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All Site ContentTaming of the ShrewAct 1Scene 1
Back to the Play
Stoics, Aristotle, and Ovid
Philosophical Context
Act 1,
Scene 1
Lines 25-40

An explanation of Tranio’s argument in Act 1, Scene 1 of myShakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

Tranio

Me pardonato, gentle master mine,    
I am in all affected as yourself,    
Glad that you thus continue your resolve
To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy.
Only, good master, while we do admire
This virtue and this moral discipline,
Let's be no stoics, nor no stocks, I pray,    
Or so devote to Aristotle's cheques,    
As Ovid be an outcast, quite abjured.    
Balk logic with acquaintance that you have,    
And practice rhetoric in your common talk;    
Music and poesy use to quicken you;    
The mathematics and the metaphysics,
Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you.    
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en.    
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.    

Tranio thinks Lucentio is going a bit overboard in advocating a philosophy of strict virtue and moral discipline. Tranio thinks they shouldn’t become followers of Stoicism, which taught that one should minimize the desire of pleasure, or of Aristotle who valued contemplation more than the sensual pleasures. People like that would even have denounced the Roman writer Ovid, author of The Art of Love.