Chicago Shakespeare Theater: The Taming of the Shrew adapted and directed by Rachel Rockwell A Look Back at The Taming of the Shrew in Performance Though readers and scholars never lost sight of Shakespeare's text since it was first published in the first Folio in 1623 (at least 30 years after it was first seen on stage), the stage history of The Taming of the Shrew has been less faithful to Shakespeare's text. Shakespeare's play was popular at least into the 1630s when it was printed again as a separate "quarto"—the equivalent to our paperback books. John Fletcher, Shakespeare's successor as the resident playwright for the King's Men, offered a sequel to Shrew that he called The Woman's Prize or the Tamer Tamed, in which Petruchio suffers "taming" by his second wife, Maria, who uses sexual denial to challenge his views of marriage. Between 1663 when Shakespeare's version of The Taming of the Shrew last appeared on London's stage as an "old revival," and 1844, when it was finally restaged in its original, Shakespeare's text disappeared in performance for 181 years.

Its story, however, remained popular and was borrowed and adapted frequently by other playwrights. In 1663, following the reopening of London's theaters—and a failed revival of A Midsummer Night's Dream—the King's Company made a final attempt to produce a Shakespearean comedy, using an adaptation of Shrew written by an actor named John Lacy. Renamed Sauny the Scot and set in London, this adaptation excluded the Christopher Sly Induction, and portrayed Grumio as a stereotypical Restoration Scotsman. Fifty-three years later in 1716, Charles Johnson produced a farcical version, The Cobbler of Preston, in which Christopher Sly would become the hero of this tale. David Garrick, the famous actor and director of London's Drury Lane, returned to an abbreviated version of Shakespeare in his Catherine and Petruchio, first produced in 1754. Garrick's play, which eliminated Christopher Sly, Bianca, and her suitors completely, remained popular for more than a century, serving as a "star piece" for famous lead actors. An opera written in 1828 was based on Garrick's rendition of the story, not Shakespeare's—by then long silenced.

It was not until Benjamin Webster revived Shakespeare's text in 1844 that The Taming of the Shrew reclaimed its place in live performance—but still it competed against Garrick's adaptation for the next 40 years. Shrew was considered the Birmingham Repertory Theatre's most successful experiment in presenting Shakespeare in modern dress. In addition to the modern costumes, the 1928 production featured press photographers and a movie camera in the wedding scene, and a young Laurence Olivier in a small role. Here in the United States, the play has evolved its own unique history. Shrew was the first Shakespearean film with sound to be made in America. It starred Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford—the leading couple in 1929. In 1930 the famous husband-wife acting duo, Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, toured The Taming of the Shrew throughout the United States. The production included a clown band, dwarves and acrobatics. It is commonly held stagelore that the offstage relationship of the couple, as witnessed by stagehand-turned-producer Saint Subber, was the inspiration for the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate.

Shakespeare's text takes a backseat in the musical adaptation in which a divorced couple, cast as Kate and Petruchio, push each other's buttons throughout the rehearsals for a play. In the twentieth century, The Taming of the Shrew proved as popular as it was controversial. Franco Zeffirelli created his famous version for the screen in 1967, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Like Pickford and Fairbanks before them, Taylor Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel in the 1953 movie, Kiss Me, Kate and Burton were the most famous Hollywood couple of the mid- Sixties; their tumultuous off-screen relationship brought new levels of ferocity to their on-screen battles. This work, like Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet, is characterized by the relationship between two characters: the Bianca subplot recedes into the background, and the Christopher Sly framework disappears entirely as a stage device of no use to Zeffirelli's naturalistic vision as a director. Kate and Petruchio fall in love at first sight, and the subsequent taming plot is approached by the film's stars as an elaborate game.

Their battle is not one so much between the sexes as between two bohemian anarchists and the conventions of the hypocritical and repressed society in which they live. There is no submission by Kate in Zeffirelli's eyes: she delivers her speech with knowing looks shared privately with Petruchio. The same text is used to very different ends in another production readily available and widely known: Jonathan Miller's Shrew filmed for the BBC television series in 1980. Miller, like Zeffirelli, banished Christopher Sly from his stage, but the similarity in interpretation stops there. In the hands of John Cleese as a cerebral, funny and rather gawky Petruchio, the taming of Katherine becomes more a studied lesson play or well-devised therapy process than a sexy game of mutual attraction. Miller's Petruchio teaches rather than tames his Kate. Kate's closing speech is portrayed as a statement of Elizabethan family and sexual values. The film ends with the wedding party joining in to sing a Puritan hymn extolling marital harmony. Just two years earlier, in 1978, a very different interpretation of Shakespeare's text, directed by Michael Bogdanov, appeared on London's stage.

Like much of the Royal Shakespeare Company's work in this period, Bogdanov's work was deeply influenced by Jan Kott's groundbreaking book, Shakespeare Our Contemporary, which posits that the themes relevant in Shakespeare's particular moment of history are equally relevant throughout human history. History repeats itself, and we return to the same problems wrapped in different circumstances (for example, the feud of the Capulets and Montagues as portrayed through the experience of rival gangs in New York City in West Side Story). Bogdanov's Shrew made a strong and relentless statement against the repression of women by a capitalist society. The production began with a drunken Christopher Sly planted as an "audience member. "The innkeeper was played by a female "usher" who, in attempting to throw this rowdy "patron" from the theater, is victimized by Sly's inebriated abuse. The Sly Induction was so realistic that at one performance audience members called the police to intervene. The struggle between Katherine and Petruchio was violent and abusive. Paduan society was portrayed as a cold, repressive bed of capitalism where women were bought, sold and used.

