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The Taming of the Shrew

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The Taming of the Shrew , comedy in five acts by William Shakespeare , written sometime in 1590–94 and first printed in the First Folio of 1623. The play describes the volatile courtship between the shrewish Katharina (Kate) and the canny Petruchio , who is determined to subdue Katharina’s legendary temper and win her dowry . The main story is offered as a play within a play; the frame plot consists of an initial two-scene “induction” in which a whimsical lord decides to play a practical joke on a drunken tinker, Christopher Sly, by inducing him to believe that he is in fact a nobleman who has suffered from amnesia and is only now awaking from it. The main body of the play is presented to Sly as an entertainment for his delectation.

The source of the Petruchio-Katharina plot is unknown, although a number of analogues exist in ballads about the “taming” of shrewish women. The play’s other plot involving Bianca and her many suitors was derived from George Gascoigne ’s comedy Supposes (1566), itself a translation of I suppositi (1509) by Ludovico Ariosto .

Following the induction , the play opens in Padua , where several eligible bachelors have gathered to claim the hand of Bianca, the youngest daughter of the wealthy Baptista. But Baptista has stated that Bianca will not be wed before her older sister, Katharina. The plot of “the taming of the shrew” then begins when Petruchio arrives in Padua in search of a rich wife. His friend Hortensio sets Petruchio’s sights on Katharina (the shrew). Although Katharina responds hostilely to Petruchio, he woos, wins, and tames her by the sheer force of his manly insistence and by his wit; Katharina is attracted to Petruchio in spite of herself, since clearly he is her match in a way that other men could not be. After their bizarre marriage ceremony, in which Petruchio dresses in a wild fashion and abuses the priest, Katharina’s taming continues. In order to show her a picture of her own willfulness, Petruchio obliges her to forgo food, sleep, and fancy clothing. He abuses his own servants, notably Grumio, as a way of demonstrating how unattractive a sharp temper can be. Katharina learns, however reluctantly, that the only way she can find peace is to agree with anything that Petruchio says and do whatever he insists. At the play’s end, Petruchio wins a bet from the other gentlemen that Katharina will be more obedient than their new wives. To show that she is indeed now more obedient, on Petruchio’s orders Katharina delivers a short sermon on the virtues of wifely obedience.

The play’s other plot follows the competition between Hortensio, Gremio, and Lucentio for Bianca’s hand in marriage. The only serious candidate is Lucentio, the son of a wealthy Florentine gentleman. He is so smitten with Bianca’s charms that he exchanges places with his clever servant, Tranio, in order to gain access to the woman he loves. He does so disguised as a tutor. So does the less-successful Hortensio. Gremio has nothing to recommend his suit except his wealth; he is an old man, unattractive to Bianca. In order to fend off this claim of wealth (since Baptista has vowed to bestow Bianca on the suitor with the greatest wealth), Tranio poses as the son of a wealthy gentleman and steps into the competition for Bianca’s hand. Needing a father to prove his claim, Tranio persuades a pedant (or merchant) from Mantua to play the role. This ruse fools Baptista, and so the formal arrangements for the marriage proceed. Tranio’s tricks are eventually exposed, but not before Lucentio and Bianca have taken the occasion to marry in secret. Hortensio, in the meantime, has forsaken his pursuit of Bianca and married a wealthy widow. In the play’s final scene, both Bianca and Hortensio’s new wife ironically prove to be shrewish.

For a discussion of this play within the context of Shakespeare’s entire corpus, see William Shakespeare: Shakespeare’s plays and poems .

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A Modern Perspective: The Taming of the Shrew

By Karen Newman

In sermons preached from the pulpit, in exhortations urged from the magistrate’s bench, in plays and popular pastimes, in morning and evening prayers at home, in early printed books rehearsing seemly female conduct, the tripartite ideal of women’s chastity, silence, and obedience was proclaimed far and wide in early modern England. Shakespeare’s heroine, Kate, in The Taming of the Shrew refuses to abide by these Renaissance ideals of womanly submission. Her self-confidence and independence, which the male characters disparage by calling her a “devil,” threaten the hierarchical organization of Renaissance society in which women were believed inferior. The price of Kate’s resistance is summed up in Hortensio’s taunt, “No mates for you, / Unless you were of gentler, milder mold” ( 1.1.59 –61).

