Hortensio, a young suitor of Bianca, disguises himself as the music tutor Litio to woo her while avoiding her father's ban. Unlike the disguised Lucentio (the Latin tutor Cambio), he does not reveal his true identity to her (3.1). He later (4.2) gives up Bianca, not only because she seems to prefer Cambio, but because he disapproves of her affection for a tutor (of lower class than herself), and gets the supposed Lucentio (actually Tranio) to give her up, too. He witnesses Petruchio's taming of Kate in 4.3 and on the road in 4.5. He marries a widow who loves him and participates in the husbands' wager on their wives' obedience in 5.3

Bianca (played by Lynne Griffin) separates the warring "tutors"--on the left, Hortensio disguised as "Litio" (played by Patrick Christopher) and, on the right, Lucentio disguised as "Cambio" (played by Peter Hutt) in the 1981 production of Taming at Stratford, Ontario. photo copyright 1983 Richard C. Ragsdale