Certainly it is possible to view Petruchio as a tamer, a man out to turn a headstrong woman into a subservient one, but his role goes beyond that. Unlike most men of his time, he seeks not to dominate, but to share his power with his wife. Would he ever have been attracted to a woman such as Bianca whom he could easily rule? Of course not, because he needs someone to match his own fiery nature. Interestingly, the other male characters, though, see only that Petruchio has succeeded in turning the most headstrong of women into a seemingly perfect wife. Hortensio (and Christopher Sly in the variant text, The Taming of A Shrew) sees Petruchio has enacted a metamorphosis in Kate, unaware of the cleverness and rhetorical strategy underlying his techniques. Hortensio (Sly, and presumably many of the men in the audience) thinks he will emulate Petruchio's behavior. However, without the necessary cleverness, tenderness, and motivation (to elevate rather than subjugate), Hortensio will never succeed.
Shakespeare creates wonderful characters in The Taming of the Shrew, wonderful in part because they are not constructed solely from his imagination. They come from a long tradition of stories and ballads on unruly women and the men who try to tame them. Some contemporary readers may view Shrew as a misogynistic work, but it really is much more. It is a work based in historical debate and, in fact, ends more positively than many of its literary and real-life counterparts. Through Petruchio, especially, Shakespeare advocates a world in which men try not to exercise absolute authority over their wives but, rather, to elevate their wives. Shakespeare's text, unlike so many of the historical counterparts, suggests that successful men and women work in tandem rather than in hierarchal fashion, and so doing elevates not only the husband and the wife, but by extension, everyone and everything they come into contact with, as well.
