title: Texas hold 'em

text: The ability to play cheaply and anonymously online has been credited as a cause of the increase in popularity of Texas hold 'em. Online poker sites both allow people to try out games (in some cases the games are entirely free to play and are just for fun social experiences) and also provide an avenue for entry into large tournaments (like the World Series of Poker) via smaller tournaments known as satellites. The 2003 and 2004 winners (Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer, respectively) of the World Series no-limit hold 'em main event qualified by playing in these tournaments.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Although online poker grew from its inception in 1998 until 2003, Moneymaker's win and the appearance of television advertisements in 2003 contributed to a tripling of industry revenues in 2004.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Games such as Pokerstars VR enable users to play games of No Limit Texas hold'em in a virtual setting, as well as other popular table games like blackjack, and the common casino game Slots.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Hold 'em is normally played using small and big blind bets—forced bets by two players. Antes (forced contributions by all players) may be used in addition to blinds, particularly in later stages of tournament play. A dealer button is used to represent the player in the dealer position; the dealer button rotates clockwise after each hand, changing the position of the dealer and blinds. The "small blind" is posted by the player to the left of the dealer and is usually equal to half of the big blind. The "big blind", posted by the player to the left of the small blind, is equal to the minimum bet. In tournament poker, the blind/ante structure periodically increases as the tournament progresses. After one round of betting is done, the next betting round will start by the person in the small blind.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: When only two players remain, special "head-to-head" or "heads up" rules are enforced and the blinds are posted differently. In this case, the person with the dealer button posts the small blind, while their opponent places the big blind. The dealer acts first before the flop. After the flop, the dealer acts last and continues to do so for the remainder of the hand.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: The three most common variations of hold 'em are "limit" hold 'em, "no-limit" hold 'em and "pot-limit" hold 'em. Limit hold 'em has historically been the most popular form of hold 'em found in casino live action games in the United States. In limit hold 'em, bets and raises during the first two rounds of betting (pre-flop and flop) must be equal to the big blind; this amount is called the "small bet". In the next two rounds of betting (turn and river), bets and raises must be equal to twice the big blind; this amount is called the "big bet".


title: Texas hold 'em

text: No-limit hold 'em has grown in popularity and is the form most commonly found in televised tournament poker and is the game played in the main event of the World Series of Poker. In no-limit hold 'em, players may bet or raise any amount over the minimum raise up to all of the chips the player has at the table (called an all-in bet). The minimum raise is equal to the size of the previous bet or raise. If someone wishes to re-raise, they must raise at least the amount of the previous raise. For example, if the big blind is $2 and there is a raise of $6 to a total of $8, a re-raise must be at least $6 more for a total of $14. If a raise or re-raise is all-in and does not equal the size of the previous raise (or half the size in some casinos), the initial raiser cannot re-raise again (in case there are other players also still in the game). In pot-limit hold 'em, the maximum raise is the current size of the pot (including the amount needed to call).


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Some casinos that offer hold 'em also allow the player to the left of the big blind to post an optional live straddle, usually double the amount of the big blind. This causes that player to act as the big blind and the player has an option to raise when it comes to their turn again. (Some variations allow for straddle on the button). No-limit games may also allow multiple re-straddles, in any amount that would be a legal raise.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Following a shuffle of the cards, play begins with each player being dealt two cards face down, with the player in the small blind receiving the first card and the player in the button seat receiving the last card dealt. (As in most poker games, the deck is a standard 52-card deck containing no jokers.) These cards are the players' "hole" or "pocket" cards. These are the only cards each player will receive individually, and they will (possibly) be revealed only at the showdown, making Texas hold 'em a closed poker game.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: The hand begins with a "pre-flop" betting round, beginning with the player to the left of the big blind (or the player to the left of the dealer, if no blinds are used) and continuing clockwise. A round of betting continues until every player has folded, put in all of their chips, or matched the amount put in by all other active players. See betting for a detailed account. Note that the blinds are considered "live" in the pre-flop betting round, meaning that they are counted toward the amount that the blind player must contribute. If all players call around to the player in the big blind position, that player may either check or raise.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: After the pre-flop betting round, assuming there remain at least two players taking part in the hand, the dealer deals a flop: three face-up community cards. The flop is followed by a second betting round. This and all subsequent betting rounds begin with the player to the dealer's left and continue clockwise.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: After the flop betting round ends, a single community card (called the turn or fourth street) is dealt, followed by a third betting round. A final single community card (called the river or fifth street) is then dealt, followed by a fourth betting round and the showdown, if necessary. In the third and fourth betting rounds, the stakes double.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: In all casinos, the dealer will burn a card before the flop, turn, and river. Because of this burn, players who are betting cannot see the back of the next community card to come. This is done for traditional reasons, to avoid any possibility of a player knowing in advance the next card to be dealt due to its being marked.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: If a player bets and all other players fold, then the remaining player is awarded the pot and is not required to show their hole cards. If two or more players remain after the final betting round, a showdown occurs. On the showdown, each player plays the best poker hand they can make from the seven cards comprising their two hole cards and the five community cards. A player may use both of their own two hole cards, only one, or none at all, to form their final five-card hand. If the five community cards form the player's best hand, then the player is said to be "playing the board" and can only hope to split the pot, because each other player can also use the same five cards to construct the same hand.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: If the best hand is shared by more than one player, then the pot is split equally among them, with any extra chips going to the first players after the button in clockwise order. It is common for players to have closely valued, but not identically ranked hands. Nevertheless, one must be careful in determining the best hand; if the hand involves fewer than five cards, (such as two pair or three of a kind), then kickers are used to settle ties (see the second example below). The card's "numerical" rank is of sole importance; suit values are irrelevant in hold 'em.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: If the first or second card dealt is exposed, then this is considered a misdeal. The dealer then retrieves the card, reshuffles the deck, and again cuts the cards. However, if any other hole card is exposed due to a dealer error, the deal continues as usual. After completing the deal, the dealer replaces the exposed card with the top card on the deck, and the exposed card is then used as the burn card. If more than one hole card is exposed, a misdeal is declared by the dealer and the hand is dealt again from the beginning.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: A misdeal is also declared if a player receives more than two hole cards by mistake (e.g. two cards stuck together).


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Each player plays the best five-card hand they can make with the seven cards available. Below is the list of best hands each player has.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: In this case, Ted wins as he has the best hand (full house). If arranged in order of hand strength from the strongest, it would be Ted's full house, Carol's flush, Alice's straight, and Bob's three-of-a-kind.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Here is a sample game involving four players. The players' individual hands will not be revealed until the showdown, to give a better sense of what happens during play:


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Compulsory bets: Alice is the dealer. Bob, to Alice's left, posts a small blind of $1, and Carol posts a big blind of $2.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Pre-flop: Alice deals two hole cards face down to each player, beginning with Bob and ending with herself. Ted must act first, being the first player after the big blind. Ted cannot check, because the $2 big blind plays as a bet, and so folds. Alice calls the $2. Bob adds an additional $1 to the $1 small blind to call the $2 total. Carol's blind is "live" (see blind), so there is the "option" to raise here, but Carol checks instead, ending the first betting round. The pot now contains $6, $2 from each of three players.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Flop: Alice now burns a card and deals the flop of three face-up community cards, . On this round, as on all subsequent rounds, the player on the dealer's left begins the betting. Bob checks, Carol opens for $2, and Alice raises another $2 (puts in $4, $2 to match Carol and $2 to raise), making the total bet now facing Bob $4. Bob calls (puts in $4, $2 to match Carol's initial bet and $2 to match Alice's raise). Carol calls as well, putting in $2. The pot now contains $18, $6 from the last round and $12 from three players this round.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Turn: Alice now burns another card and deals the turn card face up. It is the . Bob checks, Carol checks, and Alice checks; the turn has been "checked around". The pot still contains $18.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: River: Alice burns another card and deals the final river card, the , making the final board . Bob bets $4, Carol calls, and Alice folds (Alice's holding was and was hoping the river card would be a club to make a flush).


