The Taming of the Shrew: Katherine, Padua and the Cooke Sisters

Katherine Cooke declares war at the end of a Latin poem. The recipient is her sister Mildred, wife of William Cecil, and the cause is a man’s proposed departure overseas. Bring him home, Katherine says, and Mildred is the best of sisters; let him sail and she is no sister at all. This Katherine was the mother of Anne, wife of Sir Henry Neville. She shares her name with Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew. Her poem adds a further point of comparison: a learned woman using sharp wit to press her wishes on those who could frustrate them.¹

Neville married Anne Killigrew in December 1584. Katherine’s sisters included Mildred Cecil, Anne Bacon and Elizabeth Hoby, later Lady Russell. Their classical learning, translations and correspondence made the Cooke family a particularly distinguished example of women’s education in Elizabethan England. Katherine died on 27 December 1583, before her daughter married Neville.²

Katherine’s poem to Mildred Cecil

John Harington printed Katherine’s six-line poem in his commentary to Orlando Furioso in 1591, presenting the Cooke sisters as English examples of women’s learning. His marginal note explains the appeal to Mildred as a request for a kinsman’s return to Cornwall and the prevention of a journey overseas; Thomas Fuller later identifies the man as Katherine’s husband, Henry Killigrew.

Si mihi quem cupio cures Mildreda remitti,
Tu bona, tu melior, tu mihi sola soror:
Sin malè cessando retines, & trans mare mittis,
Tu mala, tu peior, tu mihi nulla soror.
Is si Cornubiam, tibi pax sit & omnia læta,
Sin mare Ciciliæ nuncio bella. Vale.

In English:

If you see to it, Mildred, that the man I long for is sent back to me,
You are a good sister, a better sister, my only sister.
But if by harmful delay you keep him back and send him overseas,
You are a bad sister, a worse sister, no sister to me.
If he goes to Cornwall, may you have peace and every happiness;
But if to sea, I declare war on Cecil. Farewell.

Amos C. Miller describes Katherine as a “formidable personality” and emphasizes the poem’s humour. He also records Cecil’s opposition to her marriage to Killigrew and Killigrew’s angry response. The poem itself makes the wit visible. Its balanced lines turn praise into its opposite: good, better, only sister becomes bad, worse, no sister. Katherine makes an appeal for help sound like a declaration of war.³

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Image source: the 1591 printed edition, p. 314.

Books for both daughters

In The Taming of the Shrew, Baptista is a wealthy father in Padua with two daughters: Katherine, the outspoken elder sister, and Bianca, the younger, whom several men want to marry. Baptista insists that Katherine must marry first. While Bianca’s suitors wait, her lessons give them a way into the household: Lucentio poses as a Latin tutor and Hortensio as a music teacher.

Lucentio’s servant Tranio meanwhile impersonates his master, presenting Baptista with gifts for the sisters’ education:

And toward the education of your daughters
I here bestow a simple instrument
And this small packet of Greek and Latin books.

— The Taming of the Shrew, 2.1⁴

The Cooke sisters, too, studied both Greek and Latin. The books offered to Baptista’s daughters thus recall the classical education of Katherine Cooke and her sisters.²

Baptista accepts the gifts and sends the tutors to both daughters. The sisters respond very differently. Hortensio reports that Katherine has struck him over the head with his lute; Bianca turns her lesson into an opportunity to answer a suitor. The shared name connects Katherine Cooke with the outspoken Katherine of the play. Her poem also brings learning and a combative wit together, qualities the play develops differently through its two sisters.⁴

Bianca answers back

During Bianca’s lesson, Lucentio—using the tutor’s name Cambio—reads two lines from Ovid’s Heroides, then substitutes a declaration of love for the translation. Bianca answers through the same Latin phrases while Hortensio, calling himself Litio, tunes his instrument nearby:

BIANCA Where left we last?

LUCENTIO, [as Cambio] Here, madam:
[Showing her a book.]
Hic ibat Simois, hic est Sigeia tellus,
Hic steterat Priami regia celsa senis.

BIANCA Conster them.

LUCENTIO Hic ibat, as I told you before, Simois, I am
Lucentio, hic est, son unto Vincentio of Pisa,
Sigeia tellus, disguised thus to get your love, Hic
steterat, and that “Lucentio” that comes a-wooing,
Priami, is my man Tranio, regia, bearing my port,
celsa senis, that we might beguile the old pantaloon.

HORTENSIO, [as Litio] Madam, my instrument’s in
tune.

BIANCA Let’s hear. [He plays.] Oh fie, the treble jars!

LUCENTIO, [as Cambio] Spit in the hole, man, and tune
again. [Hortensio tunes his lute again.]

BIANCA Now let me see if I can conster it. Hic ibat
Simois, I know you not; hic est Sigeia tellus, I trust
you not; Hic steterat Priami, take heed he hear us
not; regia, presume not; celsa senis, despair not.

— The Taming of the Shrew, 3.1⁵

“Conster” means to construe or explain, but Bianca does not translate Ovid. She repeats the Latin phrases and inserts her own English answer between them. “Presume not” keeps Lucentio at a distance; “despair not” leaves him hope. She has understood his device and made it serve her own wishes.

Katherine Cooke composes in Latin; Bianca uses a Latin exercise as cover for a private exchange. The resemblance is in the wit with which each makes learning serve a personal negotiation. Katherine promises affection or war according to her sister’s decision; Bianca combines encouragement with refusal to be rushed.

Sue Wiseman reads the lesson as a parody of schooling turned into comic seduction, emphasizing Bianca’s judgment in managing courtship. The comparison with Katherine’s poem gives that resourcefulness a concrete family setting for Neville: a woman whose classical learning could sharpen, rather than silence, her own demands.⁵⁶

Anne’s Latin appeals

Katherine’s daughter Anne used Latin in two surviving letters: to Thomas Windebank on 6 March 1601 and to Robert Cecil in May 1602. In the latter, she quoted Seneca while pleading for Neville’s release from the Tower. Katherine had appealed to Mildred Cecil for her husband; Anne appealed to Mildred’s son for hers. Across two generations, mother and daughter made classical learning serve their own claims.⁷ The Seneca quotation and Anne’s manuscript are discussed in Chapter 31, “Macbeth: The Deed and Its Consequences.”

A family connection to Padua

Shakespeare places Katherine and her sister Bianca in Padua, where their father Baptista provides tutors and books. The city belonged to the experience of three men in Neville’s family:

Neville had visited the city himself, as had his father and his future father-in-law. Padua therefore joins the family’s classical learning and Katherine’s name as another specific point of contact with the play.

The name, the writing and the family’s experience of Padua belong together. Katherine’s poem lets us hear the wit of the woman whose daughter Neville married; Anne’s letter shows Latin used within his own household to argue for his freedom. Beside Bianca’s lesson and Katherine’s resistance to her tutor, these documents show why the conjunction of women’s learning, wit and self-assertion belongs within the discussion of Neville’s family.