It is important to note, too, that the Elizabethans clearly delineated between a "shrew" and a "scold." A shrew, although a pejorative and abusive term, had no real legal status. A scold, on the other hand, is a legal category and describes a woman who has offended against public order through her speech. Unlike the shrew whose unruly behaviors are mostly disorderly and aggressive, a scold routinely committed more slanderous acts. Tale-bearing, gossiping, slandering, insulting through speech, and deliberately and maliciously attempting to stir up trouble between neighbors were all actions that could bring legal punishment onto a scold. If a woman were to be punished for such behavior, she would receive a public "cucking" wherein she was strapped to a special stool and then repeatedly dunked into water. Other forms of punishing scolds existed as well, most of which allowed for community participation. Scolds (and occasionally their husbands who allowed them to get away with it) were commonly held in great contempt by their neighboring townsmen and often received public punishment including humiliation in the stocks or being paraded through the city on a leash wearing a scold's bridle (a contraption which fit over a woman's head and contained a metal tongue suppressor to prohibit her speaking) so people could come out and jeer (hopefully shaming the transgressing woman back into line with what was considered proper womanly behavior).
The manner in which Shakespeare has Petruchio tame Kate, though, is not nearly as aggressive (or dangerous) as the methods that were actually used. Petruchio stands out positively, in fact, as being able to manifest the change in Katherine because of his cleverness and his rhetoric rather than brute force and beating. In this regard, Petruchio is much more in line with William Gouge and William Whately, who both received a great deal of pressure for advocating male restraint when dealing with unruly wives. Domestic violence at this time was commonplace, and wives were rarely exempt from forcible correction. As one critic notes, "relatively few men or women in early modern England thought wives had an absolute right not to be beaten" (Hunt qtd. in Dolan 218). Clearly Shakespeare does not endorse this model because in the end Kate and Petruchio function as a team rather than as a master and a servant.
