Michael+Dea

==**The Emotion that Inspires Deception ** == A comparison of "The Taming of the Shrew" and "The Proposal"

In the play, //The Taming of the Shrew// by William Shakespeare, Pertruchio goes into a relationship with Katherine hiding his true feelings concerning the marriage so he can become wealthy via Katherine’s dowry. In //The Proposal//, Margaret does something similar to Pertruchio with her assistant, Andrew. However, in the end, her feelings develop into something far more than marrying simply to retain her U.S citizenship and her job. In //The Taming of the Shrew//, Pertruchio deceives everyone around him so he may marry Katherine without inhibition from her family and friends. Even Katherine eventually surrenders and ends her struggling against Pertruchio’s attempts to marry her. In //The Proposal//, Margaret deceives Andrew’s family and friends but eventually comes to deceive Andrew and even attempts to deceive herself when her business-like attitude turns into an actual love of Andrew, who only agreed because Margaret threatened to destroy his career.

The two may be fairly similar, but each manipulator has a different agenda which they are trying to accomplish, and Margaret actually falls in love with Andrew, while Pertruchio shows no sign of falling for Katherine in the play. When two people fall in love, it is sometimes natural for one of them to act “like someone else” so as to further another agenda or hide their true intent.

(Act II, Scene 1, lines 326-329)
 * " Petruchio: "How much she loves. O, the kindest Kate! / She hung about my neck, and kiss on kiss / She vied so fast, protesting oath on oath, / That in twink she won me to her love. "**

In this scene, Pertruchio just spoke with Katherine about marrying her after learning that Baptista, Katherine's father, was willing to let Pertruchio marry Katherine if he could win her love. The reason for Pertruchio's desire to marry Katherine is not out of love, but out of money. He has been hired, in a way, by the suitors of Katherine's sister, Bianca, to marry Katherine, since Baptista would not allow Bianca to marry until Katherine was married. Also, Pertruchio himself is more concerned with the amount of money his new wife would bring him rather than love. But Katherine told Pertruchio that she would not have him. Due to this obstacle in his plans, Pertruchio decided to use this deception in order to still have the ability to marry Katherine and make Baptista believe that Katherine really was in love with Pertruchio. This lie Pertruchio told about Katherine's love for him, simply for monetary gain, is not disimilar to the lie which Margaret told about herself and Andrew in //The Proposal//.


 * IMAGE GOES HERE**

In //The Proposal//, Margaret, a big time editor in a New York book publisher, is in danger of losing her job and her citizenship. Her boss gave her the news that she was being deported when her assistant, Andrew, steps in informing Margaret that someone has asked for her on the phone. After a brief moment where Margaret concocts a plan, she announces to her bosses that she and Andrew are getting married. However, it is not out of love that she does this. Andrew had no idea what it was he was walking in on, and is totally against the idea. However, Margaret gets him to play along, hoping to gain a citizenship through her marriage to Andrew and be able to keep her highly profitable job. Similar to Pertruchio, she lies to everyone about her feelings for Andrew until near the end of the movie, when she comes to realize her true feelings for Andrew, which was love. However, she said nothing until the day of the wedding, when she called everything off. She deceived everyone around her, at first so she could keep her citizenship and job and then to keep herself from getting too connected with Andrew, believing he really didn't want to be with her seriously. In both cases, Margaret was deceiving those around her so she could get what she wanted, and in the end, she did.

(Act III, Scene 1, lines 32-38)
 * " Bianca: Conster them./ Lucentio: //Hic ibat,// as I told you before, //Simois,// I am Lucentio, //hic est,// son unto Vincentio of Pisa, //Sigeia tellus,// disguised thus to get your love, //Hic steterat,// and that "Lucentio" that comes a-wooing, //Priami,// is my man Tranio, //regia,// bearing my port, //celsa senis,// that we might beguile the old pantaloon **"

Lucentio, a suitor who is attempting to win Bianca's love, is conversing with Bianca under the guise of a language teacher, dictating Latin to Bianca. Lucentio's "coming clean" to Bianca about his feelings and who he is. However, that being said, he does not tell Bianca to let others know who he is and Lucentio does not tell anyone else himself until later in the play. Essentially, what Lucentio is doing is letting Bianca in on his plans while he allows everyone else to remain in the dark. This deceit Lucentio displays for everyone else concerning his relationship with Bianca is only to aid him in furthering his hidden agenda of winning Bianca's love. Margaret employs a similar trick with Andrew, her assistant, to avoid deportation back to Canada.



In this scene, Margaret tells Andrew about her plan to gain a citizenship through marrying him, though within closed doors. Andrew and Margaret are the only two people who know about what Margaret is planning, or rather the agenda she is pushing through her plans at this point. Andrew knows the consequences of such actions, and even tells Margaret that the plans she has in mind are illicit, and they can both be charged with fraud. Each is being honest in the relationship with each other, but each is also deceiving their coworkers and others around them, similar to how Lucentio and Bianca spoke during Bianca's lesson with her family and their friends. This causes issues down the road, however, when Margaret develops true feelings for Andrew and has difficulty being honest with him.

The fact that Margaret ends up having her web of lies unravelled shows that, though there will always be people who attempt to further their own agendas in a relationship, either secretly or openly, there will be very few who end up succeeding in such tasks. Lucentio ends up admitting who he really was in //The Taming of the Shrew//, and marries Bianca, exactly what he desired, once he tells the truth. Margaret ends up admitting her plan to everyone while she and Andrew were standing, and almost loses the one thing she truly desired: Andrew's affection. However, once she tells the truth, and after Andrew found her again, they end up being happily married. Truly, this is a tale where the main characters live "happily ever after."