Instead of wooing Kate, the suitors pursue her more tractable sister, Bianca, whom they admire for her silence, mildness, and sobriety. But in Bianca’s dealings with her two suitors (disguised as tutors), even she shows herself less docile than she seems. As many readers of The Taming of the Shrew have noted, if in the end one shrew is tamed, two more reveal themselves: Bianca and the widow refuse to do their husbands’ bidding at the very moment Kate has ostensibly learned to obey. In the play, the gulf between Renaissance ideals of a submissive femininity and the realities of women’s behavior is wide.

Recently, commentators have turned to the work of social historians to explain The Taming of the Shrew ’s presentation of the female characters’ transgression of Renaissance standards for women’s behavior. They point out that during the period from 1560 until the English Civil War, England suffered a “crisis of order” brought about by enormous economic, demographic, and political changes that produced acute anxiety about conventional hierarchies. 1 Groups that had traditionally been subject to the authority of others—merchants and actors, servants and apprentices—were enabled by rapid change to enter social spheres that had been customarily closed to them. Such shifts threatened perceived hierarchies in Tudor and Stuart England: men complained of upstart courtiership, of a socially mobile middle class, of “masterless men,” and of female rebellion. Since public and domestic authority in Elizabethan England was vested in men—in fathers, husbands, masters, teachers, magistrates, lords—Elizabeth I’s rule inevitably produced anxiety about women’s roles. 2

Arraignments for scolding, shrewishness, and bastardy, as well as witchcraft persecutions, crowd the historical record. 3 Although men were occasionally charged with scolding, shrewishness was a predominately female offense. Punishment for such crimes and for related offenses involving sexual misbehavior or “domineering” wives who “beat” or “abused” their husbands often involved public humiliation: the ducking stool, “carting,” and/or reproof by means of the skimmington or charivari (an informal ritual in which the accused woman or her surrogate was put in a scold’s collar or paraded through the village or town in a cart accompanied by a procession of neighbors banging pots and pans). In Shakespeare’s play we can observe traces of such practices when Baptista, Kate’s father, exhorts Bianca’s suitors to court Kate instead and Gremio exclaims, “To cart her, rather. She’s too rough for me” ( 1.1.55 ). Anxiety about changing social relations prompted the labeling of old behaviors in new ways that made criminals of women whose actions threatened patriarchal authority.

But history alone cannot account for Shakespeare’s presentation of the shrew-taming plot. Literary history—generic models and conventions, both popular and elite—shaped the way Shakespeare represents the play’s characters and action. Popular medieval fabliaux and Tudor jest books and pamphlets recount tales of shrew-taming that furnished patterns from which Shakespeare drew. These and the oral folktales on which they are based include incidents similar to the plot of The Taming of the Shrew: a father with two daughters, one curst (i.e., bad-tempered) and spurned, the other mild and sought after; a suitor determined to tame the shrew; a farcical wedding scene; quarrels of the sort Kate and Petruchio have at his country house and on the road to Padua; and a bet on the most obedient wife. An often-cited example is the anonymous ballad A Merry Jest of a Shrewd and Curst Wife Lapped in Morel’s Skin for her Good Behavior (c. 1550), in which a father has two daughters, one curst, the other docile. When a wooer seeks the shrewish daughter’s hand, the father warns him against this “devilish fiend of hell.” Unmoved, he marries her and proceeds to tame her by means of beatings and torture: after cudgeling her bloody, he wraps her in a salted morel skin. The ballad ends conventionally with a meal at which father, mother, and neighbors admire the once-shrewish wife’s obedience and with a challenge to the audience: “He that can charm a shrewd wife / Better than thus, Let him come to me and fetch ten pound / And a golden purse.”

Though the basic situation of The Taming of the Shrew resembles that of A Merry Jest, in Shakespeare’s play Petruchio avoids physical violence. Instead of beating Kate, he resorts to more civilized coercion: public humiliation at their wedding, starvation, sleep deprivation, and verbal bullying, all administered with the utmost courtesy and pretended kindness. The less violent but equally coercive taming strategies that Shakespeare has Petruchio employ can be linked to a humanist tradition represented by Juan Luis Vives, Erasmus, and later Protestant reformers, who recommend persuasion, not brutality, as the means of inculcating wifely obedience. But even the popular tradition offers analogues less grisly than A Merry Jest. For example, in the early broadside The Taming of a Shrew or the only way to make a Bad Wife Good: At least, to keep her quiet, be she bad or good, a father counsels his newly married son not to chide his wife and to give her reign over the household to prevent marital strife.

