The Taming of the Shrew

By William Shakespeare and Paul Werstine

Love and marriage are the concerns of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Lucentio’s marriage to Bianca is prompted by his idealized love of an apparently ideal woman. Petruchio’s wooing of Katherine, however, is free of idealism. Petruchio takes money from Bianca’s suitors to woo her, since Katherine must marry before her sister by her father’s decree; he also arranges the dowry with her father. Petruchio is then ready to marry Katherine, even against her will.

Katherine, the shrew of the play’s title, certainly acts much changed. But have she and Petruchio learned to love each other? Or is the marriage based on terror and deception?

The authoritative edition of The Taming of the Shrew from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-The exact text of the printed book for easy cross-reference
-Hundreds of hypertext links for instant navigation
-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Newly revised explanatory notes conveniently linked to the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Karen Newman

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Oct 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781476788517

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is the world's greatest ever playwright. Born in 1564, he split his time between Stratford-upon-Avon and London, where he worked as a playwright, poet and actor. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two, leaving three children—Susanna, Hamnet and Judith. The rest is silence.

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THE NEW FOLGER LIBRARY SHAKESPEARE

Designed to make Shakespeare’s great plays available to all readers, the New Folger Library edition of Shakespeare’s plays provides accurate texts in modern spelling and punctuation, as well as scene-by-scene action summaries, full explanatory notes, many pictures clarifying Shakespeare’s language, and notes recording all significant departures from the early printed versions. Each play is prefaced by a brief introduction, by a guide to reading Shakespeare’s language, and by accounts of his life and theater. Each play is followed by an annotated list of further readings and by a Modern Perspective written by an expert on that particular play.

Barbara A. Mowat is Director of Research emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Consulting Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, and author of The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances and of essays on Shakespeare’s plays and their editing.

Paul Werstine is Professor of English at the Graduate School and at King’s University College at Western University. He is general editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare and author of Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare and of many papers and articles on the printing and editing of Shakespeare’s plays.

Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is a privately funded research library dedicated to Shakespeare and the civilization of early modern Europe. It was founded in 1932 by Henry Clay and Emily Jordan Folger, and incorporated as part of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, one of the nation’s oldest liberal arts colleges, from which Henry Folger had graduated in 1879. In addition to its role as the world’s preeminent Shakespeare collection and its emergence as a leading center for Renaissance studies, the Folger Shakespeare Library offers a wide array of cultural and educational programs and services for the general public.

EDITORS

BARBARA A. MOWAT

Director of Research emerita

Folger Shakespeare Library

PAUL WERSTINE

Professor of English

King’s University College at Western University, Canada

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

It is hard to imagine a world without Shakespeare. Since their composition more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s plays and poems have traveled the globe, inviting those who see and read his works to make them their own.

Readers of the New Folger Editions are part of this ongoing process of taking up Shakespeare, finding our own thoughts and feelings in language that strikes us as old or unusual and, for that very reason, new. We still struggle to keep up with a writer who could think a mile a minute, whose words paint pictures that shift like clouds. These expertly edited texts are presented as a resource for study, artistic exploration, and enjoyment. As a new generation of readers engages Shakespeare in ebook form, they will encounter the classic texts of the New Folger Editions, with trusted notes and up-to-date critical essays available at their fingertips. Now readers can enjoy expertly edited, modern editions of Shakespeare anywhere they bring their e-reading devices, allowing readers not simply to keep up, but to engage deeply with a writer whose works invite us to think, and think again.

The New Folger Editions of Shakespeare’s plays, which are the basis for the texts realized here in digital form, are special because of their origin. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is the single greatest documentary source of Shakespeare’s works. An unparalleled collection of early modern books, manuscripts, and artwork connected to Shakespeare, the Folger’s holdings have been consulted extensively in the preparation of these texts. The Editions also reflect the expertise gained through the regular performance of Shakespeare’s works in the Folger’s Elizabethan Theater.

I want to express my deep thanks to editors Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine for creating these indispensable editions of Shakespeare’s works, which incorporate the best of textual scholarship with a richness of commentary that is both inspired and engaging. Readers who want to know more about Shakespeare and his plays can follow the paths these distinguished scholars have tread by visiting the Folger either in-person or online, where a range of physical and digital resources exist to supplement the material in these texts. I commend to you these words, and hope that they inspire.