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Showdown: Bob shows his hand of , so the best five-card hand possible is , for three nines, with a king-queen kicker. Carol shows her cards of , making a final hand for two pair, kings and nines, with a jack kicker. Bob wins the showdown and the $26 pot.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Because of the presence of community cards in Texas hold 'em, different players' hands can often run very close in value. As a result, it is common for kickers to be used to determine the winning hand and also for two hands (or maybe more) to tie. A kicker is a card that is part of the five-card poker hand, but is not used in determining a hand's rank. For instance, in the hand A-A-A-K-Q, the king and queen are kickers.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: The following situation illustrates the importance of breaking ties with kickers and card ranks, as well as the use of the five-card rule. After the turn, the board and players' hole cards are as follows.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: At the moment, Bob is in the lead with a hand of , making two pair, queens and eights, with a king kicker. This beats Carol's hand of by virtue of the king kicker.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Suppose the final card is the , making the final board . Bob and Carol still each have two pair (queens and eights), but both of them are now entitled to play the final ace as their fifth card, making their hands both two pair, queens and eights, with an ace kicker. Bob's king no longer plays, because the ace on the board plays as the fifth card in both hands, and a hand is only composed of the best five cards. They therefore tie and split the pot. However, if the last card is a jack or lower (except an eight, which would make a full house, or a ten, which would give Carol a higher second pair), Bob's king stays in the game and Bob wins.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Most poker authors recommend a tight-aggressive approach to playing Texas hold 'em. This strategy involves playing relatively few hands (tight), but betting and raising often with those that one does play (aggressive). Although this strategy is often recommended, some professional players successfully employ other strategies as well.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Almost all authors agree that where a player sits in the order of play (known as position) is an important element of Texas hold 'em strategy, particularly in no-limit hold'em. Players who act later have more information than players who act earlier. As a result, players typically play fewer hands from early positions than later positions.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Because of the game's level of complexity, it has received some attention from academics. One attempt to develop a quantitative model of a Texas hold'em tournament as an isolated complex system has had some success, although the full consequences for optimal strategies remain to be explored. In addition, groups at the University of Alberta and Carnegie Mellon University worked to develop poker playing programs utilizing techniques in game theory and artificial intelligence. In January 2015, the AAAS journal Science reported that the group at the University of Alberta had succeeded in coding a computer program called Cepheus that can learn from its playing experience to optimize its CFR algorithm and approach playing perfection when opposing strong players in the variant known as heads-up limit Texas Hold ’em, which involves only two players. Although it does not win every hand, it is unbeatable on average over a large number of hands. The program exhibits more variation in its tactics than professional players do, for instance bluffing with weak hands that professional players tend to fold. Public web access to observe and play against Cepheus is available.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Because only two cards are dealt to each player, it is easy to characterize all of the starting hands. There are (52 × 51)/2 = 1,326 distinct possible combinations of two cards from a standard 52-card deck. Because no suit is more powerful than another, many of these can be equated for the analysis of starting-hand strategy. For example, although and are distinct combinations of cards by rank and suit, they are of equal value as starting hands.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Because of this equivalence, there are only 169 effectively different hole-card combinations. Thirteen of these are pairs, from deuces (twos) to aces. There are 78 ways to have two cards of different rank (12 possible hands containing one ace, 11 possible hands containing one king but no ace, 10 possible hands containing one queen but no ace or king, etc.). Both hole cards can be used in a flush if they are suited, but pairs are never suited, so there would be 13 possible pairs, 78 possible suited non-pairs, and 78 possible unsuited ("off-suit") non-pairs, for a total of 169 possible hands. Suited starting hands are stronger than their unsuited counterparts, although the magnitude of this strength advantage in different games is debated.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Because of the limited number of starting hands, most strategy guides include a detailed discussion of each of them. This distinguishes hold 'em from other poker games where the number of starting card combinations forces strategy guides to group hands into broad categories. Another result of this small number is the proliferation of colloquial names for individual hands.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Texas Hold'em is commonly played both as a "cash" or "ring" game and as a tournament game. Strategy for these different forms can vary.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Before the advent of poker tournaments, all poker games were played with real money where players bet actual currency (or chips that represented currency). Games that feature wagering actual money on individual hands are still very common and are referred to as "cash games" or "ring games".


title: Texas hold 'em

text: The no-limit and fixed-limit cash-game versions of hold 'em are strategically very different. Doyle Brunson claims that "the games are so different that there are not many players who rank with the best in both types of hold 'em. Many no-limit players have difficulty "gearing down" for limit, while limit players often lack the courage and 'feel' necessary to excel at no-limit." Because the size of bets is restricted in limit games, the ability to bluff is somewhat curtailed. Because one is not (usually) risking all of one's chips in limit poker, players are sometimes advised to take more chances.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Lower-stakes games also exhibit different properties than higher-stakes games. Small-stakes games often involve more players in each hand and can vary from extremely passive (little raising and betting) to extremely aggressive (many raises). This difference of small-stakes games has prompted several books dedicated to only those games.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Texas hold 'em is often associated with poker tournaments largely because it is played as the main event in many of the famous tournaments, including the World Series of Poker's Main Event, and is the most common tournament overall. Traditionally, a poker tournament is played with chips that represent a player's stake in the tournament. Standard play allows all entrants to "buy-in" for a fixed amount and all players begin with an equal value of chips. Play proceeds until one player has accumulated all the chips in play or a deal is made among the remaining players to "chop" the remaining prize pool. The money pool is redistributed to the players in relation to the place they finished in the tournament. Only a small percentage of the players receive any money, with the majority receiving nothing. "The percentages are not standardized, but common rules of thumb call for one table" (usually nine players) "to get paid for each 100 entrants," according to poker author Andrew Glazer, in his book, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Poker". A good rule of thumb is that close to 10% of players will be paid in a tournament. As a result, the strategy in poker tournaments can be very different from a cash game.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Proper strategy in tournaments can vary widely depending on the amount of chips one has, the stage of the tournament, the amount of chips others have, and the playing styles of one's opponents. Although some authors still recommend a tight playing style, others recommend looser play (playing more hands) in tournaments than one would otherwise play in cash games. In tournaments the blinds and antes increase regularly, and can become much larger near the end of the tournament. This can force players to play hands that they would not normally play when the blinds were small, which can warrant both more loose and more aggressive play.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: The strategy of playing each hand can be very different according to the strength of the hand. For example, on a strong hand, a player might want to try to appear weak in order to not scare off other players with weaker hands, while on a weak hand, a player might try to bluff other players into folding.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: There are several ways to evaluate hand strength; two of the most common are counting outs and using calculators.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Such cards are called "outs", and hand strength can be measured by how many outs are still in the deck (if there are many outs then the probability to get one of them is high and therefore the hand is strong). The following chart determines the probability of hitting outs (bettering the player's hand) based on how many cards are left in the deck and the draw type.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: There are several other poker variants that resemble Texas hold 'em. Hold 'em is a member of a class of poker games known as community card games, where some cards are available for use by all the players. There are several other games that use five community cards in addition to some private cards and are thus like Texas hold 'em. Royal hold 'em has the same structure as Texas hold 'em, but the deck contains only Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks, and Tens. Pineapple and Omaha hold 'em both vary the number of cards an individual receives before the flop (along with the rules regarding how they may be used to form a hand), but are dealt identically afterward. In Double Texas Hold'em, each player receives 3 hole cards and establishes a middle common card that plays with each of the other cards, but the outer cards don’t play with each other (each player has two 2-card hands). Alternatively, in Double-board hold'em all players receive the same number of private cards, but there are two sets of community cards. The winner is either selected for each individual board with each receiving half of the pot, or the best overall hand takes the entire pot, depending on the rules agreed upon by the players.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Another variant is known as Greek hold 'em which requires each player to use both hole cards and only 3 from the board instead of the best five of seven cards.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Manila is a hold'em variant that was once popular in Australia. In Manila, players receive two private cards from a reduced deck (containing no cards lower than 7). A five-card board is dealt, unlike Texas hold 'em, one card at a time; there is a betting round after each card. Manila has several variations of its own, similar to the variants listed above.


title: Texas hold 'em

text: Six-plus hold 'em (also known as Short-deck hold 'em) is a community card poker game variant of Texas hold 'em, where cards 2 through 5 are removed. Each player is dealt two cards face down and seeks to make his or her best five-card poker hand using from any combination of the seven cards (five community cards and their own two hole cards).


