[Explanation: I was recently cast as Tranio in The Taming of the Shrew. Character analysis is a hobby of mine, and Tranio, being particularly hard to pin down, is my latest victim. Let's see if I can figure out what makes him tick. More posts to come...]
"Tranio, since for the great desire I had
To see fair Padua, nursery of arts,
I am arrived for fruitful Lombardy,
The pleasant garden of great Italy,
And by my father's love and leave am armed
With his good will and thy good company."
- Lucentio, speaking the first lines of The Taming of the Shrew (if you don't count the induction)
Shrew, as actors call it, is a tricky, multi-layered menagerie of a play. Of course, everyone now knows that it's about Katerina and Petruchio, but if you were an Elizabethan theater-goer you might start out thinking it was a play about a drunken man tricked into believing himself a lord. (That's just the frame story.) And once you were past that, you'd think that it was a play about Lucentio and his faithful servant-slash-sidekick, Tranio, scheming to set Lucentio up with the beautiful and unavailable Bianca. Well, it is a play about that, too, but Lucentio and Tranio are only the subplot, and they've got a fair chance of fading into the background if the performance they're in has a particularly good Petruchio.
I don't know how common the "tame your wife" plot might have been in Elizabethan England--my guess is that it showed up in other places besides Shrew. But the subplot, like most of Shakespeare's subplots, is lifted from every source available. Tranio represents one of the most ancient and hardy breeds of stock character ever to emerge from theater; the Plautine slave, or Servus Callidus. (Definitions of the word callidus, as given by a Latin dictionary I found online: clever, dextrous, experienced, skillful, cunning, sly. All of which more or less apply to Tranio.) In fact, his name was actually stolen from a Plautus play, where it had been appended to a character of the same type. Nowadays, when we authors reach for a Shakespeare name if we want to impart some shorthand (Puck for a tricky character, for instance, or Tybalt for one with murderous intent), it's funny to think that Shakespeare himself once did the same thing.
By the way, my recent Wodehouse obsession sprang directly from being cast as Tranio. I had a vague recollection of reading part of a Jeeves story, and Tranio instantly reminded me of Jeeves. No coincidence there--and not just because Wodehouse knew his Shakespeare, but because Wodehouse knew his theater. He spent years working in drama and writing musical comedies for the stage, which leads me to believe that Bertie's man Jeeves, if not a direct descendant of Lucentio's man Tranio, is at least a near-relative.
Lucentio is, of course, less capable than Tranio. He starts out as the absent-minded scholar and seamlessly transitions into the dreamy lover as soon as Bianca sets her foot on stage. That's not to say he isn't intelligent, but he's too busy with his thoughts to help himself at any given moment. Tranio is never too busy to help Lucentio--in fact, he's never busy with anything else. "Singleness of purpose" is his motto. (I'm reminded of Jeeves again. Dialogue from a Jeeves story: "Are you busy just now?" "No, sir." "I mean, not doing anything in particular?" "No, sir. It is my practice at this hour to read some improving book; but, if you desire my services, this can easily be postponed, or, indeed, abandoned altogether.") If he's serious about his business, your trusty Servus Callidus isn't going to be doing a thing besides helping you, any more than a piece of technology would. That's Tranio--the Elizabethan equivalent of the iPhone. Can't figure out what to do from here? Tranio has an app for that.
That's not to say the Servus Callidus doesn't help himself; he'd just prefer to tie his personal plans neatly in with yours, almost as if they're an afterthought. "I am content to be Lucentio," says Tranio, disguising himself as his employer, "because so well I love Lucentio." But it's hinted that his willingness to go along with the scheme might also have something to do with the fact that being Lucentio entails wearing Lucentio's clothes, managing Lucentio's money and throwing parties at Lucentio's house. Not a bad deal, even if it's only temporary.
In a sentence: Tranio has an agenda, and he's sticking with it.
(Or, if you prefer your character analysis to rhyme: Tranio has a plan, yo.)