In both popular and elite materials on marriage and education, taming or educating a wife is likened to the training or domestication of animals—unbroken horses, intractable cats, untamed hawks, even wild beasts. Implied in this comparison is the view that women are themselves unmanageable creatures whom only rigorous training and violence, or the continued threat of violence, can render submissive. Popular folktales and fabliaux, marital handbooks, sermons, and educational treatises all resort to the language and vocabularies of animal taming. In The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare has Petruchio compare taming Kate to training a falcon, and he peppers Petruchio’s speech with the technical language of hawk taming.

The humanist writers also sought to inculcate obedience through a less dehumanizing but perhaps more powerfully manipulative method. Following such earlier writers as Saint Paul, they set up an analogy in which marriage and the family are likened to the government of the kingdom. The family is represented as a little world organized like the larger world of the state or commonwealth, and the wife’s duty to obey her husband is equated with the subject’s duty to obey the prince. Wifely obedience, according to this model, is exacted not through violence but through strategies of molding the wife into a fit subject. In early modern England, the family was the basic unit of production as well as consumption, the site of the pooling and distribution of resources and of the reproduction of proper subjects for the commonwealth. In such a world, managing femininity had important political as well as social and economic consequences: in Elizabethan England a woman who murdered her spouse was tried not for murder as was her male counterpart but for treason, and her punishment was correspondingly more severe.

Kate’s speech at the end of the play on the status of wives as subjects most forcefully illustrates this rationalization of wifely subjection:

Such duty as the subject owes the prince,

Even such a woman oweth to her husband;

And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,

And not obedient to his honest will,

What is she but a foul contending rebel

And graceless traitor to her loving lord?

( 5.2.171 –76)

No lines in the play have been more variously interpreted than this final speech in which Kate advocates women’s submission to their husbands’ wills. Some critics have accepted Kate’s speech simply as testimony that she has been tamed; others argue that it must be understood ironically as pretense, a strategy for living peaceably in patriarchal culture. Although either interpretation can be supported by the text and by a director’s choices in the theater, what is perhaps most striking about Kate’s final speech is that at the very moment the ideology of women’s silence and submission is most forcefully articulated, we find a woman (or at any rate, a boy playing a woman’s part, since on the Elizabethan stage all women’s parts were played by boy actors) speaking forcefully and in public the longest speech in the play, at the most dramatic moment in the action. In short, Kate’s speaking as she does contradicts the very sentiments she affirms.

Not only does Shakespeare’s shrew-taming plot depend on generic models— fabliaux, folktales, educational treatises, sermons and the like—but the subplot—the wooing of Bianca—also depends on literary models, in particular George Gascoigne’s Supposes (1566), a translation of the Italian comedy I Suppositi (1509) by the Italian poet and playwright Lodovico Ariosto (1474–1533). Ariosto’s play was modeled on the classical new comic tradition generally traced to the Greek playwright Menander (4th century B.C.E. ) and made available to the Renaissance through his Latin imitators Plautus (254?–184 B.C.E. ) and Terence (185–159 B.C.E. ). 4 Typically, the plot structure of new comedy involves young people whose desire for one another is opposed by the young man’s father, or by a pimp, or by some other representative of an older generation. The plot depends on a trick or twist usually involving money and perpetrated by a servant or slave that allows the lovers to be united. In the Greco-Roman tradition, the female character is often an unmarriageable slave or courtesan, and the resolution sometimes entails mistaken identity—the woman is discovered to be a citizen lost or sold into slavery at birth, in which case the play can end in marriage.

Early Renaissance versions of such comedies transform the social and sexual relations typical of new-comic plots: the young woman is typically marriageable, the opposition is often her father, and the sexual intrigue usually ends in marriage. Shakespeare and the English playwrights modify this structure further by melding it with the romance tradition of the chaste lover (like Lucentio) who wishes only for marriage from the start. In addition, in The Taming of the Shrew Shakespeare adds a rival for Bianca’s hand (Hortensio) to enhance the romantic plot by allowing her a choice between possible husbands. New comedy typically follows the unities of time and place: the lovers are already at odds with some authority at the outset, and the play enacts only the intrigue that brings them together. Shakespeare, however, dramatizes the entire action, from Lucentio’s falling in love and wooing Bianca through the intrigue that leads to their marriage and on to the celebratory feast at the end.