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592. The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Christopher Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself. The nobleman then has the play performed for Sly's diversion.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The main plot depicts the courtship of Petruchio and Katherina, the headstrong, obdurate shrew. Initially, Katherina is an unwilling participant in the relationship; however, Petruchio "tames" her with various psychological and physical torments, such as keeping her from eating and drinking, until she becomes a desirable, compliant, and obedient bride. The subplot features a competition between the suitors of Katherina's younger sister, Bianca, who is seen as the "ideal" woman. The question of whether the play is misogynistic has become the subject of considerable controversy, particularly among modern scholars, audiences, and readers.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: "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.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Prior to the first act, an induction frames the play as a "kind of history" played in front of a befuddled drunkard named Christopher Sly who is tricked into believing that he is a lord. The play is performed in order to distract Sly from his "wife," who is actually Bartholomew, a servant, dressed as a woman.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In the play performed for Sly, the "shrew" is Katherina, the older daughter of Baptista Minola, a lord in Padua. Numerous men, including Tranio, deem Katherina an unworthy option for marriage because of her notorious assertiveness and willfulness. On the other hand, men such as Hortensio and Gremio are eager to marry her younger sister Bianca. However, Baptista has sworn Bianca is not allowed to marry until Katherina is wed; this motivates Bianca's suitors to work together to find Katherina a husband so that they may compete for Bianca. The plot thickens when Lucentio, who has recently come to Padua to attend university, falls in love with Bianca. Overhearing Baptista say that he is on the lookout for tutors for his daughters, Lucentio devises a plan in which he disguises himself as a Latin tutor named Cambio in order to woo Bianca behind Baptista's back and meanwhile has his servant Tranio pretend to be him.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In the meantime, Petruchio, accompanied by his servant Grumio, arrives in Padua from Verona. He explains to Hortensio, an old friend of his, that since his father's death he has set out to enjoy life and wed. Hearing this, Hortensio recruits Petruchio as a suitor for Katherina. He also has Petruchio present him (Hortensio) to Baptista disguised as a music tutor named Litio. Thus, Lucentio and Hortensio attempt to woo Bianca while pretending to be the tutors Cambio and Litio respectively.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: To counter Katherina's shrewish nature, Petruchio pretends that any harsh things she says or does are actually kind and gentle. Katherina agrees to marry Petruchio after seeing that he is the only man willing to counter her quick remarks; however, at the ceremony, Petruchio makes an embarrassing scene when he strikes the priest and drinks the communion wine. After the wedding, Petruchio takes Katherina to his home against her will. Once they are gone, Gremio and Tranio (disguised as Lucentio) formally bid for Bianca, with Tranio easily outbidding Gremio. However, in his zeal to win he promises much more than Lucentio actually possesses. When Baptista determines that once Lucentio's father confirms the dowry, Bianca and Tranio (i.e. Lucentio) can marry, Tranio decides that they will need someone to pretend to be Vincentio, Lucentio's father. Meanwhile, Tranio persuades Hortensio that Bianca is not worthy of his attentions, thus removing Lucentio's remaining rival.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In Verona, Petruchio begins the "taming" of his new wife. She is refused food and clothing because nothing – according to Petruchio – is good enough for her; he claims that perfectly cooked meat is overcooked, a beautiful dress doesn't fit right, and a stylish hat is not fashionable. He also disagrees with everything that she says, forcing her to agree with everything that he says, no matter how absurd; on their way back to Padua to attend Bianca's wedding, she agrees with Petruchio that the sun is the moon, and proclaims "if you please to call it a rush-candle,/Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me" (4.5.14–15). Along the way, they meet Vincentio, who is also on his way to Padua, and Katherina agrees with Petruchio when he declares that Vincentio is a woman and then apologises to Vincentio when Petruchio tells her that he is a man.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Back in Padua, Lucentio and Tranio convince a passing pedant to pretend to be Vincentio and confirm the dowry for Bianca. The man does so, and Baptista is happy for Bianca to wed Lucentio (still Tranio in disguise). Bianca, aware of the deception, then secretly elopes with the real Lucentio to get married. However, when Vincentio reaches Padua, he encounters the pedant, who claims to be Lucentio's father. Tranio (still disguised as Lucentio) appears, and the pedant acknowledges him to be his son Lucentio. In all the confusion, the real Vincentio is set to be arrested, when the real Lucentio appears with his newly betrothed Bianca, revealing all to a bewildered Baptista and Vincentio. Lucentio explains everything, and all is forgiven by the two fathers.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Meanwhile, Hortensio has married a rich widow. In the final scene of the play there are three newly married couples; Bianca and Lucentio, the widow and Hortensio, and Katherina and Petruchio. Because of the general opinion that Petruchio is married to a shrew, a good-natured quarrel breaks out amongst the three men about whose wife is the most obedient. Petruchio proposes a wager whereby each will send a servant to call for their wives, and whichever comes most obediently will have won the wager for her husband. Katherina is the only one of the three who comes, winning the wager for Petruchio. She then hauls the other two wives into the room, giving a speech on why wives should always obey their husbands. The play ends with Baptista, Hortensio and Lucentio marvelling at how successfully Petruchio has tamed the shrew.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Although there is no direct literary source for the induction, the tale of a commoner being duped into believing he is a lord is one found in many literary traditions. Such a story is recorded in "Arabian Nights" where Harun al-Rashid plays the same trick on a man he finds sleeping in an alley. Another is found in "De Rebus Burgundicis" (1584) by the Dutch historian Pontus de Huyter, where Philip, Duke of Burgundy, after attending his sister's wedding in Portugal, finds a drunken "artisan" whom he entertains with a "pleasant Comedie." "Arabian Nights" was not translated into English until the mid 18th century, although Shakespeare may have known it by word of mouth. He could also have known the Duke of Burgundy story because although "De Rebus" was not translated into French until 1600 and not into English until 1607, there is evidence the story existed in English in a jest book (now lost) by Richard Edwardes, written in 1570.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Regarding the Petruchio/Katherina story, there are a variety of possible influences, but no one specific source. The basic elements of the narrative are present in tale 35 of the fourteenth-century Spanish book "Libro de los ejemplos del conde Lucanor y de Patronio" by Don Juan Manuel, which tells of a young man who marries a "very strong and fiery woman." The text had been translated into English by the sixteenth century, but there is no evidence that Shakespeare drew on it. The story of a headstrong woman tamed by a man was well known, and found in numerous traditions. For example, according to "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer, Noah's wife was such a woman ('"Hastow nought herd," quod Nicholas, "also/The sorwe of Noë with his felaschippe/That he had or he gat his wyf to schipe"'; "The Miller's Tale", l. 352–354), and it was common for her to be depicted in this manner in mystery plays. Historically, another such woman was Xanthippe, Socrates' wife, who is mentioned by Petruchio himself (1.2.70). Such characters also occur throughout medieval literature, in popular farces both before and during Shakespeare's lifetime, and in folklore.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In 1890, Alfred Tolman conjectured a possible literary source for the wager scene may have been William Caxton's 1484 translation of Geoffroy IV de la Tour Landry's "Livre pour l'enseignement de ses filles du Chevalier de La Tour Landry" (1372). Written for his daughters as a guide on how to behave appropriately, de la Tour Landry includes "a treatise on the domestic education of women" which features an anecdote in which three merchants make a wager as to which of their wives will prove the most obedient when called upon to jump into a basin of water. The episode sees the first two wives refuse to obey (as in the play), it ends at a banquet (as does the play) and it features a speech regarding the "correct" way for a husband to discipline his wife. In 1959, John W. Shroeder conjectured that "Chevalier de La Tour Landry"s depiction of the Queen Vastis story may also have been an influence on Shakespeare.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In 1964, Richard Hosley suggested the main source for the play may have been the anonymous ballad "A merry jeste of a shrewde and curst Wyfe, lapped in Morrelles Skin, for her good behauyour". The ballad tells the story of a marriage in which the husband must tame his headstrong wife. Like "Shrew", the story features a family with two sisters, the younger of whom is seen as mild and desirable. However, in "Merry Jest", the older sister is obdurate not because it is simply her nature, but because she has been raised by her shrewish mother to seek mastery over men. Ultimately, the couple return to the family house, where the now tamed woman lectures her sister on the merits of being an obedient wife. The taming in this version is much more physical than in Shakespeare; the shrew is beaten with birch rods until she bleeds, and is then wrapped in the salted flesh of a plough horse (the Morrelle of the title). "Merry Jest" was not unknown to earlier editors of the play, and had been dismissed as a source by A.R. Frey, W.C. Hazlitt, R. Warwick Bond and Frederick S. Boas. Modern editors also express doubt as to Hosley's argument.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In 1966, Jan Harold Brunvand argued that the main source for the play was not literary, but the oral folktale tradition. He argued the Petruchio/Katherina story represents an example of Type 901 ('Shrew-taming Complex') in the Aarne–Thompson classification system. Brunvand discovered 383 oral examples of Type 901 spread over thirty European countries, but he could find only 35 literary examples, leading him to conclude "Shakespeare's taming plot, which has not been traced successfully in its entirety to any known printed version, must have come ultimately from oral tradition." Most contemporary critics accept Brunvand's findings.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: A source for Shakespeare's sub-plot was first identified by Alfred Tolman in 1890 as Ludovico Ariosto's "I Suppositi", which was published in 1551. George Gascoigne's English prose translation "Supposes" was performed in 1566 and printed in 1573. In "I Suppositi", Erostrato (the equivalent of Lucentio) falls in love with Polynesta (Bianca), daughter of Damon (Baptista). Erostrato disguises himself as Dulipo (Tranio), a servant, whilst the real Dulipo pretends to be Erostrato. Having done this, Erostrato is hired as a tutor for Polynesta. Meanwhile, Dulipo pretends to formally woo Polynesta so as to frustrate the wooing of the aged Cleander (Gremio). Dulipo outbids Cleander, but he promises far more than he can deliver, so he and Erostrato dupe a travelling gentleman from Siena into pretending to be Erostrato's father, Philogano (Vincentio). However, when Polynesta is found to be pregnant, Damon has Dulipo imprisoned (the real father is Erostrato). Soon thereafter, the real Philogano arrives, and all comes to a head. Erostrato reveals himself, and begs clemency for Dulipo. Damon realises that Polynesta is truly in love with Erostrato, and so forgives the subterfuge. Having been released from jail, Dulipo then discovers he is Cleander's son. An additional minor source is "Mostellaria" by Plautus, from which Shakespeare probably took the names of Tranio and Grumio.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Efforts to date the play's composition are complicated by its uncertain relationship with another Elizabethan play entitled "A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called the taming of a Shrew", which has an almost identical plot but different wording and character names. "The Shrew"s exact relationship with "A Shrew" is unknown. Different theories suggest "A Shrew" could be a reported text of a performance of "The Shrew", a source for "The Shrew", an early draft (possibly reported) of "The Shrew", or an adaptation of "The Shrew". "A Shrew" was entered in the Stationers' Register on 2 May 1594, suggesting that whatever the relationship between the two plays, "The Shrew" was most likely written somewhere between 1590 (roughly when Shakespeare arrived in London) and 1594 (registration of "A Shrew").