Michael Witmore

Director, Folger Shakespeare Library

Contents

Editors’ Preface

Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

Reading Shakespeare’s Language:

The Taming of the Shrew

Shakespeare’s Life

Shakespeare’s Theater

The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays

An Introduction to This Text

Characters in the Play

The Taming of the Shrew

Text of the Play with Commentary

Induction

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act 1

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act 2

Scene 1

Act 3

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act 4

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Act 5

Scene 1

Scene 2

Longer Notes

Textual Notes

Appendix: Framing Dialogue in

The Taming of a Shrew (1594)

The Taming of the Shrew: A Modern Perspective, by Karen Newman

Further Reading

Key to Famous Lines and Phrases

Commentary

Induction

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act 1

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act 2

Scene 1

Act 3

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act 4

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Act 5

Scene 1

Scene 2

Editors’ Preface

In recent years, ways of dealing with Shakespeare’s texts and with the interpretation of his plays have been undergoing significant change. This edition, while retaining many of the features that have always made the Folger Shakespeare so attractive to the general reader, at the same time reflects these current ways of thinking about Shakespeare. For example, modern readers, actors, and teachers have become interested in the differences between, on the one hand, the early forms in which Shakespeare’s plays were first published and, on the other hand, the forms in which editors through the centuries have presented them. In response to this interest, we have based our edition on what we consider the best early printed version of a particular play (explaining our rationale in a section called An Introduction to This Text) and have marked our changes in the text—unobtrusively, we hope, but in such a way that the curious reader can be aware that a change has been made and can consult the Textual Notes to discover what appeared in the early printed version.

Current ways of looking at the plays are reflected in our brief introductions, in many of the commentary notes, in the annotated lists of Further Reading, and especially in each play’s Modern Perspective, an essay written by an outstanding scholar who brings to the reader his or her fresh assessment of the play in the light of today’s interests and concerns.

As in the Folger Library General Reader’s Shakespeare, which the New Folger Library Shakespeare replaces, we include explanatory notes designed to help make Shakespeare’s language clearer to a modern reader, and we hyperlink notes to the lines that they explain. We also follow the earlier edition in including illustrations—of objects, of clothing, of mythological figures—from books and manuscripts in the Folger Library collection. We provide fresh accounts of the life of Shakespeare, of the publishing of his plays, and of the theaters in which his plays were performed, as well as an introduction to the text itself. We also include a section called Reading Shakespeare’s Language, in which we try to help readers learn to break the code of Elizabethan poetic language.

For each section of each volume, we are indebted to a host of generous experts and fellow scholars. The Reading Shakespeare’s Language sections, for example, could not have been written had not Arthur King, of Brigham Young University, and Randal Robinson, author of Unlocking Shakespeare’s Language, led the way in untangling Shakespearean language puzzles and shared their insights and methodologies generously with us. Shakespeare’s Life profited by the careful reading given it by S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Theater was read and strengthened by Andrew Gurr, William Ingram, and John Astington, and The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays is indebted to the comments of Peter W. M. Blayney. We, as editors, take sole responsibility for any errors in our editions.

We are grateful to the authors of the Modern Perspectives, to Leeds Barroll and David Bevington for their generous encouragement; to the Huntington and Newberry Libraries for fellowship support; to King’s University College for the grants it has provided to Paul Werstine; to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which has provided him with Research Time Stipends; to R. J. Shroyer of Western University for essential computer support; and to the Folger Institute’s Center for Shakespeare Studies for its fortuitous sponsorship of a workshop on Shakespeare’s Texts for Students and Teachers (funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and led by Richard Knowles of the University of Wisconsin), a workshop from which we learned an enormous amount about what is wanted by college and high-school teachers of Shakespeare today.

In preparing this preface for the publication of The Taming of the Shrew in 1992, we wrote: Our biggest debt is to the Folger Shakespeare Library: to Werner Gundersheimer, Director of the Library, who has made possible our edition; to Jean Miller, the Library’s Art Curator, who combed the Library holdings for illustrations, and to Julie Ainsworth, Head of the Photography Department, who carefully photographed them; to Peggy O’Brien, Director of Education, who gave us expert advice about the needs being expressed by Shakespeare teachers and students (and to Martha Christian and other master teachers who used our texts in manuscript in their classrooms); to the staff of the Academic Programs Division, especially Paul Menzer (who drafted Further Reading material), Mary Tonkinson, Lena Cowen Orlin, Molly Haws, and Jessica Hymowitz; and, finally, to the staff of the Library Reading Room, whose patience and support have been invaluable.

