Performance and Identity in The Taming of the Shrew

When Lucentio and Tranio swap clothes in Act 1, they do not simply change costumes—they change who they are. Tranio dons Lucentio’s fine doublet and becomes “Lucentio” in the eyes of Padua, while the real Lucentio becomes “Cambio,” a humble tutor. The play opens with this premise written into its bones: identity is not fixed beneath the costume but emerges through performance itself. Yet this is not cynicism. The play seems to suggest that performance can be sincere, that playing a role can lead you to genuine feeling. Lucentio, dressed as a poor scholar, falls genuinely in love with Bianca while teaching her Latin. The costume was a disguise, but the love it enabled was real.

Early in the play, disguise serves practical purposes—Lucentio needs access to Bianca, Hortensio needs to get close enough to court her, and Sly needs to be tricked into accepting a new life. But as the play progresses, performance becomes less about deception and more about transformation. Petruchio arrives in his tattered clothes and speaks plainly about his strategy: “Thus I’ll visit her.” He will court Kate through contradiction, praising her fury as sweetness. He is, from the start, performing—but the question the play keeps open is whether his performance eventually becomes real. By the time Kate is calling the sun the moon at his word, have they both been transformed by their roles, or are they simply playing them more skillfully?

Bianca offers a counterpoint to this fluidity. She appears to be the “good daughter,” obedient and modest, the opposite of Kate’s defiance. Yet by Act 5, when commanded to obey her husband, she refuses outright. The soft performance was itself a performance—or at least, a choice that could be unmade. Even the Widow, married only moments before, refuses her husband’s authority. These moments suggest that identity is not settled by a single performance or a costume change. What looks like transformation might be strategic role-play; what looks like obedience might be a calculated performance that can be dropped at will.

The play never fully resolves whether Kate has been genuinely tamed or has learned to perform taming more convincingly. Her final speech on wifely obedience is delivered with such apparent sincerity that productions have divided for centuries on whether she means it. But perhaps that irresolution is the point. In a world where Sly never wakes from his dream, where servants become masters and tutors become suitors, the distinction between real change and performed change may not matter. What counts is what you do, how you speak, and whom you’re with. The costume may be all there is.