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Some writers suggest, that it is possible to narrow the date further. A "terminus ante quem" for "A Shrew" could to be August 1592, as a stage direction at 3.21 mentions "Simon," which probably refers to the actor Simon Jewell, who was buried on 21 August 1592. Furthermore, "The Shrew" seems to have been written earlier than 1593, as Anthony Chute's "Beauty Dishonoured, written under the title of Shore's wife" (published in June 1593) contains the line "He calls his Kate, and she must come and kiss him." This must refer to "The Shrew", as there is no corresponding "kissing scene" in "A Shrew". There are also verbal similarities between both "Shrew" plays and the anonymous play "A Knack To Know A Knave" (first performed at The Rose on 10 June 1592). "Knack" features several passages common to both "A Shrew" and "The Shrew", but it also borrows several passages unique to "The Shrew". This suggests "The Shrew" was on stage prior to June 1592.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In his 1982 edition of the play for The Oxford Shakespeare, H.J. Oliver suggests the play was composed no later than 1592. He bases this on the title page of "A Shrew", which mentions the play had been performed "sundry times" by Pembroke's Men. When the London theatres were closed on 23 June 1592 due to an outbreak of plague, Pembroke's Men went on a regional tour to Bath and Ludlow. The tour was a financial failure, and the company returned to London on 28 September, financially ruined. Over the course of the next three years, four plays with their name on the title page were published; Christopher Marlowe's "Edward II" (published in quarto in July 1593), and Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus" (published in quarto in 1594), "The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York" (published in octavo in 1595) and "The Taming of a Shrew" (published in quarto in May 1594). Oliver says it is a "natural assumption" that these publications were sold by members of Pembroke's Men who were broke after the failed tour. Oliver assumes that "A Shrew" is a reported version of "The Shrew", which means "The Shrew" must have been in their possession when they began their tour in June, as they didn't perform it upon returning to London in September, nor would they have taken possession of any new material at that time.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Ann Thompson considers "A Shrew" to be a reported text in her 1984 and 2003 editions of the play for the New Cambridge Shakespeare. She focuses on the closure of the theatres on 23 June 1592, arguing that the play must have been written prior to June 1592 for it to have given rise to "A Shrew". She cites the reference to "Simon" in "A Shrew", Anthony Chute's allusion to "The Shrew" in "Beauty Dishonoured" and the verbal similarities between "The Shrew" and "A Knack to Know a Knave" as supporting a date of composition prior to June 1592. Stephen Roy Miller, in his 1998 edition of "A Shrew" for the New Cambridge Shakespeare, agrees with the date of late 1591/early 1592, as he believes "The Shrew" preceded "A Shrew" (although he rejects the reported text theory in favour of an adaptation/rewrite theory). In "William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion" Gary Taylor argues for a date of composition around 1590-1591, noting much of the same evidence cited by other scholars but acknowledging the difficulty of dating the play with certainty.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Keir Elam, however, has argued for a "terminus post quem" of 1591 for "The Shrew", based on Shakespeare's probable use of two sources published that year: Abraham Ortelius' map of Italy in the fourth edition of "Theatrum Orbis Terrarum", and John Florio's "Second Fruits". Firstly, Shakespeare errs in putting Padua in Lombardy instead of Veneto, probably because he used Ortelius' map of Italy as a source, which has "Lombardy" written across the entirety of northern Italy. Secondly, Elam suggests that Shakespeare derived his Italian idioms and some of the dialogue from Florio's "Second Fruits", a bilingual introduction to Italian language and culture. Elam argues that Lucentio's opening dialogue,


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: is an example of Shakespeare's borrowing from Florio's dialogue between Peter and Stephan, who have just arrived in the north:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Elam's arguments suggest "The Shrew" must have been written no earlier than 1591, which places the date of composition around 1591-1592.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The 1594 quarto of "A Shrew" was printed by Peter Short for Cuthbert Burbie. It was republished in 1596 (again by Short for Burbie), and 1607 by Valentine Simmes for Nicholas Ling. "The Shrew" was not published until the "First Folio" in 1623. The only quarto version of "The Shrew" was printed by William Stansby for John Smethwick in 1631 as "A Wittie and Pleasant comedie called The Taming of the Shrew", based on the 1623 folio text. W.W. Greg has demonstrated that "A Shrew" and "The Shrew" were treated as the same text for the purposes of copyright, i.e. ownership of one constituted ownership of the other, and when Smethwick purchased the rights from Ling in 1609 to print the play in the "First Folio", Ling actually transferred the rights for "A Shrew", not "The Shrew".


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: One of the most fundamental critical debates surrounding "The Shrew" is its relationship with "A Shrew". There are five main theories as to the nature of this relationship:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The exact relationship between "The Shrew" and "A Shrew" is uncertain, but many scholars consider "The Shrew" the original, with "A Shrew" derived from it; as H.J. Oliver suggests, there are "passages in ["A Shrew"] [...] that make sense only if one knows the [Follio] version from which they must have been derived."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The debate regarding the relationship between the two plays began in 1725, when Alexander Pope incorporated extracts from "A Shrew" into "The Shrew" in his edition of Shakespeare's works. In "The Shrew", the Christopher Sly framework is only featured twice; at the opening of the play, and at the end of Act 1, Scene 1. However, in "A Shrew", the Sly framework reappears a further five times, including a scene which comes after the final scene of the Petruchio/Katherina story. Pope added most of the Sly framework to "The Shrew", even though he acknowledged in his preface that he did not believe Shakespeare had written "A Shrew". Subsequent editors followed suit, adding some or all of the Sly framework to their versions of "The Shrew"; Lewis Theobald (1733), Thomas Hanmer (1744), William Warburton (1747), Samuel Johnson and George Steevens (1765) and Edward Capell (1768). In his 1790 edition of "The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare", however, Edmond Malone removed all "A Shrew" extracts and returned the text to the 1623 "First Folio" version. By the end of the eighteenth century, the predominant theory had come to be that "A Shrew" was a non-Shakespearean source for "The Shrew", and hence to include extracts from it was to graft non-authorial material onto the play.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: This theory prevailed until 1850, when Samuel Hickson compared the texts of "The Shrew" and "A Shrew", concluding "The Shrew" was the original, and "A Shrew" was derived from it. By comparing seven passages which are similar in both plays, he concluded "the original conception is invariably to be found" in "The Shrew". His explanation was that "A Shrew" was written by Christopher Marlowe, with "The Shrew" as his template. He reached this conclusion primarily because "A Shrew" features numerous lines almost identical to lines in Marlowe's "Tamburlaine" and "Dr. Faustus".


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In 1926, building on Hickson's research, Peter Alexander first suggested the bad quarto theory. Alexander agreed with Hickson that "A Shrew" was derived from "The Shrew", but he did not agree that Marlowe wrote "A Shrew". Instead he labelled "A Shrew" a bad quarto. His main argument was that, primarily in the subplot of "A Shrew", characters act without motivation, whereas such motivation is present in "The Shrew". Alexander believed this represents an example of a "reporter" forgetting details and becoming confused, which also explains why lines from other plays are used from time to time; to cover gaps which the reporter knows have been left. He also argued the subplot in "The Shrew" was closer to the plot of "I Suppositi"/"Supposes" than the subplot in "A Shrew", which he felt indicated the subplot in "The Shrew" must have been based directly on the source, whereas the subplot in "A Shrew" was a step removed. In their 1928 edition of the play for the New Shakespeare, Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson supported Alexander's argument. However, there has always been critical resistance to the theory.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: An early scholar to find fault with Alexander's reasoning was E.K. Chambers, who reasserted the source theory. Chambers, who supported Alexander's bad quarto theory regarding "The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster" and "The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of Yorke", argued "A Shrew" did not fit the pattern of a bad quarto; "I am quite unable to believe that "A Shrew" had any such origin. Its textual relation to "The Shrew" does not bear any analogy to that of other 'bad Quartos' to the legitimate texts from which they were memorised. The nomenclature, which at least a memoriser can recall, is entirely different. The verbal parallels are limited to stray phrases, most frequent in the main plot, for which I believe Shakespeare picked them up from "A Shrew"." He explained the relationship between "I Suppositi"/"Supposes" and the subplots by arguing the subplot in "The Shrew" was based upon both the subplot in "A Shrew" and the original version of the story in Ariosto/Gascoigne.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In 1938, Leo Kirschbaum made a similar argument. In an article listing over twenty examples of bad quartos, Kirschbaum did not include "A Shrew", which he felt was too different from "The Shrew" to come under the bad quarto banner; "despite protestations to the contrary, "The Taming of a Shrew" does not stand in relation to "The Shrew" as "The True Tragedie", for example, stands in relation to "3 Henry VI"." Writing in 1998, Stephen Roy Miller offers much the same opinion; "the relation of the early quarto to the "Folio" text is unlike other early quartos because the texts vary much more in plotting and dialogue [...] the differences between the texts are substantial and coherent enough to establish that there was deliberate revision in producing one text out of the other; hence "A Shrew" is not merely a poor report (or 'bad quarto') of "The Shrew"." Character names are changed, basic plot points are altered (Kate has two sisters for example, not one), the play is set in Athens instead of Padua, the Sly framework forms a complete narrative, and entire speeches are completely different, all of which suggests to Miller that the author of "A Shrew" thought they were working on something different from Shakespeare's play, not attempting to transcribe it for resale; "underpinning the notion of a 'Shakespearean bad quarto' is the assumption that the motive of whoever compiled that text was to produce, differentially, a verbal replica of what appeared on stage." Miller believes that Chambers and Kirschbaum successfully illustrate "A Shrew" does not fulfil this rubric.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Alexander's theory continued to be challenged as the years went on. In 1942, R.A. Houk developed what came to be dubbed the "Ur-Shrew" theory; both "A Shrew" and "The Shrew" were based upon a third play, now lost. In 1943, G.I. Duthie refined Houk's suggestion by arguing "A Shrew" was a memorial reconstruction of "Ur-Shrew", a now lost early draft of "The Shrew"; ""A Shrew" is substantially a memorially constructed text and is dependent upon an early "Shrew" play, now lost. "The Shrew" is a reworking of this lost play." Hickson, who believed Marlowe to have written "A Shrew", had hinted at this theory in 1850; "though I do not believe Shakspeare's play to contain a line of any other writer, I think it extremely probable that we have it only in a revised form, and that, consequently, the play which Marlowe imitated might not necessarily have been that fund of life and humour that we find it now." Hickson is here arguing that Marlowe's "A Shrew" is not based upon the version of "The Shrew" found in the "First Folio", but on another version of the play. Duthie argues this other version was a Shakespearean early draft of "The Shrew"; "A Shrew" constitutes a reported text of a now lost early draft.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Alexander returned to the debate in 1969, re-presenting his bad quarto theory. In particular, he concentrated on the various complications and inconsistencies in the subplot of "A Shrew", which had been used by Houk and Duthie as evidence for an "Ur-Shrew", to argue that the reporter of "A Shrew" attempted to recreate the complex subplot from "The Shrew" but got confused; "the compiler of "A Shrew" while trying to follow the subplot of "The Shrew" gave it up as too complicated to reproduce, and fell back on love scenes in which he substituted for the maneuvers of the disguised Lucentio and Hortensio extracts from "Tamburlaine" and "Faustus", with which the lovers woo their ladies."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: After little further discussion of the issue in the 1970s, the 1980s saw the publication of three scholarly editions of "The Shrew", all of which re-addressed the question of the relationship between the two plays; Brian Morris' 1981 edition for the second series of the Arden Shakespeare, H.J. Oliver's 1982 edition for the Oxford Shakespeare and Ann Thompson's 1984 edition for the New Cambridge Shakespeare. Morris summarised the scholarly position in 1981 as one in which no clear-cut answers could be found; "unless new, external evidence comes to light, the relationship between "The Shrew" and "A Shrew" can never be decided beyond a peradventure. It will always be a balance of probabilities, shifting as new arguments and opinions are added to the scales. Nevertheless, in the present century, the movement has unquestionably been towards an acceptance of the Bad Quarto theory, and this can now be accepted as at least the current orthodoxy." Morris himself, and Thompson, supported the bad quarto theory, with Oliver tentatively arguing for Duthie's bad quarto/early draft/"Ur-Shrew" theory.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Perhaps the most extensive examination of the question came in 1998 in Stephen Roy Miller's edition of "A Shrew" for the New Cambridge Shakespeare: The Early Quartos series. Miller agrees with most modern scholars that "A Shrew" is derived from "The Shrew", but he does not believe it to be a bad quarto. Instead, he argues it is an adaptation by someone other than Shakespeare. Miller believes Alexander's suggestion in 1969 that the reporter became confused is unlikely, and instead suggests an adapter at work; "the most economic explanation of indebtedness is that whoever compiled "A Shrew" borrowed the lines from Shakespeare's "The Shrew", or a version of it, and adapted them." Part of Miller's evidence relates to Gremio, who has no counterpart in "A Shrew". In "The Shrew", after the wedding, Gremio expresses doubts as to whether or not Petruchio will be able to tame Katherina. In "A Shrew", these lines are extended and split between Polidor (the equivalent of Hortensio) and Phylema (Bianca). As Gremio "does" have a counterpart in "I Suppositi", Miller concludes that "to argue the priority of "A Shrew" in this case would mean arguing that Shakespeare took the negative hints from the speeches of Polidor and Phylema and gave them to a character he resurrected from "Supposes". This is a less economical argument than to suggest that the compiler of "A Shrew", dismissing Gremio, simply shared his doubts among the characters available." He argues there is even evidence in the play that the compiler knew he was working within a specific literary tradition; "as with his partial change of character names, the compiler seems to wish to produce dialogue much like his models, but not the same. For him, adaptation includes exact quotation, imitation and incorporation of his own additions. This seems to define his personal style, and his aim seems to be to produce his own version, presumably intended that it should be tuned more towards the popular era than "The Shrew"."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: As had Alexander, Houk and Duthie, Miller believes the key to the debate is to be found in the subplot, as it is here where the two plays differ most. He points out that the subplot in "The Shrew" is based on "the classical style of Latin comedy with an intricate plot involving deception, often kept in motion by a comic servant." The subplot in "A Shrew", however, which features an extra sister and addresses the issue of marrying above and below one's class, "has many elements more associated with the romantic style of comedy popular in London in the 1590s." Miller cites plays such as Robert Greene's "Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay" and "Fair Em" as evidence of the popularity of such plays. He points to the fact that in "The Shrew", there is only eleven lines of romance between Lucentio and Bianca, but in "A Shrew", there is an entire scene between Kate's two sisters and their lovers. This, he argues, is evidence of an adaptation rather than a faulty report;