As we revise the play for publication in 2014, we add to the above our gratitude to Michael Witmore, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, who brings to our work a gratifying enthusiasm and vision; to Gail Kern Paster, Director of the Library from 2002 until 2011, whose interest and support have been unfailing and whose scholarly expertise continues to be an invaluable resource; to Stephen Llano, our production editor at Simon & Schuster, whose expertise, attention to detail, and wisdom have been essential to this project from the very beginning, and to Jonathan Evans and Alysha Bullock, who, as they take over from Stephen on his retirement, are demonstrating their own expertise and professional skills; to Deborah Curren-Aquino, who provides extensive editorial and production support; to Alice Falk for her expert copyediting; to Christina LeMaster and Rebecca Niles for crucial production assistance; to the Folger’s Photography Department; to Michael Poston for unfailing computer support; to Kate Lawson for help with Further Reading; and, for especially helpful conversations about The Shrew and A Shrew, to David Schalkwyk, Director of Research at the Folger from 2009 to 2013. Among the editions we consulted, we found Ann Thompson’s updated New Cambridge edition and Barbara Hodgdon’s Arden edition especially useful. Finally, we once again express our gratitude to the late Jean Miller for the wonderful images she unearthed from the Folger collection and to the ever-supportive staff of the Library Reading Room.

Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine

2014

Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew

Love and marriage are the concerns of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. The play offers us some strikingly different models of the process of attracting and choosing a mate and then coming to terms with the mate one has chosen. Some of these models may still seem attractive to us, some not. Lucentio’s courtship of and marriage to Bianca are prompted by his idealized love of an apparently ideal woman. When she first appears, Bianca is silent and perfectly obedient to her father. Lucentio then speaks of her as if she were a goddess come to earth. Because her father denies all men the opportunity openly to court Bianca, Lucentio spontaneously throws off his social status as a gentleman in order to disguise himself as a lowly tutor, the only kind of man that Bianca’s father, Baptista, will let near her. All that matters to Lucentio is winning Bianca’s heart. To marry her—even in secret and in shared defiance of her father—is surely, he believes, to be happy.

An alternative style of wooing adopted by Petruchio in quest of Katherine is notably free of idealism. Petruchio is concerned with money. He takes money from all Bianca’s suitors for wooing her older sister, Katherine, who, Baptista has dictated, must be married before Bianca. When Petruchio comes to see Katherine, he first arranges with her father the dowry to be acquired by marrying her. Assured of the money, Petruchio is ready to marry Katherine even against her will. Katherine is the shrew named in the play’s title; and, according to all the men but Petruchio, her bad temper denies her the status of ideal woman accorded Bianca by Lucentio. Yet by the end of the play, Katherine, whether she has been tamed or not, certainly acts much changed. Petruchio then claims to have the more successful marriage. But is the marriage of Petruchio and Katherine a superior match—have they truly learned to love each other?—or is it based on terror and deception?

From the 1623 First Folio. (Copy 58 in the Folger Library Collection).

And what of the plot about Christopher Sly, the drunken tinker, with which the play opens, and which we, following editorial tradition, call The Induction? The play about Katherine, Petruchio, Bianca, and Bianca’s suitors actually begins as a comedy put on for the entertainment of the deceived Christopher Sly—that is, as a play-within-a-play. If we were to take Taming’s first two scenes as an opening frame within which the taming play is set, our questions about Katherine’s transformation or about Petruchio’s taming methods would perhaps need to be reformulated. If, that is, there existed a closing frame (as in other versions, in which the Sly figure watches the whole entertainment and learns from it how to tame his shrewish wife), we might respond to the play-within-the-play as a kind of parody on marriage customs and male fantasies about how women should and should not behave. Because The Taming of the Shrew exists in only one early printed form (the one in the 1623 First Folio), and because that printing lacks a closing frame for the Sly story, the opening Sly scenes are considered a prologue rather than part of a frame—though some productions borrow the closing frame from the anonymous Taming of a Shrew. (See Appendix, "Framing Dialogue in The Taming of a Shrew (1594).") This basic question about how seriously we are to take its plots and characters may be the most intriguing question presented us by The Taming of the Shrew.

