“…43 Patrizi looks back on classical eudemonism and defends the preservation instinct of every living being: he would thus later reconfigure the relation between passions and virtues, paving the way for post-Cartesian modernity and the revolutionary horizons of self-liberation of Spinoza's ethics. 44 Perhaps, then, Petruchio would have done well not to forget the spirited and salacious warning of the Italian humanist Ortensio Lando, who had seen in the habitus of the obedient and caring woman the antiphrastic sign of fraudulent conduct: 'The wives' modesty makes them too overbearing, too daring, and less fearful of their husbands; thus we should rejoice if they are dishonest rather than modest, because they would be less insolent, less troublesome and less proud'. 45 The defeated and submissive woman of the closing scene of the play, the modest woman, coy and tamed like the obedient horse, emblem of anger, of the Horatian passage quoted in the opening section of this article, seems in the end to hide, behind the impeccable conduct of the finally modest Kate, the mocking adulterous wisdom of the dishonest wives of Lando's paradox.…”