Things Are Not Always What They Seem The most prevalent theme in Shakespeare's Taming of The Shrew is the theme of deception versus reality. The play opens in the induction with a lord's trickery toward a drunken tinker. This theme of deception only intensifies as the play moves forward, with many characters’ switching roles to deceive others. Also, Petruchio assumes an ugly and mischievous personality once he marries Kate to tame her. Bianca’s personality also shifts as the play continues. The entire play revolves around the character's attempts to beguile and to manipulate each other for their own personal gains. The play opens with the scene of a lord's returning from a hunt. On the way home, the lord and his party stumble upon…show more content… However, Petruchio’s diabolical side shows through almost immediately. He arrives late to the wedding, wearing outrageous clothes and riding a mangled old horse. He acts heinously during the wedding feast, and runs out before the end with his new bride. Petruchio starves Kate, and forces her to stay up at night. When they encounter a traveler on the road, who turns out to be Vincentio, Petruchio forces her to address the traveler as a young woman. Petruchio uses all these tactics to tame Kate from a miserable and boisterous woman to a good and kind housewife. Kate finally realizes her transformation when she agrees with Petruchio that the moon is out during midday. She exclaims to him, "Then, God be bless’d, it is the blessed sun:/ But sun it is not, when you say it is not;/ And the moon changes even as your mind./ What you will have it named, even that it is;/ And so it shall be so for Katharina" (IV.v). After he tames her, he changes his behavior back to the sweet doting that he exemplifies at the beginning. He treats her once again like the love of his life, and not a slave. He puts on the facade of an execrable madman in order to domesticate Kate into a kind and perfect