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Miller believes the compiler "appears to have wished to make the play shorter, more of a romantic comedy full of wooing and glamorous rhetoric, and to add more obvious, broad comedy."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: H.J. Oliver argues the version of the play in the 1623 "First Folio" was likely copied not from a prompt book or transcript, but from the author's own foul papers, which he believes showed signs of revision by Shakespeare. These revisions, Oliver says, relate primarily to the character of Hortensio, and suggest that in an original version of the play, now lost, Hortensio was not a suitor to Bianca, but simply an old friend of Petruchio. When Shakespeare rewrote the play so that Hortensio became a suitor in disguise (Litio), many of his lines were either omitted or given to Tranio (disguised as Lucentio).


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Oliver cites several scenes in the play where Hortensio (or his absence) causes problems. For example, in Act 2, Scene 1, Tranio (as Lucentio) and Gremio bid for Bianca, but Hortensio, who everyone is aware is also a suitor, is never mentioned. In Act 3, Scene 1, Lucentio (as Cambio) tells Bianca "we might beguile the old Pantalowne" (l.36), yet says nothing of Hortensio's attempts to woo her, instead implying his only rival is Gremio. In Act 3, Scene 2, Tranio suddenly becomes an old friend of Petruchio, knowing his mannerisms and explaining his tardiness prior to the wedding. However, up to this point, Petruchio's only acquaintance in Padua has been Hortensio. In Act 4, Scene 3, Hortensio tells Vincentio that Lucentio has married Bianca. However, as far as Hortensio should be concerned, Lucentio has denounced Bianca, because in Act 4, Scene 2, Tranio (disguised as Lucentio) agreed with Hortensio that neither of them would pursue Bianca, and as such, his knowledge of the marriage of who he supposes to be Lucentio and Bianca makes little sense. From this, Oliver concludes that an original version of the play existed in which Hortensio was simply a friend of Petruchio's, and had no involvement in the Bianca subplot, but wishing to complicate things, Shakespeare rewrote the play, introducing the Litio disguise, and giving some of Hortensio's discarded lines to Tranio, but not fully correcting everything to fit the presence of a new suitor.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: This is important in Duthie's theory of an "Ur-Shrew" insofar as he argues it is the original version of "The Shrew" upon which "A Shrew" is based, not the version which appears in the 1623 "First Folio". As Oliver argues, ""A Shrew" is a report of an earlier, Shakespearian, form of "The Shrew" in which Hortensio was not disguised as Litio." Oliver suggests that when Pembroke's Men left London in June 1592, they had in their possession a now lost early draft of the play. Upon returning to London, they published "A Shrew" in 1594, some time after which Shakespeare rewrote his original play into the form seen in the "First Folio".