In The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare carefully interweaves his main plot and his subplot: Lucentio sees and loves Bianca ( 1.1 ); Petruchio vows to marry Kate ( 1.2 ); Petruchio woos her ( 2.1 ); Lucentio and Hortensio woo Bianca ( 3.1 ). The plots diverge at the marriage of Kate and Petruchio ( 3.2 ), briefly to reunite (after the taming scenes at Petruchio’s house and Lucentio’s gulling of Baptista) on the journey back to Padua when Kate calls Lucentio’s father a “young budding virgin” ( 4.5.41 ). That “mistaken” identity in turn prepares for another, Tranio’s refusal to recognize Vincentio in 5.1 , a complication resolved by the appearance of the young lovers as husband and wife. The two plots are united again in the conventional comic feast and wager that end the play.

The convention of mistaken identity, which Shakespeare inherited from his classical and Italian predecessors, is not only a plot device in the play but also works thematically to undermine notions of an essential self or a fixed identity. In the Induction (an eighteenth-century editorial appellation, since the Sly incidents are simply part of Act 1 in the First Folio [1623], the earliest printed edition of The Taming of the Shrew ), Sly is persuaded he is a lord instead of a tinker; in the opening scene of the play proper, Lucentio and Tranio exchange identities as master and servant. Kate is transformed after enduring the irrational world of Petruchio’s country house, where she is denied food, sleep, and the fashionable accoutrements of her social class until

                                                           she (poor soul)

Knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak,

And sits as one new-risen from a dream.

( 4.1.184 –86)

In the tradition of Shakespeare’s later romantic comedies, she subsequently “discovers” a new identity as obedient wife. 5 Bianca and the widow, who begin by conforming to oppressive codes of womanly duty, reveal their independence. The Merchant assumes the identity of Vincentio, while Vincentio is “mistaken” for a “fair lovely maid.” Mistaken identity works literally in the disguise plots of the Induction and the Bianca-Lucentio action and figuratively in the taming plot, in which Petruchio plays at antic ruffian and Kate at submissive wife.

The Induction, with its duping of the tinker Sly, is linked to yet another folklore tradition, the motif of the “sleeper awakened” found in many versions throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Usually the story ends with the Sly character returned to his beggarly identity, as in a play published in 1594, the anonymous A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called The taming of a Shrew. In the anonymous play, the Sly action is completed with an epilogue in which Sly awakes after the comedy to rediscover himself a tinker and vows to return home to tame his own shrewish wife. Unusually, in The Taming of the Shrew there is no such epilogue and no return to the Christopher Sly action. (See Appendix, “Framing Dialogue in The Taming of a Shrew (1594),” for a discussion of the relation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and the anonymous play.)

The Taming of the Shrew has been popular onstage since its earliest production, though, like many of Shakespeare’s plays, in radically altered forms. By the early seventeenth century it had already prompted a sequel, John Fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize; or the Tamer Tamed (c. 1611). In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it has inspired successful musical, popular film, and television adaptations, and numerous stage productions. And the play continues to be a staple in both secondary and postsecondary school curricula. The play’s contemporary success depends first on comic virtuosity, but in a time of rapid social change when traditional gender roles are being challenged and the malleability of identity is increasingly acknowledged, audiences take pleasure in The Taming of the Shrew ’s representation of the instability both of conventional gender hierarchies and of human identity itself.

• See particularly Lawrence Stone, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529–1642 (New York: Harper & Row, 1972) and his Crisis of the English Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).
• On the anxiety produced by Elizabeth, see Louis Montrose, “ ‘Shaping Fantasies’: Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture,” Representations , no. 1 (1983): 61–94; however, see also Leah Marcus, Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and Its Discontents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), ch. 2, in which she shows how Elizabeth represented herself as both prince and father to her people.
• See David Underdown, “The Taming of the Scold: The Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England , edited by Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 116–35.
• “New” is a misnomer since “new comedy” is dubbed “new” only in relation to the “old” comic tradition represented by Aristophanes (448?–380? B.C.E.).
• On Kate’s development and Shrew as romantic comedy, see John Bean, “Comic Structure and the Humanizing of Kate in The Taming of the Shrew,” in The Woman’s Part , edited by Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Gayle Greene, and Carol Thomas Neely, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980), pp. 65–78.