After you have read the play, we invite you to read "The Taming of the Shrew: A Modern Perspective" by Professor Karen Newman of Brown University.

. . . fair Padua, nursery of arts. (1.1.2)

From Pietro Bertelli, Theatrum vrbium Italicarum . . . (1599).

Reading Shakespeare’s Language: The Taming of the Shrew

For many people today, reading Shakespeare’s language can be a problem—but it is a problem that can be solved. Those who have studied Latin (or even French or German or Spanish), and those who are used to reading poetry, will have little difficulty understanding the language of Shakespeare’s poetic drama. Others, however, need to develop the skills of untangling unusual sentence structures and of recognizing and understanding poetic compressions, omissions, and wordplay. And even those skilled in reading unusual sentence structures may have occasional trouble with Shakespeare’s words. More than four hundred years of static—caused by changes in language and life—intervene between his speaking and our hearing. Most of his immense vocabulary is still in use, but a few of his words are no longer used, and many of his words now have meanings quite different from those they had in the sixteenth century. In the theater, most of these difficulties are solved for us by actors who study the language and articulate it for us so that the essential meaning is heard—or, when combined with stage action, is at least felt. When reading on one’s own, one must do what each actor does: go over the lines (often with a dictionary close at hand) until the puzzles are solved and the lines yield up their poetry and the characters speak in words and phrases that are, suddenly, rewarding and wonderfully memorable.

Shakespeare’s Words

As you begin to read the opening scenes of a play by Shakespeare, you may notice occasional unfamiliar words. Some are unfamiliar simply because we no longer use them. In the opening scenes of The Taming of the Shrew, for example, you will find the words feeze you (i.e., fix you, do for you), an (i.e., if), bestraught (i.e., distracted), and iwis (i.e., certainly). Words of this kind are explained in notes to the text and will become familiar the more of Shakespeare’s plays you read.

In The Taming of the Shrew, as in all of Shakespeare’s writing, more problematic are the words that we still use but that now have different meanings. In the opening scenes of The Taming of the Shrew, for example, the word heavy has the meaning of grave, the word envious is used where we would say malicious, brave where we would say splendid, idle where we would say silly, and curst where we would say bad-tempered. Such words will be explained in the notes to the text, but they, too, will become familiar as you continue to read Shakespeare’s language.

Some words are strange not because of the static introduced by changes in language over the past centuries but because these are words that Shakespeare uses to build a dramatic world that has its own space and time. The Taming of the Shrew is a particularly complicated example of Shakespeare’s construction of a dramatic world in that he creates one world in what we call the Induction—a world inhabited by an English beggar and an English lord and his attendants—and then creates a second, Italian, world for the main body of the play. In the Induction we find rogues, stocks, and headboroughs, as well as references to deep-mouthed brachs, wanton pictures, obeisances, and embracements. In the opening scenes of the main body of the play, the setting in Italy and the story’s focus on wooing are created through repeated references to Padua, to Lombardy, to Pisa, to dowries, to Ovid, to poesy, and to Minerva, and through such Italian phrases as Mi perdonato and basta. These local references create the Padua that Kate, Petruchio, Lucentio, and Bianca inhabit and will become increasingly familiar to you as you get further into the play.

Shakespeare’s Sentences

In an English sentence, meaning is quite dependent on the place given each word. The dog bit the boy and The boy bit the dog mean very different things, even though the individual words are the same. Because English places such importance on the positions of words in sentences, on the way words are arranged, unusual arrangements can puzzle a reader. Shakespeare frequently shifts his sentences away from normal English arrangements—often in order to create the rhythm he seeks, sometimes in order to use a line’s poetic rhythm to emphasize a particular word, sometimes to give a character his or her own speech patterns or to allow the character to speak in a special way. When we attend a good performance of the

Reviews for The Taming of the Shrew

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This may be my favorite Shakespeare, but I haven't read them all yet. This is my favorite so far. I love the way the man keeps pushing in on Kate until she receives his love.

[vhartpowers · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It's bawdy and crass; juvenile humor. I guess this explains why I enjoyed it in high school, but didn't enjoy it as much as an adult.

