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 of the word "taming" in Shakespeare's play, The Taming of the Shrew. In this roaring farce, the character of Katharine is conceived throughout as a human embodiment of the spirit of a hawk. She is tamed as hawks were tamed; and the sudden and complete change in her character from extreme shrewishness to extreme docility was exactly similar to the familiar change that took place as the result of very similar treatment in the life of every hawk. This idea, though no Elizabethan could fail to see it, is explicity set forth by Petrucio: