Bianca

Question 1

typicality

Answer 1

• bianca as ideal, typical, submissive elizabethan wife

Question 2

quotes where suitors admire her for her values

Answer 2

‘treasure’
‘jewel’
‘young modest girl’

Question 3

Act 3 Scene 1

Answer 3

• biancas first display of assertiveness as she is in her own domain (bedroom) where can use her status over suitors
• away from baptista who controls her by limiting her language spoken
• latin

Question 4

‘take you your instrument, play you’

Answer 4

• monosyllabic verbs
• subverts roles they held as Bianca takes on a teacher role and controls them
• uncommon for women to be in charge of men and order them around- she can as she is the one being pined over + location

Question 5

how is latin significant for bianca? + quote

Answer 5

• uses her hidden intelligence to lucentio to manipulate him- parallelling Lucentios speech revealing his deceit
• ‘despair not’

Question 6

‘despair not’

Answer 6

• surprise as women at time not likely show interest or speak to suitors personally without their fathers present
• conflicts with how Shakespeare previously portrayed her to be
• giving lucentio hope- honest + direct, in power

Question 7

Bianca return back to previous self evidence Act 3 Scene 1

Answer 7

‘good masters’
- trying to please them
- embodied sterotypical attitudes
- links to Act 1- ref to ‘masters’, adressing as superiors, but now she has more power (domains)

Question 8

Shakespeare’s reasoning for presenting Bianca in two different ways in one scene?

Answer 8

indicates her potential facade, suppressing manipulative, assertive, intelligent self.
women in elizabethan time who were submissive + with such beauty not deemed to be assertive-> allowing her to treat males in certain way without being challenged

Question 9

Bianca as ideal - reasoning behind it

Answer 9

Shakespeare crafts her to be the epitomy of feminity and virtue which men searched for for wives

Question 10

‘daughter of agenor’ with ‘sweet beauty’

Answer 10

• appears to be a godess, placing her on pedestal of something angelic, greek mythology- king of gods enamored with duaghter of agenor so turned himself into tame white bull-> lengths lucentio would go to profess his love + ideas of love mythological not reality, whilst showing his intelligence