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It sounds like an extreme and ludicrous statement, but I don't actually know that Shakespeare has a more interpretable play. It all comes down to that moment at the end: Katherine's gonna come out and deliver her closing speech (and for those who still somehow see this as straight-up misogyny, consider all the past versions that haven't done so, and that the ultimate power of meaningmaking is here in Kate's hands--okay, and those of her director--which is easy enough to see as a definitive repudiation of Petruchio's efforts to take away her reality and signifying power with all the no-no-the-sun-is-the-moon stuff earlier). And I mean, relations between the sexes? A friend of mine says about class relations (which are also, naturally, at play here, and what is Kate from one perspective but another tinker, an overturner of the social order? A hero?), he says, "of course it's complicated, it's a gas, baby, you dig?" You can play the speech totally straight--but even then, like, what does Shakespeare think about it? Has Kate found strong manlove or been broken by a sadist?--and you can play it ironically, in about a billion permutations.So well done, Shakespeare. (You're suuuuuch a good writer. I'm sooooo impressed.) But here's what came to me watching this guy the other day at Bard on the Beach, not about that director's interpretation--which was basically "two stong-willed eccentrics find each other, embrace, and turn their rapier tongues on the rest of the world"--not about any interpretation at all, but about what the last scene says about real life. Because you can have your single simple reading of a play if you wanna and walk away and not have any problems come of it, but when you do that with real life there's that certain excess that'll always trip you up and mug you and leave you unsure where it all went wrong.So what came out at me was the way both things are true. Petruchio can king-of-the-castle Katherine around all he wants and it will always be repulsive, to our sensibilities as well as (it has been convincingly argued) those of the Elizabethans. That doesn't mean it's the whole story here. In that final scene, when Kate is the only obedient wife, what we see is a dark shadow over the future of these marriages--and leaving aside for the moment whether that includes Kate and Petruchio's and what the implications of that are, think about the others. Lucentio's marriage to Bianca and Hortensio's to the Widow may be under threat because the wives are not obedient--or maybe they're just gonna make their husbands into buffoons and that's in the normal way of things--but what is it that makes either of those eventualities a problem? It's that they're weaklings. And calling them out on that doesn't make Petruchio any less of a bully. But forget the bully thing for a second: he's also a man who knows what he wants and won't settle for any less. And in this milieu, Katherine doesn't have the same privilege--she has to be a shrew or a possession. But are the other wives much happier with their carping men? Not at all. The men still have all the power on paper, but their sense of manhood depends on a submission they're not going to be able to secure.And I hope we've left all the submission stuff behind. What we need in our relationships is to be responsible for ourselves. Kate's paradox is that in submitting completely to her husband she has total freedom to move--he kisses her hand rather than step on it. It's repulsive. But they're strong people who (perhaps? depending on your interpretation?) respect each other. And I think there's something to be said for a partner who just rides out your storms, who has themself enough in hand to make their expectations clear (thankfully, today this is a mutual process). And I have spent a lot of time trying to please people I was with and needing to protect them to feel okay myself, and that that's emotional brinksmanship and will never actually help them feel better, and then I'll feel distress too. The great thing about The Taming of the Shrew is to see a marriage without any tally of needs and catalogue of fears and litany of resentments and haunting cloud of failures--where whatever anyone does it'll be laughed off in the end. The question it leaves me with is whether the only way to have that is for marriage to be something even worse--a chattel relationship instead of one between messy, needy, hypersensitive equals.

[knotbox · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Really funny. Although, yes, it is technically sexist. When I heard that last speech performed live, there was no real mutual respect it seemed, and maybe it was a little dull. But when the mutual respect is clear, you realize it isn't just Kate who has changed, but her husband as well. Thus it becomes clear that they respect each other, and truly, while it appears that she is 'beneath him' and always agreeing with everything he says, there is an air that she is only learning to not be contrary and she thus becomes able to be in a relationship, in a partnership.