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Duthie's arguments were never fully accepted at the time, as critics tended to look on the relationship between the two plays as an either-or situation; "A Shrew" is "either" a reported text "or" an early draft. In more recent scholarship, however, the possibility that a text could be both has been shown to be critically viable. For example, in his 2003 Oxford Shakespeare edition of "2 Henry VI", Roger Warren makes the same argument for "The First Part of the Contention". Randall Martin reaches the same conclusion regarding "The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of Yorke" in his 2001 Oxford Shakespeare edition of "3 Henry VI". This lends support to the theory that "A Shrew" could be both a reported text and an early draft.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: "The Taming of the Shrew" has been the subject of critical controversy. Dana Aspinall writes "Since its first appearance, some time between 1588 and 1594, "Shrew" has elicited a panoply of heartily supportive, ethically uneasy, or altogether disgusted responses to its rough-and-tumble treatment of the 'taming' of the 'curst shrew' Katherina, and obviously, of all potentially unruly wives." Phyllis Rackin argues that "seen in the context of current anxieties, desires and beliefs, Shakespeare's play seems to prefigure the most oppressive modern assumptions about women and to validate those assumptions as timeless truths." Stevie Davies says that responses to "Shrew" have been "dominated by feelings of unease and embarrassment, accompanied by the desire to prove that Shakespeare cannot have meant what he seems to be saying; and that therefore he cannot really be saying it." Philippa Kelly asks:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Some scholars argue that even in Shakespeare's day the play must have been controversial, due to the changing nature of gender politics. Marjorie Garber, for example, suggests Shakespeare created the Induction so the audience wouldn't react badly to the misogyny in the Petruchio/Katherina story; he was, in effect, defending himself against charges of sexism. G.R. Hibbard argues that during the period in which the play was written, arranged marriages were beginning to give way to newer, more romantically informed unions, and thus people's views on women's position in society, and their relationships with men, were in a state of flux. As such, audiences may not have been as predisposed to tolerate the harsh treatment of Katherina as is often thought.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Evidence of at least some initial societal discomfort with "The Shrew" is, perhaps, to be found in the fact that John Fletcher, Shakespeare's successor as house playwright for the King's Men, wrote "The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed" as a sequel to Shakespeare's play. Written "c."1611, the play tells the story of Petruchio's remarriage after Katherina's death. In a mirror of the original, his new wife attempts (successfully) to tame him – thus the tamer becomes the tamed. Although Fletcher's sequel is often downplayed as merely a farce, some critics acknowledge the more serious implications of such a reaction. Lynda Boose, for example, writes, "Fletcher's response may in itself reflect the kind of discomfort that "Shrew" has characteristically provoked in men and why its many revisions since 1594 have repeatedly contrived ways of softening the edges."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: With the rise of the feminist movement in the twentieth century, reactions to the play have tended to become more divergent. For some critics, "Kate's taming was no longer as funny as it had been [...] her domination became, in George Bernard Shaw's words 'altogether disgusting to modern sensibility'." Addressing the relationship between "A Shrew" and "The Shrew" from a political perspective, for example, Leah S. Marcus very much believes the play to be what it seems. She argues "A Shrew" is an earlier version of "The Shrew", but acknowledges that most scholars reject the idea that "A Shrew" was written by Shakespeare. She believes one of the reasons for this is because "A Shrew" "hedges the play's patriarchal message with numerous qualifiers that do not exist in" "The Shrew". She calls "A Shrew" a more "progressive" text than "The Shrew", and argues that scholars tend to dismiss the idea that "A Shrew" is Shakespearean because "the women are not as satisfactorily tamed as they are in "The Shrew"." She also points out that if "A Shrew" is an early draft, it suggests Shakespeare "may have increased rather than decreased the patriarchal violence of his materials", something which, she believes, scholars find difficult to accept.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: However, others see the play as preceding 20th century feminist condemnation of patriarchal domination, and as an argument for the liberation of women. For example, Conall Morrison, director of the RSC "relentlessly unpleasant" 2008 production, wrote:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Jonathan Miller, director of the 1980 "BBC Television Shakespeare" adaptation, and several theatrical productions, argues that although the play is not misogynistic, neither is it a feminist treatise:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: An element in the debate regarding the play's misogyny, or lack thereof, is the Induction, and how it relates to the Katherina/Petruchio story. According to H.J. Oliver, "it has become orthodoxy to claim to find in the Induction the same 'theme' as is to be found in both the Bianca and the Katherine-Petruchio plots of the main play, and to take it for granted that identity of theme is a merit and 'justifies' the introduction of Sly." For example, Geoffrey Bullough argues the three plots "are all linked in idea because all contain discussion of the relations of the sexes in marriage." Richard Hosley suggests the three plots form a unified whole insofar as they all deal with "assumptions about identity and assumptions about personality." Oliver, however, argues that "the Sly Induction does not so much announce the theme of the enclosed stories as establish their "tone"."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: This is important in terms of determining the seriousness of Katherina's final speech. Marjorie Garber writes of the Induction, "the frame performs the important task of distancing the later action, and of insuring a lightness of tone – significant in light of the real abuse to which Kate is subjected by Petruchio." Oliver argues the Induction is used to remove the audience from the world of the enclosed plot – to place the Sly story on the same level of reality as the audience, and the Katherina/Petruchio story on a different level of reality. This, he argues, is done to ensure the audience does not take the play literally, that it sees the Katherina/Petruchio story as a farce:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Oliver argues that "the main purpose of the Induction was to set the tone for the play within the play – in particular, to present the story of Kate and her sister as none-too-serious comedy put on to divert a drunken tinker". He suggests that if the Induction is removed from a production of the play (as it very often is), a fundamental part of the structure has been lost. Speaking of Jonathan Miller's "BBC Television Shakespeare" adaptation of 1980, which omitted the Induction, Stanley Wells wrote "to omit the Christopher Sly episodes is to suppress one of Shakespeare's most volatile lesser characters, to jettison most of the play's best poetry, and to strip it of an entire dramatic dimension."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Regarding the importance of the Induction, Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen argue "the Sly framework establishes a self-referential theatricality in which the status of the shrew-play "as" a play is enforced." Graham Holderness argues "the play in its received entirety does not propose any simple or unitary view of sexual politics: it contains a crudely reactionary dogma of masculine supremacy, but it also works on that ideology to force its expression into self-contradiction. The means by which this self-interrogation is accomplished is that complex theatrical device of the Sly-framework [...] without the metadramatic potentialities of the Sly-framework, any production of "Shrew" is thrown much more passively at the mercy of the director's artistic and political ideology." Coppélia Kahn suggests "the transformation of Christopher Sly from drunken lout to noble lord, a transformation only temporary and skin-deep, suggests that Kate's switch from independence may also be deceptive and prepares us for the irony of the "dénouement"." The Induction serves to undercut charges of misogyny – the play within the play is a farce, it is not supposed to be taken seriously by the audience, as it is not taken seriously by Sly. As such, questions of the seriousness of what happens within it are rendered irrelevant.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Language itself is a major theme in the play, especially in the taming process, where mastery of language becomes paramount. Katherina is initially described as a shrew because of her harsh language to those around her. Karen Newman points out, "from the outset of the play, Katherine's threat to male authority is posed through language: it is perceived by others as such and is linked to a claim larger than shrewishness – witchcraft – through the constant allusions to Katherine's kinship with the devil." For example, after Katherina rebukes Hortensio and Gremio in Act 1, Scene 1, Hortensio replies with "From all such devils, good Lord deliver us!" (l.66). Even Katherina's own father refers to her as "thou hilding of a devilish spirit" (2.1.26). Petruchio, however, attempts to tame her – and thus her language – with rhetoric that specifically undermines her tempestuous nature;


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Here Petruchio is specifically attacking the very function of Katherina's language, vowing that no matter what she says, he will purposely misinterpret it, thus undermining the basis of the linguistic sign, and disrupting the relationship between signifier and signified. In this sense, Margaret Jane Kidnie argues this scene demonstrates the "slipperiness of language."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Apart from undermining her language, Petruchio also uses language to objectify her. For example, in Act 3, Scene 2, Petruchio explains to all present that Katherina is now literally his property:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In discussing Petruchio's objectification of Katherina, Tita French Baumlin focuses on his puns on her name. By referring to her as a "cake" and a "cat" (2.1.185–195), he objectifies her in a more subtle manner than saying she belongs to him. A further aspect of Petruchio's taming rhetoric is the repeated comparison of Katherina to animals. In particular, he is prone to comparing her to a hawk (2.1.8 and 4.1.177–183), often employing an overarching hunting metaphor; "My falcon now is sharp and passing empty,/And till she stoop she must not be full-gorged" (4.1.177–178). Katherina, however, appropriates this method herself, leading to a trading of insults rife with animal imagery in Act 2, Scene 1 (ll.207–232), where she compares Petruchio to a turtle and a crab.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Language itself has thus become a battleground. However, it is Petruchio who seemingly emerges as the victor. In his house, after Petruchio has dismissed the haberdasher, Katherina exclaims


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Katherina is here declaring her independence of language; no matter what Petruchio may do, she will always be free to speak her mind. However, only one-hundred lines later, the following exchange occurs;


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Kidnie says of this scene, "the language game has suddenly changed and the stakes have been raised. Whereas before he seemed to mishear or misunderstand her words, Petruchio now overtly tests his wife's subjection by demanding that she concede to his views even when they are demonstrably unreasonable. The lesson is that Petruchio has the absolute authority to rename their world." Katherina is free to say whatever she wishes, as long she agrees with Petruchio. His apparent victory in the 'language game' is seen in Act 4, Scene 5, when Katherina is made to switch the words "moon" and "sun", and she concedes that she will agree with whatever Petruchio says, no matter how absurd:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Of this scene, Kidnie argues "what he 'says' must take priority over what Katherina 'knows'." From this point, Katherina's language changes from her earlier vernacular; instead of defying Petruchio and his words, she has apparently succumbed to his rhetoric and accepted that she will use "his" language instead of her own – both Katherina and her language have, seemingly, been tamed.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The important role of language, however, is not confined to the taming plot. For example, in a psychoanalytic reading of the play, Joel Fineman suggests there is a distinction made between male and female language, further subcategorising the latter into good and bad, epitomised by Bianca and Katherina respectively. Language is also important in relation to the Induction. Here, Sly speaks in prose until he begins to accept his new role as lord, at which point he switches to blank verse and adopts the royal we. Language is also important in relation to Tranio and Lucentio, who appear on stage speaking a highly artificial style of blank verse full of classical and mythological allusions and elaborate metaphors and similes, thus immediately setting them aside from the more straightforward language of the Induction, and alerting the audience to the fact that they are now in an entirely different "milieu".


