Taming of the Shrew Act 1 / Erste Akt

I have read the first act of the play, including the induction.  I really like the induction, and I'm sad that it's cut out of most productions as unnecessary.  Partly this is because, when my high school did this I played the part of Christopher Sly, but mostly because I think it sheds light on one of the main themes of the play:  Identity and how  people act when they are treated a certain way.  
Sly is a drunkard found asleep in the streets, and a passing Lord decides to have some fun and dress him up and pretend that he's noble.  The servants take him and dress him and serve him as if he were a Lord, until Christopher Sly believes he is a lord.  The line is "Would not the beggar then forget himself?", "Würde der Bettler nicht sein selbst vergessen?" and the servant says, "he shall think by our true diligence he is no less than what we say he is."  "er soll es glauben daß er nichts anders ist, als wir ihn nennen".


I see the same theme played out in the play, with Katherina.  She is a shrew and as others keep calling her a shrew she continues to be a shrew. But when Petruchio treats her like a lady, like a respectable wife, she begins to believe that she can be that.  For me, the play is not about "taming" a woman, making her subservient. but allowing her to be something more than others allow her to be.  It's the medieval version of Johnny Lingo -- he calls her an 8-cow wife so she begins to believe that she is worth 8 cows.  More on this as I continue to read the play and find lines that speak to this point.

Kate and Petruchio in the Polynesian islands?

What I found very interesting as I read in German was the fact that I found rhyming couplets.  I am reading the translation by Wolf Baudissin, originally translated in 1831, and when Lucentio and Tranio are commenting on Katherina's frowardness and Bianca's mildness.  

"Tranio: "Seht, junger Herr, was hier sich für ein Spaß weist! / Die Dirn ist toll, wo nicht, gewaltig nasweis.

Lucentio: "Doch sieh, wie in der andern sanftem Schweigen / sich jungfraüliche Mild' und Demut zeigen."

What is most fascinating is the word choice.  Where in English Tranio says, "That wench is stark mad or wonderful froward."  In German he calls her a 'Dirn' which can be translated, archaically, as wanton or a strumpet, or even in some dialects as simply a lass, but mostly in modern German the word 'Dirne' means a prostitute.  I have to admit I had to read the line twice to see if that'a really the word he used, but it was probably used in one of these older or dialectal senses when it was originally translated.