Kate’s speech in The Taming of the Shrew in V.ii is a complicated joke, like her speech in IV.v. It represents the culmination of the lessons she learned from the games Petruchio played with her throughout Act IV. Some of those lessons were intended to train her to direct her wit at others upon cue from him. This goal he accomplished. He intended to teach her the lesson that she would be rewarded for obedience and punished for disobedience, which he also accomplished. Kate also learned, however, the paradoxical art of being submissive and subversive at the same time, which was a lesson Petruchio certainly did not intend to teach her. She achieved a subtle, subversive mocking effect by carrying a given premise of Petruchio’s to its extreme logical conclusion, thereby exposing it as ridiculous and ironically implying just the opposite.

Kate’s intentions in both of her speeches were the composite of multiple motives. The first motive in both of her speeches was to have some fun cooperating in a joke with Petruchio – she gladly seized the opportunities he gave her to exercise her wit and spirit at the expense of others. The second motive in both was to mock Petruchio by going to a ridiculous extreme. Her final speech had the additional motive of revenge on Bianca, the widow, and Lucentio and Vincentio. She gets revenge on the first two by making them appear to be greater shrews than she. She gets revenge on Lucentio and Vincentio by indirectly emasculating them. Finally, in the last six lines of her final speech, which are lightened by rhyme, she mocks all the earlier rhetoric of the speech.