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The Taming of the Shrew

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Gender and Misogyny

Issues related to gender are hugely important in this play, which centers around Petruchio "taming" Katherine and forcing her into the traditionally submissive role of a wife. The play is filled with characters who fit and don't fit traditional gender roles—particularly the idea of the male as dominant and the female as submissive. The quiet, mild-mannered Bianca , for example, plays the traditional role of a woman well, while Katherine rebels against this stereotype with…

Social Hierarchy

Women are just one socially oppressed group in the play; another is the class of servants that are continually beaten, abused, and insulted by the likes of Petruchio , Vincentio , and other noblemen. In fact, the play begins with a scene not about the relation between men and women, but between men of different social classes, as the Lord plays a practical joke on the poor Christopher Sly . Social standing is arguably a…

Theater, Performance, and Identity

The Taming of the Shrew is a play that thinks a great deal about theater itself. This kind of self-reflexivity and theater about theater (often called meta-theater), allows the play to raise questions about performance. To begin, the central plot involving Baptista's daughters and their suitors is a play within a play, performed by a group of traveling actors for Christopher Sly and a small audience who are themselves acting, pretending to be the attendants…

Shakespeare's comedy has many scenes of instruction, but tends to poke fun at formal education. Lucentio arrives in Padua as a young scholar ready to pursue his studies, but when Tranio tells him to study what he likes the most, he follows his heart... to the beautiful Bianca . "Cambio" and "Litio" (really Lucentio and Hortensio ) are supposed to teach Bianca, but this teaching is merely an excuse to get close to her and…

The plot of The Taming of the Shrew hinges on the marriages of Baptista's two daughters. Over the course of the play, there is a significant tension between different understandings of what marriage is. One understanding of marriage is that it is simply a union of two people in love. This is what Lucentio seems to desire with Bianca and, as the two develop affection for each other, their relationship seems to exemplify this idealistic…

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The Taming of the Shrew

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This volume is a comprehensive collection of critical essays on The Taming of the Shrew , and includes extensive discussions of the play's various printed versions and its theatrical productions. Aspinall has included only those essays that offer the most influential and controversial arguments surrounding the play. The issues discussed include gender, authority, female autonomy and unruliness, courtship and marriage, language and speech, and performance and theatricality.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part i | 38  pages, a critical history of the taming of the shrew, chapter | 36  pages, the play and the critics, part ii | 266  pages, the taming of the shrew: critical appraisals, chapter | 4  pages, from his introduction to the taming of the shrew (1928), chapter | 13  pages, the taming untamed, or, the return of the shrew, horses and hermaphrodites, the good marriage of katherine and petruchio, chapter | 22  pages, the ending of the shrew, chapter | 24  pages, “love wrought these miracles”, chapter | 38  pages, scolding brides and bridling scolds, chapter | 19  pages, chapter | 23  pages, the performance of things in the taming of the shrew, chapter | 26  pages, framing the taming, cultural control in the taming of the shrew, “what's that to you” or, facing facts, chapter | 28  pages, household kates, part iii | 84  pages, the taming of the shrew on stage, in film, and on television, chapter | 9  pages, “an unholy alliance”, chapter | 2  pages, the performance of feminism in the taming of the shrew 1, review of gale edwards's taming of the shrew,, chapter | 18  pages, petruchio's house in postwar suburbia, katherina bound, or play(k)ating the strictures of everyday life.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Plays — The Taming of The Shrew

Essays on The Taming of The Shrew

Brief description of the taming of the shrew: the taming of the shrew is a comedic play by william shakespeare that explores themes of gender roles, marriage, and societal expectations. the story follows the courtship of petruchio and katherina, two headstrong individuals whose relationship challenges traditional gender dynamics. the play is ... read more brief description of the taming of the shrew: the taming of the shrew is a comedic play by william shakespeare that explores themes of gender roles, marriage, and societal expectations. the story follows the courtship of petruchio and katherina, two headstrong individuals whose relationship challenges traditional gender dynamics. the play is significant for its portrayal of the complexities of love and power, making it a compelling topic for exploration in essays. importance of writing essays on this topic: essays on the taming of the shrew are essential for delving into the complexities of shakespeare's work and understanding the historical and cultural context in which it was written. by exploring the themes and characters in depth, students can develop critical thinking skills and gain insight into the timeless relevance of the play's messages about gender and relationships. tips on choosing a good topic: - consider the themes: look for essay topics that delve into the themes of gender, power dynamics, and societal expectations in the play. - character analysis: choose topics that allow for in-depth analysis of characters such as katherina, petruchio, and bianca. - historical context: explore topics that examine the play's relevance to the time period in which it was written and how it reflects societal norms. essay topics, concluding thought: engaging with the taming of the shrew through essay writing offers a unique opportunity to explore the complexities of shakespeare's work and gain a deeper understanding of its themes and characters. by choosing a compelling topic and conducting thorough analysis, students can develop critical thinking skills and appreciate the enduring relevance of the play's messages. 24 essay samples found sort & filter 1 the taming of the shrew: gender roles in shakespeare's play, gender roles in shakespeare’s "taming of the shrew", made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