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In productions of the play, it is often the interpretation of Katherina's final speech (the longest speech in the play) that defines the tone of the entire production, such is the importance of this speech and what it says, or seems to say, about female submission:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Traditionally, many critics have taken the speech literally. Writing in 1943, for example, G.I. Duthie argued "what Shakespeare emphasises here is the foolishness of trying to destroy order." However, in a modern western society, holding relatively egalitarian views on gender, such an interpretation presents a dilemma, as according to said interpretation the play seemingly celebrates female subjugation.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: George Bernard Shaw wrote in 1897 that "no man with any decency of feeling can sit it out in the company of a woman without being extremely ashamed of the lord-of-creation moral implied in the wager and the speech put into the woman's own mouth." Katherina is seen as having been successfully tamed, and having come to accept her newly submissive role to such an extent that she advocates that role for others, the final speech rationalises, according to Duthie, in both a political and sociological sense, the submission of wives to husbands.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Actress Meryl Streep, who played Katherina in 1978 at the Shakespeare in the Park festival, says of the play, "really what matters is that they have an incredible passion and love; it's not something that Katherina admits to right away, but it does provide the source of her change." Similarly, John C. Bean sees the speech as the final stage in the process of Katherina's change of heart towards Petruchio; "if we can appreciate the liberal element in Kate's last speech – the speech that strikes modern sensibilities as advocating male tyranny – we can perhaps see that Kate is tamed not in the automatic manner of behavioural psychology but in the spontaneous manner of the later romantic comedies where characters lose themselves and emerge, as if from a dream, liberated into the bonds of love."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Perhaps the most common interpretation in the modern era is that the speech is ironic; Katherina has not been tamed at all, she has merely duped Petruchio into thinking she has. Two especially well known examples of this interpretation are seen in the two major feature film adaptations of the play; Sam Taylor's 1929 version and Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 version. In Taylor's film, Katherina, played by Mary Pickford, winks at Bianca during the speech, indicating she does not mean a word of what she is saying. In Zeffirelli's film, Katherina, played by Elizabeth Taylor, delivers the speech as though it were her own idea, and the submission aspect is reversed by her ending the speech and leaving the room, causing Petruchio to have to run after her. Phyllis Rackin is an example of a scholar who reads the speech ironically, especially in how it deals with gender. She points out that several lines in the speech focus on the woman's body, but in the Elizabethan theatre, the role would have been played by a young boy, thus rendering any evocation of the female form as ironic. Reading the play as a satire of gender roles, she sees the speech as the culmination of this process. Along similar lines, Philippa Kelly says "the body of the boy actor in Shakespeare's time would have created a sexual indeterminacy that would have undermined the patriarchal narrative, so that the taming is only "apparently" so. And in declaring women's passivity so extensively and performing it centre-stage, Kate might be seen to take on a kind of agency that rebukes the feminine codes of silence and obedience which she so expressly advocates." Similarly, Coppélia Kahn argues the speech is really about how little Katherina has been tamed; "she steals the scene from her husband, who has held the stage throughout the play, and reveals that he has failed to tame her in the sense he set out to. He has gained her outward compliance in the form of a public display, while her spirit remains mischievously free."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In relation to this interpretation, William Empson suggests that Katherina was originally performed by an adult male actor rather than a young boy. He argues that the play indicates on several occasions that Katherina is physically strong, and even capable of over-powering Petruchio. For example, this is demonstrated off-stage when the horse falls on her as she is riding to Petruchio's home, and she is able to lift it off herself, and later when she throws Petruchio off a servant he is beating. Empson argues that the point is not that Katherina is, as a woman, weak, but that she is not well cast in the role in life which she finds herself having to play. The end of the play then offers blatant irony when a strong male actor, dressed as a woman, lectures women on how to play their parts.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The fourth school of thought is that the play is a farce, and hence the speech should not be read seriously or ironically. For example, Robert B. Heilman argues that "the whole wager scene falls essentially within the realm of farce: the responses are largely mechanical, as is their symmetry. Kate's final long speech on the obligations and fitting style of wives we can think of as a more or less automatic statement – that is, the kind appropriate to farce – of a generally held doctrine." He further makes his case by positing:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Another way in which to read the speech (and the play) as farcical is to focus on the Induction. H.J. Oliver, for example, emphasising the importance of the Induction, writes "the play within the play has been presented only after all the preliminaries have encouraged us to take it as a farce. We have been warned." Of Katherina's speech, he argues:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Emma Smith suggests a possible fifth interpretation: Petruchio and Kate have colluded together to plot this set-piece speech, "a speech learned off pat", to demonstrate that Kate is the most obedient of the three wives and so allow Petruchio to win the wager.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The issue of gender politics is an important theme in "The Taming of the Shrew". In a letter to the "Pall Mall Gazette", George Bernard Shaw famously called the play "one vile insult to womanhood and manhood from the first word to the last." A critic, Emily Detmer, points out that in the late 16th and early 17th century, laws curtailing husbands' use of violence in disciplining their wives were becoming more commonplace; "the same culture that still "felt good" about dunking scolds, whipping whores, or burning witches was becoming increasingly sensitive about husbands beating their wives." Detmer argues:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Petruchio's answer is to psychologically tame Katherina, a method not frowned upon by society; "the play signals a shift towards a "modern" way of managing the subordination of wives by legitimatising domination as long as it is not physical." Detmer argues "Shakespeare's "shrew" is tamed in a manner that would have made the wife-beating reformers proud; Petruchio's taming "policy" dramatises how abstention from physical violence works better. The play encourages its audience not only to pay close attention to Petruchio's method but also to judge and enjoy the method's permissibility because of the absence of blows and the harmonious outcome."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: However, Detmer is critical of scholars who defend Shakespeare for depicting male dominance in a less brutal fashion than many of his contemporaries. For example, although not specifically mentioned by Detmer, Michael West writes "the play's attitude was characteristically Elizabethan and was expressed more humanly by Shakespeare than by some of his sources." Detmer goes on to read the play in light of modern psychological theories regarding women's responses to domestic violence, and argues that Katherina develops Stockholm syndrome:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In a Marxist reading of the play, Natasha Korda argues that, although Petruchio is not characterised as a violent man, he still embodies sixteenth century notions regarding the subjugation and objectification of women. Shrew taming stories existed prior to Shakespeare's play, and in such stories, "the object of the tale was simply to put the shrew to work, to restore her (frequently through some gruesome form of punishment) to her proper productive place within the household economy." Petruchio does not do this, but Korda argues he still works to curtail the activities of the woman; "Kate [is] not a reluctant producer, but rather an avid and sophisticated consumer of market goods [...] Petruchio's taming strategy is accordingly aimed not at his wife's productive capacity – not once does he ask Kate to brew, bake, wash, card, or spin – but at her consumption. He seeks to educate her in her role as a consumer." She believes that even though Petruchio does not use force to tame Katherina, his actions are still an endorsement of patriarchy; he makes her his property and tames her into accepting a patriarchal economic worldview. Vital in this reading is Katherina's final speech, which Korda argues "inaugurates a new gendered division of labour, according to which husbands "labour both by sea and land" while their wives luxuriate at home [...] In erasing the status of housework as work, separate-sphere ideology renders the housewife perpetually indebted to her husband [...] "The Taming of the Shrew" marks the emergence of the ideological separation of feminine and masculine spheres of labour."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In a different reading of how gender politics are handled in the play, David Beauregard reads the relationship between Katherina and Petruchio in traditional Aristotelian terms. Petruchio, as the architect of virtue ("Politics", 1.13), brings Kate into harmony with her nature by developing her "new-built virtue and obedience", (5.2.118), and she, in turn, brings to Petruchio in her person all the Aristotelian components of happiness – wealth and good fortune, virtue, friendship and love, the promise of domestic peace and quiet ("Nicomachean Ethics", 1.7–8). The virtue of obedience at the center of Kate's final speech is not what Aristotle describes as the despotic rule of master over slave, but rather the statesman's rule over a free and equal person ("Politics", 1.3, 12–13). Recognising the evil of despotic domination, the play holds up in inverse form Kate's shrewishness, the feminine form of the will to dominance, as an evil that obstructs natural fulfillment and destroys marital happiness.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Ann Thompson argues that "the fact that in the folktale versions the shrew-taming story always comes to its climax when the husbands wager on their wives' obedience must have been partly responsible for the large number of references to sporting, gaming and gambling throughout the play. These metaphors can help to make Petruchio's cruelty acceptable by making it seem limited and conventionalised." Marvin Bennet Krims argues that "the play leans heavily on representations of cruelty for its comedic effect." He believes cruelty permeates the entire play, including the Induction, arguing the Sly frame, with the Lord's spiteful practical joke, prepares the audience for a play willing to treat cruelty as a comedic matter. He suggests that cruelty is a more important theme than gender, arguing that "the aggression represented in "Taming" can be read as having less to do with gender and more to do with hate, with the text thereby becoming a comic representation of the general problem of human cruelty and victimisation."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Director Michael Bogdanov, who directed the play in 1978, considers that "Shakespeare was a feminist":


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The motivation of money is another theme. When speaking of whether or not someone may ever want to marry Katherina, Hortensio says "Though it pass your patience and mine to endure her loud alarums, why man, there be good fellows in the world, and a man could light on them, would take her with all faults and money enough" (1.1.125–128). In the scene that follows Petruchio says:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: A few lines later Grumio says, "Why give him gold enough and marry him to a puppet or an aglet-baby, or an old trot with ne're a tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases as two and fifty horses. Why, nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal" (1.2.77–80). Furthermore, Petruchio is encouraged to woo Katherina by Gremio, Tranio (as Lucentio), and Hortensio, who vow to pay him if he wins her, on top of Baptista's dowry ("After my death, the one half of my lands, and in possession, twenty thousand crowns"). Later, Petruchio does not agree with Baptista on the subject of love in this exchange:


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Gremio and Tranio literally bid for Bianca. As Baptista says, "'Tis deeds must win the prize, and he of both/That can assure my daughter greatest dower/Shall have my Bianca's love" (2.1.344–346).


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The first opera based on the play was Ferdinando Bertoni's opera buffa "Il duca di Atene" (1780), with libretto by Carlo Francesco Badini.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Frederic Reynolds' "Catherine and Petruchio" (1828) is an adaptation of Garrick, with an overture taken from Gioachino Rossini, songs derived from numerous Shakespeare plays and sonnets, and music by John Braham and Thomas Simpson Cooke. Starring Fanny Ayton and James William Wallack, the opera premiered at Drury Lane, but it was not successful, and closed after only a few performances. Hermann Goetz' "Der Widerspänstigen Zähmung" (1874), with libretto by Joseph Viktor Widmann, is a comic opera, which focuses on the Bianca subplot, and cuts back the taming story. It was first performed at the original National Theatre Mannheim. John Kendrick Bangs' "Katherine: A Travesty" (1888) is a Gilbert and Sullivan-style parody operetta which premiered in the Metropolitan Opera. Spyridon Samaras' "La furia domata: commedia musicale in tre atti" (1895) is a now lost lyric comedy with libretto by Enrico Annibale Butti and Giulio Macchi, which premiered at the Teatro Lirico. Ruperto Chapí's "Las bravías" (1896), with a libretto by José López Silva and Carlos Fernández Shaw, is a one-act "género chico" "zarzuela" clearly based on the story, but with names changed and the location altered to Madrid: it was a major success in Spain, with over 200 performances in 1896 alone, and continues to be performed regularly.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Johan Wagenaar's "De getemde feeks" (1909) is the second of three overtures Wagenaar wrote based on Shakespeare, the others being "Koning Jan" (1891) and "Driekoningenavond" (1928). Another overture inspired by the play is Alfred Reynolds' "The Taming of the Shrew Overture" (1927). Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's verismo opera "Sly, ovvero la leggenda del dormiente risvegliato" (1927) focuses on the Induction, with libretto by Giovacchino Forzano. A tragedy, the opera depicts Sly as a hard-drinking and debt-ridden poet who sings in a London pub. When he is tricked into believing that he is a lord, his life improves, but upon learning it is a ruse, he mistakenly concludes the woman he loves (Dolly) only told him she loved him as part of the ruse. In despair, he kills himself by cutting his wrists, with Dolly arriving too late to save him. Starring Aureliano Pertile and Mercedes Llopart, it was first performed at La Scala in Milan. Rudolf Karel's "The Taming of the Shrew" is an unfinished opera upon which he worked between 1942 and 1944. Philip Greeley Clapp's "The Taming of the Shrew" (1948) was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera. Vittorio Giannini's "The Taming of the Shrew" (1953) is an opera buffa, with libretto by Giannini and Dorothy Fee. It was first performed at the Cincinnati Music Hall, starring Dorothy Short and Robert Kircher. Vissarion Shebalin's "Ukroshchenye stroptivoy" (1957), with libretto by Abram Akimovich Gozenpud, was Shebalin's last opera and was immediately hailed as a masterpiece throughout Russia. Dominick Argento's "Christopher Sly" (1962), with libretto by John Manlove, is a comic opera in two scenes and an interlude, first performed in the University of Minnesota. Sly is duped by a Lord into believing that he himself is a lord. However, he soon becomes aware of the ruse, and when left alone, he flees with the Lord's valuables and his two mistresses.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The earliest known musical adaptation of the play was a ballad opera based on Charles Johnson's "The Cobler of Preston". Called "The Cobler of Preston's Opera", the piece was anonymously written, although William Dunkin is thought by some scholars as a likely candidate. Rehearsals for the premier began in Smock Alley in October 1731, but sometime in November or December, the show was cancelled. It was instead performed by a group of children (including an eleven-year-old Peg Woffington) in January 1732 at Signora Violante's New Booth in Dame Street. It was subsequently published in March.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: James Worsdale's "A Cure for a Scold" is also a ballad opera. First performed at Drury Lane in 1735, starring Kitty Clive and Charles Macklin, "A Cure for a Scold" was an adaptation of Lacy's "Sauny the Scot" rather than Shakespeare's original "Taming of the Shrew". Petruchio was renamed Manly, and Katherina was renamed Margaret (nicknamed Peg). At the end, there is no wager. Instead, Peg pretends she is dying, and as Petruchio runs for a doctor, she reveals she is fine, and declares "you have taught me what 'tis to be a Wife, and I shall make it my Study to be obliging and obedient," to which Manly replies "My best Peg, we will exchange Kindness, and be each others Servants." After the play has finished, the actress playing Peg steps forward and speaks directly to the audience as herself; "Well, I must own, it wounds me to the Heart/To play, unwomanly, so mean a Part./What – to submit, so tamely – so contented,/Thank Heav'n! I'm not the Thing I represented."


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: Cole Porter's musical "Kiss Me, Kate" is an adaptation of "Taming of the Shrew". The music and lyrics are by Porter and the book is by Samuel and Bella Spewack. It is at least partially based on the 1935/1936 Theatre Guild production of "Taming of the Shrew", which starred husband and wife Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, whose backstage fights became legendary. The musical tells the story of a husband and wife acting duo (Fred and Lilli) attempting to stage "The Taming of the Shrew", but whose backstage fights keep getting in the way. The musical opened on Broadway at the New Century Theatre in 1948, running for a total of 1,077 performances. Directed by John C. Wilson with choreography by Hanya Holm, it starred Patricia Morison and Alfred Drake. The production moved to the West End in 1951, directed by Samuel Spewack with choreography again by Holm, and starring Patricia Morrison and Bill Johnson. It ran for 501 performances. As well as being a box office hit, the musical was also a critical success, winning five Tony Awards; Best Authors (Musical), Best Original Score, Best Costume Design, Best Musical and Best Producers (Musical). The play has since been revived numerous times in various countries. Its 1999 revival at the Martin Beck Theatre, directed by Michael Blakemore and starring Marin Mazzie and Brian Stokes Mitchell, was especially successful, winning another five Tonys; Best Actor (Musical), Best Costume Design, Best Director (Musical), Best Orchestrations, and Best Revival (Musical).


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: The first ballet version of the play was Maurice Béjart's "La mégère apprivoisée". Using the music of Alessandro Scarlatti, it was originally performed by the Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris in 1954. The best known ballet adaptation is John Cranko's "The Taming of the Shrew", first performed by the Stuttgart Ballet at the Staatsoper Stuttgart in 1969. Another ballet adaptation is Louis Falco's "Kate's Rag", first performed by the Louis Falco Dance Company at the Akademie der Künste in 1980. In 1988, Aleksandre Machavariani composed a ballet suite, but it was not performed until 2009, when his son, conductor Vakhtang Machavariani, gave a concert at the Georgian National Music Center featuring music by Modest Mussorgsky, Sergei Prokofiev and some of his father's pieces.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In 1924, extracts from the play were broadcast on BBC Radio, performed by the Cardiff Station Repertory Company as the eight episode of a series of programs showcasing Shakespeare's plays, entitled "Shakespeare Night". Extracts were also broadcast in 1925 as part of "Shakespeare: Scene and Story", with Edna Godfrey-Turner and William Macready, and in 1926 as part of "Shakespeare's Heroines", with Madge Titheradge and Edmund Willard. In 1927, a forty-three-minute truncation of the play was broadcast on BBC National Programme, with Barbara Couper and Ian Fleming. In 1932, National Programme aired another truncated version, this one running eighty-five minutes, and again starring Couper, with Francis James as Petruchio. In 1935, Peter Creswell directed a broadcast of the relatively complete text (only the Bianca subplot was trimmed) on National Programme, starring Mary Hinton and Godfrey Tearle. This was the first non-theatrical version of the play to feature Sly, who was played by Stuart Robertson. In 1941, Creswell directed another adaptation for BBC Home Service, again starring Tearle, with Fay Compton as Katherina. In 1947, BBC Light Programme aired extracts for their "Theatre Programme" from John Burrell's Edinburgh Festival production, with Patricia Burke and Trevor Howard. In 1954, the full-length play aired on BBC Home Service, directed by Peter Watts, starring Mary Wimbush and Joseph O'Conor, with Norman Shelley as Sly. BBC Radio 4 aired another full-length broadcast (without the Induction) in 1973 as part of their "Monday Night Theatre" series, directed by Ian Cotterell, starring Fenella Fielding and Paul Daneman. In 1989, BBC Radio 3 aired the full play, directed by Jeremy Mortimer, starring Cheryl Campbell and Bob Peck, with William Simons as Sly. In 2000, BBC Radio 3 aired another full-length production (without the Induction) as part of their "Shakespeare for the New Millennium" series, directed by Melanie Harris, and starring Ruth Mitchell and Gerard McSorley.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: In the United States, the first major radio production was in July 1937 on NBC Blue Network, when John Barrymore adapted the play into a forty-five-minute piece, starring Elaine Barrie and Barrymore himself. In August of the same year, CBS Radio aired a sixty-minute adaptation directed by Brewster Mason, starring Frieda Inescort and Edward G. Robinson. The adaptation was written by Gilbert Seldes, who employed a narrator (Godfrey Tearle) to fill in gaps in the story, tell the audience about the clothes worn by the characters and offer opinions as to the direction of the plot. For example, Act 4, Scene 5 ends with the narrator musing "We know that Katherina obeys her husband, but has her spirit been really tamed I wonder?" In 1940, a thirty-minute musical version of the play written by Joseph Gottlieb and Irvin Graham aired on CBS as part of their "Columbia Workshop" series, starring Nan Sunderland and Carleton Young. In 1941, NBC Blue Network aired a sixty-minute adaptation as part of their "Great Plays" series, written by Ranald MacDougall, directed by Charles Warburton, and starring Grace Coppin and Herbert Rudley. In 1949, ABC Radio aired an adaptation directed by Homer Fickett, starring Joyce Redman and Burgess Meredith. In 1953, NBC broadcast William Dawkins' production live from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The cast list for this production has been lost, but it is known to have featured George Peppard. In 1960, NBC aired a sixty-minute version adapted by Carl Ritchie from Robert Loper's stage production for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, starring Ann Hackney and Gerard Larson.


title: The Taming of the Shrew

text: All references to "The Taming of the Shrew", unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Oxford Shakespeare (Oliver, 1982), which is based on the 1623 First Folio. Under this referencing system, 1.2.51 means Act 1, Scene 2, line 51.


title: Lawyer

text: A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solicitor, legal executive, or public servant — with each role having different functions and privileges. Working as a lawyer generally involves the practical application of abstract legal theories and knowledge to solve specific problems. Some lawyers also work primarily in advancing the interests of the law and legal profession.


title: Lawyer

text: Different legal jurisdictions have different requirements in the determination of who is recognized as being a lawyer. As a result, the meaning of the term "lawyer" may vary from place to place.


title: Lawyer

text: Some jurisdictions have two types of lawyers, barrister and solicitors, while others fuse the two. A barrister (also known as an advocate or counselor in some jurisdictions) is a lawyer who typically specializes in arguing before courts, particularly in higher courts. A solicitor (or attorney) is a lawyer who is trained to prepare cases and give advice on legal subjects. Depending on jurisdiction, solicitors can also represent people in lower courts but do not have ordinarily have rights of audience in higher courts. Both solicitors and barristers are trained in law. However, in jurisdictions where there is a split profession, only barristers are admitted as members of a bar association.


title: Lawyer

text: The distinction between barristers and solicitors originated in the English legal system, but many countries that adopted English law have eliminated the distinction. Countries such as New Zealand, Canada (with the exception of Quebec, which practices civil law), India, Pakistan, and the US have adopted a fused profession, where all lawyers have the privileges of both barristers and solicitors.


title: Lawyer

text: Some fused-profession jurisdictions use one term to describe lawyers generally. For example, the US lawyers are typically referred to as "attorneys", while Indian and Pakistani lawyers are known as "advocates". Other fused jurisdictions use terms such as "barrister and solicitor" or "attorney and counselor" to describe lawyers in general.


title: Lawyer

text: Nonetheless, the terminology of "barrister" and "solicitor" may still be applied to lawyers who deal in the specific kinds of work barristers and solicitors generally do. In countries like the US, however, the term "trial lawyer" typically describes the work of a lawyer who specialises primarily in arguing cases.