[samlives2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I recently read this in my tenth grade English class. Of course, the play itself was at it always is: hilarious and incredible. Every time I read something by Shakespeare, I marvel at his creativity, originality, and skill for crafting puns and witty wordplay.The version of this book that I read included many other sections relating to Shakespeare's works: his life, his writings, and how his plays were shown, plus a section entitled "A Modern Perspective," which was somewhat of an overview of the themes in the play and revealed many things people in my English class missed while reading the text (not that they actually looked at the extra stuff: that's like watching Lord of the Rings without the bonus footage). I found all of the extra details quite interesting and it gave me enough background to participate fully in class discussions where most of my peers were left behind. Thank you, Folger Library!

[maccy_p · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a clever play. However, it revolves massively around the directors interpretation of Bianca (sweet and innocent, or scheming and bitchy) and more importantly on the dynamic between Petruchio and Katherine (does he break her, or does she finally understand him and willing go along with it). I really wanted it to be the later but, as a feminist, I couldn't understand how a free minded woman would say the things said in Kate's last speech.And one MAJOR nit pick; where did Sly go? He's there at the beginning, but not anywhere else.

[ashleigh_autumn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is honestly mu favorite work by Shakespeare. I love the humor within it. I have read this for classes I have performed Katherine's final Monologue. I know people find that this plays has become a past idea of thinking of how women should behave since we are in a modern day world that that works for men and women to be equal without bowing down. However, at the time this play was written, that was not yet the thinking. No matter what, this is and always will be a favorite of mine.

[arten60 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable, funny and entertaining Bacon was a gifted writer.

[justagirlwithabook · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I had to read this one when I was in high school for an AP Lit course (man, I hated that course). Lit teachers have so many opportunities to choose some really amazing, relevant lit, and while I think Shakespeare is still relevant today, the way this book was taught was miserable. There were moments when the discussions in class were interesting, but it wasn't any thanks to the instructor or the play itself, I don't think. Of course, in high school fashion we watched the movie afterwards, and I found I enjoyed it better (and actually understood the play better, too). It was okay, but not one of my favorites among the Shakespeare pile of plays.

[madamxtra · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

What can I say...I love Shakespeare's poetic language, wit and his insight into the human condition. But, I must be honest and tell you that I had to force myself to finish this book because I'm an independent, liberated, modern woman and I don't think there's anything funny about the way Pet. mentally abused Kate. Here we have a lying rouge who is cast as a hero as he uses psychological war-fare, humiliation and starvation to bend the will of a wealthy woman, just to get her money. This is the kind of thing we read about in the news; some wealthy woman being taken-in by a playboy that she met on an internet dating site. It wasn't funny back in the day and it isn't funny now.Good thing he didn't try that with Lorena Bobbitt...SMILE!!!

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Lluchthartige komedie. Over hoe de hevige Katherine trouwt met Petruccio en daardoor haar plaats in de maatschappij vindt waardoor haar rebels karakter “getemd” wordt; verschillende verhaallijnen, nogal rommelig, met typische rolomkeringen; thema van de ideale vrouw, nogal dubieus aangebracht. -brutaal optreden om Katherine te breken-vaders die hun dochters als koopwaar verhandelen-betekenis van de inleiding is duister-onverklaarbare wendingenUiteenlopende interpretaties over het optreden van Petruccio. Die gedraagt zich brutaal om Katherine uit evenwicht te brengen (“being mad herself, she is madly mated”), in act IV.1 licht hij zijn motieven toe. Bekende slotscène: uitval Katherine tegen ongehoorzame vrouwen (niet duidelijk wat het doel is): “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper/Thy head, thy sovereign”

[jhudsui_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I had to give it a second star because some of the jokes were funny but really, this is just horrible. I'm not saying it should never be performed because it's a part of our cultural heritage and significant for influencing a lot of later works but I really think it's unsuitable for casual performance, for entertainment of general audiences. I saw it performed at a summer park show and Petruccio's player kept stopping to apologize out of character because the audience was booing him so loudly.

[meandmybooks-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well, Toto, we're a long way from Beatrice and Benedick here, that's for sure! This is among the plays that are Much better watched than read, if only because directors and actors can make subtle adaptations and add nuance to situations and characters who are, as written, fairly brutal and unattractive. Done “right,” this is a very entertaining play – I particularly enjoyed the BBC's “Shakespeare Retold” version, starring Shirley Henderson and Rufus Sewell. As with “Much Ado About Nothing,” though, “The Taming of the Shrew” features one interesting couple and one dull one. Bianca and her swain actually spend very little time together, but it's plenty. Katherine and Petruchio may or may not be suited to each other, but we'll never know because Petruchio has all the power and no qualms about using it. What “saves” the play is Katherine's own sheer nastiness, as evidenced by her unwarranted brutality to both her sister and her tutor. She's been bullying her family and servants, so we don't feel terribly sorry for her when she receives the same treatment from her new husband. The clowns in “Shrew” are irritating rather than witty, and the framing device adds little. Still, it's Shakespeare, and there are some clever wordplays, images, and amusing bits of dialog. And Katherine and Petruchio do seem to have arranged an amicable detente by the end, where we can feasibly imagine them going along for several years before one of them murders the other.

[wealhtheowwylfing · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I bet every older sister secretly likes this play.

[paradox98_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My favorite Shakespeare comedy, and a personaly favorite in classical literature.

[mattviews · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Unlike any other Shakespeare's plays, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW has an induction, which lives up to its name in the sense that the prologue scene does indeed lead into the play that follows. It seems likely that Shakespeare had adopted the device from medieval narrative poetry, where it was extensively used to introduce a story in the form of a dream. In the induction, far more is involved than the mere setting of a scene and the informing to audience. In fact, Christopher Sly seems to have lapse into a dream as he is forced to adopt a new identity. The brief yet vigorous altercation between Sly and the hostess with which the induction begins is a curtain raiser for the dramatic struggle between Petruchio and Katherina that is to follow. Equally as significant is the Lord's instructions to his servant-boy as to the behavior he is to assume when he appears disguised as Sly's wife forebode the main theme of the play. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW has a powerful appeal for the Elizabethan audience at the time it opened because the struggle for mastery in a marriage remained a fact of existence and hot topics for writers. A true-to-life domestic scene opens the play and instantly grasps attention: Signor Baptista forbids all suitors to court his younger daughter Bianca until he finds a husband for the ill-tempered, difficult, and waspish elder daughter Katherina. She is notorious for her hot temper, foul tongue, and caprice. Out of jealousy and the qualm not remaining single, she often vents out her anger on her sister. Suitors of the younger sister, who decide to put aside their rivalry, contrive to find a match for Katherina. Gremio and Hortensio bear the cost of Petruchio's courting Katherina while Lucentio, who is madly in love with Bianca, and his crafty servant Tranio cunningly switch role to infiltrate the Baptista house. What inevitably follows is a facetious pursuit of love and a farcical melodrama that culminate in a riotously funny final scene in which Lucentio's real father, who has no clue of his son's betrothal, confronts the pedant-disguised impostor who reverse-accuses him of a charlatan. Equally as clueless of the entire crafty scheme is Baptista whom the suitors have tricked and outmaneuvered. He is consistently mistaken about everything and everybody, so that he does not even understand why Bianca later asks for his forgiveness. He and Vincentio are merely the butts for all the intrigues that go on throughout the play. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW maintains an irresistible appeal among the comedies owing to the intriguing trickery with which characters rival for courtship. Just as suspenseful and entertaining is Petruchio's calculated, punctilious campaign to tame his wife. His line of attack is psychological, although persuasive words carefully planned for each step accompany his actions. He somehow outsmarts his wife and deliberately outdoes her in his perversity and bad temper. The quintessential spleen of tantrum flourishes in the scenes in which Petruchio abuses his servants and tailor. His being abusive, tyrannical, violent, and capricious functions more than a reflection - it is evident of a caricature of Katherina through an exaggerated parody of her wild behavior. His evaluation of her mind is confirmed by her softening and surrender for she welcomes the opportunity of meeting an antagonist who will put up a good fight. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is highly rhetorical (even more so than AS YOU LIKE IT). Whether it is Petruchio's aggressive, vituperative taming or the milder courting of Bianca, the play never lacks an elite style with which Shakespeare exploited language to a linguistic virtuosity. For example, Petruchio's taming distinguishes from the usual method that might involve violence. What differentiate his campaign are the subtlety, the sophistication, and the ingenuity of his conceiving of Katherina's mind. His perspicacious mind justifies the use of highly rhetorical, puny, and literary discourse that somehow alienates the ordinary speech in the play and paradoxically brings in a fuller, more intimate possession of his witty scheme.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A better play to see than read. There's room for a lot of physical comedy here, and I think it shows that WS was better at tragedy than broad farce. Still, it's noted as having been read four times. "Kiss Me, Kate!" is more fun.

