The Taming of the Shrew Lucentio Quotes

Change and disguise are central to the Bianca plot, as just about all of her suitors don disguises to win her love. Here, Bianca cleverly puns on the word cambio, meaning "change" in Italian. We're also interested in the way Lucentio blames his bad behavior (playing dress-up and lying to everyone) on "love." Sounds like a lame copout for sure, but he might be telling the truth. In his opening speech in Act 1, Lucentio seems hell-bent on studying and making his family proud of his "virtuousness." The moment he sees Bianca, however, he transforms into a man without scruples. Perhaps it's true that love really does change a man, but not necessarily for the better.

When Tranio sees Bianca for the very first time, he gives voice to the reason why men find Bianca so attractive and suitable for marriage – silence and obedience to her father make her an ideal woman and an attractive candidate for wifehood. Too bad for Lucentio that Bianca turns out to be none of these things.

Lucentio arrives in Padua with good intentions – he believes his commitment to his studies will please his family. This plan is quickly abandoned, however, when Lucentio falls in love with Bianca and decides to dress up as a "tutor," an ironic twist. Bianca, however, is the one who teaches Lucentio a lesson when she turns out not to be the silent and obedient woman Lucentio expects her to be.

When Lucentio reads an excerpt from Ovid's Heroides and reveals his love for Bianca instead of translating the Latin lines to English, education becomes a disguise (like any other costume in play) for the act of courtship. The theme of education in this passage can also help us think about how the act of translation (turning words from one language into another while retaining the same sense or meaning) is a kind of transformation. While Lucentio's outside appearance changes (from Lucentio to "Cambio"), the person on the inside remains exactly the same.

Education is aligned with deception, no doubt, but here, Tranio's pun on "plotted" also underscores the fact that Baptista's request for tutors to school his daughters unwittingly sets the sub "plot" in motion.

In order for the play to set the world in its rightful place and restore the proper social order, children must reconcile with their parents. We're not sure why Vincentio forgives Lucentio so quickly and easily (aside from the obvious fact that he's happy to see his kid is alive and the play can't drag on forever). It does seem, however, that gesture must be made publicly in order for things to work out. Bianca follows suit in the next lines. Later, of course, Kate makes the exact same gesture toward Petruchio in Act 5, Scene 2, kneeling at his feet before a very public audience.