The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Franco Zeffirelli in 1967, is a film based off of the comedy written by William Shakespeare in the 1500’s. A basic overview of the film is that this is a story about marriage for two sisters Katharina and Bianca. Katharina is the older sister who has a jealous side to her, while Bianca is the younger sister who is more beautiful. Because of this jealousy, just about every man refuses to approach Katharina for marriage, which enrages her even more. On the other hand, just about every man is trying their best to approach Bianca. Their father guarantees that Bianca may only be available for marriage, if Katharina is married first. Throughout this story there are many different forms of archetypes. The one that sticks out to me is class. I believe this dictated the progress of the story greatly. And just to be sure, I will be covering both types of class, poverty level and behavioral.

The first thing I noticed in the film, was the distinct difference between the rich and poor. The rich had clothing of smooth and bright colors. This material was also thick and came in multiple layers. The poor had clothing that was torn, dingy and dull colors with thin material. Obviously, the jewelry played a part in the level of status as well. Richer classes had more lavish and gaudy jewelry, while the poor classes had none. The setting for the rich, was bright, clean and full of joy. In the poor areas, the setting was dark, dirty and gloomy. This all plays a part in the fact that during that time, the more money you had or the higher your status was, the more freedom you had at doing anything. Case in point, was the prologue. Sly, a poor tinker, was the center of a joke by a local lord, who decides to trick Sly into thinking he was a lord. The lord probably did this because he felt like it. Another point about being rich gives you more freedom, is throughout the movie I noticed that the rich people spent most of their time just laying around or doing things that had nothing to do with work, while the peasants were running around like crazy, trying to make sure their “masters” were always happy.

There was another part of class that caught my attention. And that would be the behavior type of class. Although Katharina is in a wealthy family, she acts as if she had no class at all. Blinded by her jealousness from her sister’s beauty, poise and character that grabs all of the attention, Katharina becomes enraged with her sister, Bianca. Katharina acts like a tyrant through most of the story until she meets her match, Petruchio. He comes from a high class family as well, has lost most of its wealth. He is more of a jokester of sorts who wants to have fun, but at the drop of a dime will become very strategic when money becomes involved.

Towards the end of the film, I noticed an even exchange of lessons in class from both Katharina and Petruchio. First, she teaches him a lesson in class by shaping up his place of residence including the people there. And he follows up with his own lesson in class by teaching her to act a certain way in order to get what she wants. Through this exchange of lessons, they end up becoming truly connected. This is evident at the end of the film as Petruchio wins the bet of 4,000 jewels. Katharina wins his trust and respect when she gives all of the women a lecture on being a woman to her man. And they both win each other by showing how they care for each other.

In the beginning, this archetype was difficult for me to explain. It was not until I realized that “class” had a secondary part to it. The amount of wealth put the story into motion. But the lessons in proper behavior put the story in overdrive.

References
Taming of the Shrew - (Zeffirelli, 1967)