The Role of Marriage in Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer’s...

Shakespearean comedies, like â€Å"The Taming of the Shrew†, â€Å"A Midsummer’s Night Dream† and â€Å"The Merchant of Venice†, typically end with a happy ending usually involving a marriage between a couple that was courting throughout the play. The ill-matched couples courting throughout the play often encounter obstacles and experience an uncanny style of courting. Shakespeare focuses on the hectic courting of the poorly matched individuals married at the end of the play rather than the future lives of these newlyweds is not given much thought in order to give the play a light ending. Rather than Shakespeare describing love as a natural human state, necessary for true happiness, Shakespeare’s plays are doubtful about marriage’s ability to provide†¦show more content†¦2 Although the plays may reflect the legal concerns of the day, Shakespeares interest in deeply engaging those issues appears to vary significantly. At first, read ers may feel that the legal issues are overemphasized. The Sokols conscientious documentation of all references to marriage laws in the plays and sonnets suggests that many references are oblique or superficial in order to maintain the hierarchy. 3 In Shakespeare’s comedy, â€Å"The Taming of the Shrew†, the author depicts the subjection of a willful woman to the will of her husband. 2 The female protagonist in the play, Kate, has a shrill tongue, a hot temper and irrational attitude giving her the reputation of a â€Å"shrew†. The first way Shakespeare portrays marriage in this play is by showing the female subject to being married as the victim who is passed from her father to the suoiter of her father’s choosing. In â€Å"The Taming of the Shrew†, Kate is seen as an object in her courting and marriage to Petruchio . Kate’s father, Minola Baptista is one of the wealthiest men in Padua. Due to Baptista’s wealth his daughters, the pretty and poised Bianca and the sharped tongued Kate, become the target of many suitors because of the extensive wealth of their father. Baptista is a good-natured man but displays superficial behaviors. Baptista believes that is the financial aspect of the marriage is more important than his daughter’s happiness. Kate is