In Act 1, Scene 1, the audience is introduced to Lucentio and his servant, Tranio, both of whom are newly arrived in the city of Padua, Italy. To better illustrate his feelings upon arrival, Lucentio employs simile:
LUCENTIO: Tell me thy mind, for I have Pisa left
And am to Padua come, as he that leaves
A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep
And with satiety seeks to quench his thirst.
Lucentio compares Pisa and Padua to shallow and deep water, respectively. Through this figurative language, he expresses a wish to develop his philosophical capacities further in Padua, expressing the emotions and plans and wishes characteristic of a young man on the cusp of adulthood.
While not explicit in this passage, Lucentio's arrival no doubt carries with it a certain amount of sexual awakening. While he came to Padua to "quench his thirst" for knowledge, Lucentio awoke another thirst upon arrival: his craving for Bianca. Lucentio's journey is set to be one of both intellectual and sexual self-discovery as he seeks to satisfy his needs and desires, both of which have undoubtedly been building in him since adolescence. This youthful need for sexual and romantic self discovery is evident not only in the above passage, but in Lucentio's initial interactions with Bianca, whom he falls for almost immediately.
In Act 1, Scene 1, Lucentio waxes eloquent about Bianca's beauty, combining allusions and similes to properly convey his appreciation:
LUCENTIO: O yes, I saw sweet beauty in her face,
Such as the daughter of Agenor had,
That made great Jove to humble him to her hand
When with his knees he kissed the Cretan strand.
In this passage, Lucentio compares Bianca to the "daughter of Agenor," which is an allusion to the figure of Europa, the daughter of King Agenor of Phoenicia in Greek mythology. As the legend goes, Europa was so beautiful she inspired the love of the god Zeus ("Jove," as Shakespeare calls him in the above excerpt). According to legend, Europa gave birth to King Minos of Crete, the man responsible for creating a labyrinth and trapping the Minotaur inside.
By likening Bianca to Europa, Lucentio inadvertently positions himself as a Zeus-like figure: the king of the gods, descending from Mount Olympus to bed any mortal woman he wishes. Again, this reads as the innocent entitlement of youth. Lucentio desires Bianca; and, like a god, he feels that this desire entitles him to descend from on high and claim her as his bride. This youthful folly robs him of the discernment needed to see Bianca as she is, as opposed to the persona she projects.
In Act 1, Scene 2, Petruchio explains that his primary marital concern is money. He emphasizes this point by pairing multiple similes and allusions, comparing his theoretical wife to several less-than-desirable characters from classical antiquity only to state that nothing else matters as long as she has money:
PETRUCHIO: Signior Hortensio, ’twixt such friends as we
Few words suffice. And therefore, if thou know
One rich enough to be Petruchio’s wife,
As wealth is burden of my wooing dance,
Be she as foul as was Florentius' love,
As old as Sibyl and as curst and shrewd
As Socrates' Xanthippe, or a worse,
She moves me not, or not removes at least
Affection’s edge in me, were she as rough
As are the swelling Adriatic seas.
I come to wive it wealthily in Padua;
If wealthily, then happily in Padua.
Petruchio alludes to Xanthippe, a woman who lived in ancient Athens and who was Socrates's wife. According to some records, Xanthippe behaved in a "shrew"-like manner towards Socrates, hounding and abusing him. The Sibyls, to whom Petruchio also alludes, were ancient and wise oracles who featured principally in Greek mythology. The combination of these two allusions paint an imagined Katherine as shrewish and old. Petruchio further extends this image, using simile to compare Kate's affection to the "swelling Adriatic seas." Neither Kate's rough, sea-like temperament nor her theoretical age or disposition could dissuade Petruchio from marrying her given the right price tag.
In Act 1, Scene 2, Petruchio comforts Hortensio about Bianca's situation, stating that he will marry the eldest daughter, Katherine, in order to free up Bianca for matrimony. In the process of communicating this, Petruchio describes Kate's method of "chiding" through an apt simile:
PETRUCHIO: Hortensio, peace. Thou know’st not gold’s effect.
Tell me her father’s name, and ’tis enough;
For I will board her, though she chide as loud
As thunder when the clouds in autumn crack.
In the above passage, comparing Kate's "chiding" to "loud thunder" is a means of further aligning her with the wildness of nature. At this point in the play, Petruchio has yet to meet Kate, viewing her more as a force of nature than a human being. Though his understanding of her deepens and shifts over the course of the play, he does not entirely rid himself of the notion that Kate must be subdued—or, rather, that the shrewish element of her personality must be stripped back and away.
Shakespeare published his First Folio, which contained The Taming of the Shrew, in 1623. This coincided with European colonialism, which began roughly around 1492. Examining The Taming of the Shrew in its proper historical context, one can draw clear connections between the colonizers' wish to conquer and "civilize" indigenous people and Petruchio's wish to conquer and "civilize" Kate.
In her speech at the end of Act 5, Scene 2, Katherine condemns her fellow women for disobeying their husbands. Petruchio prompts her to deliver this address, which she begins with a series of similes:
KATHERINE: Fie, fie! Unknit that threat'ning unkind brow
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
While Katherine's speech contains a host of figurative language, these two opening similes are particularly worth unpacking. In the above excerpt, Kate tackles the relationship between feminine beauty and traditional gender roles, comparing disobedience to a frost settling on a meadow (or "mead"). In Kate's changed view, women should accept their roles in society as lower in the hierarchy or risk social unrest by upsetting the misogynistic systems on which their culture and the surrounding institutions are based.
Katherine also compares the "fame"—or reputations—of women to "fair buds" easily shaken by wind, stating that disobedience to one's husband will easily cause such an upset. This rhetoric, though meant to cap off a narrative arc in which a character grows and changes, only further reinforces the patriarchal ideals that Kate—at first—resisted.