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The Theme of Deception in "The Taming of The Shrew"

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Women and Power in Shakespearean Drama Taming of The Shrew

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Analysis of Katharina, The Shrew in Shakespeare's The Taming of The Shrew

Analysis of the important aspects and measures covered in the shakespeare’s play "taming of the shrew", an idea of the 'great chain of being" in the taming of the shrew and richard iii, analysis of the character of a faltering father in the taming of the shrew, the significance of the induction in the taming of the shrew, the reality paradox in the taming of the shrew, analysis of petruchio's language in the taming of the shrew, representation of clothing as a method to tackle the main issues in taming of the shrew, the main desire of hortensio in shakespeare’s taming of the shrew, comparison of "the taming of the shrew" and "10 things i hate about you", manly friendship as depicted in as you like it and the taming of the shrew, comparing the depiction of women in othello, the taming of the shrew, and death of a salesman, the construction of heroines in shakespeare's comedy plays, taming of the shrew archetype analysis.

William Shakespeare

Katherine, Petruchio, Bianca, Baptista, Lucentio, Gremio and Hortensio, Gremio and Hortensio, Grumio, Biondello, Christopher Sly

1590-1592, by William Shakespeare

The play describes the volatile courtship between the shrewish Katharina (Kate) and the canny Petruchio, who is determined to subdue Katharina’s legendary temper and win her dowry. The main story is offered as a play within a play; the frame plot consists of an initial two-scene “induction” in which a whimsical lord decides to play a practical joke on a drunken tinker, Christopher Sly, by inducing him to believe that he is in fact a nobleman who has suffered from amnesia and is only now awaking from it. The main body of the play is presented to Sly as an entertainment for his delectation.

The main themes of the play are female submissiveness, gender politics, cruelty, money, and language.

Katherina (Kate) Minola, Bianca Minola, Baptista Minola, Petruchio, Gremio, Lucentio, Hortensio, Grumio, Tranio, Biondello, Vincentio, Widow, Pedant, Haberdasher, Tailor, Curtis, Nathaniel, Peter, Joseph, Nicholas, Phillip, Christopher Sly

The source of the Petruchio-Katharina plot is unknown, although a number of analogues exist in ballads about the “taming” of shrewish women. The play’s other plot involving Bianca and her many suitors was derived from George Gascoigne’s comedy Supposes (1566), itself a translation of I suppositi (1509) by Ludovico Ariosto.

The Taming of the Shrew has always been controversial in terms of sexism. While it presents misogyny as well as abuse of power in both gender and class relations, The Taming of the Shrew seems to do this in an ironic way, with all the dangers of misinterpretation that irony always brings with it.

The Taming of the Shrew has been adapted numerous times for stage, screen, opera, ballet, and musical theatre; perhaps the most famous adaptations being Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate; McLintock!, a 1963 American Western comedy film, starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara; and the 1967 film of the play, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The 1999 high-school comedy film 10 Things I Hate About You, and the 2003 romantic comedy Deliver Us from Eva are also loosely based on the play.

“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.” “Sit by my side, and let the world slip: we shall ne'er be younger.” “There's small choice in rotten apples.” “If I be waspish, best beware my sting.”

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The Taming of the Shrew

The untamed shrew aachal gowan 10th grade.

William Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew is set in Padua, where Katherine, the stubborn “shrew” the title refers to, is pursued by a bachelor named Petruchio who is in search of a wealthy wife. Katherine is known as the most ill-tempered woman in all of Padua, but Petruchio is not unnerved by this and makes it his aim to tame Katherine and turn her into the perfect submissive wife. At the end of the play, Katherine gives a speech that seemingly supports Petruchio’s idealistic values on women which may lead some readers to believe she has successfully been tamed. However, Katherine is not truly tamed, instead she has become a smarter version of herself and recognizes when and where she needs to pretend to conform to society’s standards in order to get what she wants, whereas before she would blurt out whatever came into her mind and often got in trouble for it. In addition, The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy and during her speech, Katherine uses irony to support her arguments, hinting that Shakespeare intended for it to be taken comically.

At the start of the play, Katherine’s bold personality and unwillingness to back down is distinct, but as the story progresses she learns to control herself and choose her battles...

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