingale:
Petruchio · Act 2, Scene 1
motif Transformation and Dream
Sly wakes in a lord's bed and is told he's been sleeping for fifteen years—he asks, "Am I a lord, and have I such a lady? Or do I dream?" Kate at Petruchio's house is described as "one new risen from a dream." The language of sleeping, waking, and dreaming threads through the play, evoking Ovidian metamorphosis. People shift shape and identity as if under enchantment. But the play complicates the idea that transformation is "real." Sly's unresolved status—still dreaming or truly awake?—suggests that transformation itself is the point, not the answer to whether it's genuine. The play asks less "Can people change?" and more "What does it feel like to become someone else?"
Thus have I politicly begun my reign, / And 'tis my hope to end successfully.
This is how I've cleverly started my reign, / And I hope to finish it just as well.
Petruchio · Act 4, Scene 1
motif Mind and Body
Petruchio argues that "'tis the mind that makes the body rich," that honour shines even in poor clothes. Yet the play obsessively stages the body: Kate's hunger, her exhaustion, her hand placed below Petruchio's foot, the wedding night bed. Physical deprivation—no food, no sleep—breaks Kate's will more effectively than any argument. Hortensio's music lesson and Lucentio's language lessons are covers for physical attraction and desire. The play's final irony is that Kate's famous obedience speech is delivered in the body—a bodily performance that may or may not express an inner conviction. What the mind believes and what the body does remain unstably linked.
And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, / So honour peereth in the meanest habit.
And just as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, / Honour shines even in the most modest attire.
Petruchio · Act 4, Scene 3
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, / Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
A woman who's upset is like a muddy fountain, / Dirty, unattractive, thick, without beauty;
Katherina · Act 5, Scene 2