[collingsruth · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm sure we could argue the feminist interpretation for ages, but though full of Shakespeare's usual wit I couldn't figure out what he was going for here and it ended up just being a frustrating read.

[engpunk77 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Read this twice, once for high school and once for college, and both times I despised it. I don't remember why, but I think it was some feminist outrage that I had...

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The introductory scenes with Sly were a surprise to me! I was also somewhat surprised by how much of the musical Kiss Me Kate is directly from the play.

[therebelprince · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As always, a great edition from the Arden publishers.

[iamchrysanthemum · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

What an odd, misogynistic play. Most interesting was the induction with Christopher Sly, a drunkard who is tricked into believing he is a rich lord. This plot line, included to set up the whole identity switch storyline, is never resolved in my text. I know Shakespeare is considered a master playwright of the English language and I do truly appreciate his work, but isn't he a bit unoriginal at times? There's the whole "borrowing" stories from other authors and then the fact that many of his stories feature the same motifs--funny servants, identity mixups, instalove followed by marriages, rich Italians in search of dowries and hot wives, mean fathers. I guess the Elizabethan theatre-going crowd had a specific niche, and Shakespeare knew how to work within it. Which, if you think about it, isn't that different from our generation being obsessed with vampires and paranormal romances. In 5 centuries, will our descendants look back at our reading tastes and wonder why it all seems the same?

[toufiq-35 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this play when I was in the sixth grade and at that time I did not completely understand the meaning of "male ego" or "abusive relationships". As the message hidden in this play depicts that women of those times had to succumb dutifully to their "chauvinist" husbands, years later I came to realize how the society of that era looked down upon the uprising and independent women of all times.

While the reason for this play may or may not have been to contemplate women rights and gender equality, nothing makes it anything less than an excellent read, perhaps a minute literary classic in my say!

First of all, notoriously famous for the dark comedy, this play in my opinion is the best Shakespearean Comedy. The play consisting of extremely comical, vivid and humorous energetic ploys never offered me a chance to put it down and stop reading.

From the beginning of the play the readers get an entertaining idea of how terrifying a shrew, the leading character Kate is because of her amusingly foul mouth and vicious temper. Pair that with an equally determined and witty leading male character, Petruchio, who employs comical methods to shape Kate, and you get a splendid comedy. The play proceeds with an interesting insight into how Kate gradually evolves into his devoted wife and a polite woman.

The characters and their dialogues fashion the utmost wit and brilliant excitement all through out the play. Every scene is composed of numerous hilarious and amusing acts that just grip the readers to continue being indulged in the entertaining story.

The play also stands out because of its unique structure. Most Shakespearean plays comprise of romance, banishment, and disguise as a key theme to the plot.
For instance, one never fails to identify the certain styles of Shakespeare; namely one method would be: Male characters in the beginning disguise themselves and they fall for the wrong women who were also disguised. However, everyone reconcile with their true one in the end after a series of farce incidents.
Another signature style would be: Groups of high ranked men and their king are banished to the forsaken islands or forests by a nemesis. Then the noble men and their king would regain power and get invited back in the end by the strange love marriage between the children of the king and his nemesis!

To a great relief this play consisted of none of those techniques which therefore was a remarkably fresh way of journeying through a wonderful Shakespeare comedy.

[paulinaturnsthepages · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My second review (check out my review of The Count of Monte Cristo) and this book is an amazing play. I had to read this for school and I thought this was going to be boring and non-entertaining but, to my surprise, It is hilarious! This book is a clever comedy in which Shakespeare shows two very different sisters and a plot so complex and difficult It is interesting. Some people may think Shakespeare is dull and I can see why but, this is a book i recommend from middle school to the rest of your life. You see Bianca (the innocent, boy fanatic girl who is very vain) and Kate (a feminist who is more reserved to herself and never wants to marry). Kate is very strong and has her dignity. This play is a page turner for sure. I have also seen the movie and the TV series (now gone) and none of them compare to the humorous English vernacular of Shakespeare. (Even though Elizabeth Taylor plays one hell of a Kate!)- Paulina

[anacarter-127109 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Amazing.....