Typically, texts about husbands and wives present marriage from a male point of view.’

Come, come, you froward and unable worms, My mind hath been as big as one of yours, My heart as great, my reason haply more, To bandy word for word and frown for frown. But now I see our lances are but straws, Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare, That seeming to be most which we indeed least are. Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot, And place your hands below your husband’s foot.

Starting Questions: What's happening in this passage? Which characters agree with the male point of view, and which don't? What is our relationship with those characters? What historical evidence do you have for a marriage structure that privileges the man's point of view? Is there any historical evidence of a resistance to this view?

Then: what is the moral of the text of Katherina is being sincere? What evidence is there of irony? How might this change the reading of the text? If it is deliberately ambiguous, how might a reader make sense of this, and incorporate the text's ambivalent properties into it's interpretation?