In light of Bogdanov's dark interpretation, Katherine's final speech was a somber one—with evidence of the woman's angry but suppressed resistance to the role she had been unfairly dealt in this society of males and money. In the 1985 Royal Shakespeare Company tour, director Di Trevis used the play-within-a-play as a springboard for a commentary on property and poverty. The show began with the players crossing the stage in tattered costumes. Leading the procession pulling an oversized property basket on wheels was a young unwed mother, who would later take on the role of Kate. Both the players and the characters in the play were portrayed as needy. Like Sly, the players were playthings for the wealthy, and acting provided them with a life of fantasy and some income. Turkish director Yücel Erten interpreted the play in 1986 as a love tragedy. In Erten's production, Petruchio broke down Kate's defensive wall as she fell in love, and subsequently his humiliation of her resulted in her emotional breakdown. After delivering her infamous speech of female submission, Kate removed her shawl to reveal her slit wrists and suicide. While David H.

Bell's upcoming production is the first abridgement at CST, The Taming of the Shrew has appeared on its stage as a full-length production twice before. In fact, it was Bell who brought Shrew to CST's stage three years ago. Set in 1960 along the Via Veneto, an area in Rome made famous by Frederico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, Bell's production opened the Theater's 2003 season. Bell created a world of glamour, wealth and high fashion. The set was filled with the balconies, fountains and marble arches of a glamorous Italian street. Around the café owned by Kate's father, papparazi swarmed and Vespa scooters zoomed. To reflect the time period of the show, Bell updated certain lines: horse references, for example, were changed to motorcycles. Bell staged an optimistic view of Kate's taming, and the "Kiss me, Kate" scene left the audience believing that Kate and Petruchio were very much in love. Kate's final speech was delivered by actor Kate Fry as a woman changed by love, not tamed by torture.

A decade earlier in 1993 staged at CST's previous home, the Ruth Page Theatre, Artistic Director Barbara Gaines directed CST's first production of Shrew. Gaines retained the Christopher Sly framework of the original script and set the production in Renaissance Italy. Actors were dressed in ornate colorful costumes, with the warm woods of the set inviting the audience in to this antique world. Gaines chose not make a political statement with Kate's transformation from shrew to wife, but allowed the audience to interpret Kate's final speech on their own. Teen comedies dominated movie screens in the 1990s, so it was perhaps no surprise that a teen flick, called 10 Things I Hate About You, premiered in 1999. What is surprising, however, is the fact that its story is based upon Shakespeare's 400-year-old play. The setting moves to Tacoma, Washington. Kat (Katherina) is now an antisocial, Sylvia Plath-reading, ball-breaking, vicious field hockey-playing high school student, frequently called a "heinous bitch" by her sister Bianca, who is the most popular and sought-after girl in school.

In the movie's contemporary high school world, Bianca doesn't want to get married. She just wants to go on a date with a boy, which her pregnancy-phobic father forbids until the older sister starts dating. Money is still the impetus for Patrick (Petruchio). Cameron (Lucentio) sets a plan in motion where Joey (Hortensio) pays Patrick to date Kat so that Cameron can have a chance with Bianca. Patrick, who is feared by fellow classmates, is the only one not deterred by Kat's man-hating reputation. Kat's taming is, in fact, quite a bit tamer than her namesake's. The famous speech of submission at the end of Shakespeare's play is transformed in the film into Kat publicly reading a poem she has written about Patrick, first listing all his vile characteristics, and culminating with the line: "But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all." True to both its derivative genres—teen movies and Shakespeare comedy—10 Things I Hate About You delivers a happy ending.

The twenty-first century has ushered in a trend in performance that faces Shrew's gender politics through re-inventing a convention from the Early Modern English stage: single-gender casting. Of course, men played all roles in Elizabethan times, but in 2003 Shakespeare's Globe started an all-female troupe called the Company of Women. In its inaugural season, the company performed Shrew, directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Lloyd did not feminize the story or characters in any way. The patriarchal structure remained firmly in place, with the machismo of many of the male characters was highly exaggerated. Petruchio, for example, urinated on a pillar of The Globe's stage. Kate's final speech was presented as an obvious satire. She leapt on to a table and lifted up her dress, embarrassing Petruchio who couldn't convince her to come down. Encouraging all the wives to place their hands under their husband's feet brought only gales of laughter in response. The all-female cast of Shrew shifted the play's controversial theme from female submission to male power in general.

In 2005, the BBC launched a new series of contemporary Shakespeare adaptations, entitled "ShakespearRe-Told." Screenwriter Sally Wainwright reframes Shakespeare's story in modern-day Britain, where Katherine Minola is a successful, outspoken politician, poised to become the next leader of the opposition party. Her sister Bianca is a jet-setting model, who vows she'll marry only when her older sister does-which means never. Bianca's spurned boyfriend has a cash-strapped aristocrat friend named Petruchio, who decides that the unattainable, unlovable—and very wealthy—politician will be his. Petruchio traps Katherine at their honeymoon villa in Italy, slashing the car tires and hiding her phone and clothes. The two do, indeed, fall in love—just as Katherine wins the leadership of her party and kicks off her campaign to become prime minister. When Bianca insists that her boyfriend Lucentio sign a pre-nuptial agreement, Kate delivers an impassioned speech, declaring that wives obey their husbands, and that if her sister requires a pre-nuptial agreement, then she shouldn't get married.

In the end, the credits are run against a backdrop of blissful family photos of the new prime Minister, her adoring husband and their triplets. As part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's Complete Works Festival in 2006, Propellor, an all-male English theater company, brought The Taming of the Shrew to the stage. Director Edward Hall (who directed CST's production of Rose Rage: Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3 here and subsequently in New York) chose to preserve the Induction with Christopher Sly and the play-within-a-play. In an interesting twist, Sly was eventually goaded into taking on the part of Petruchio in the play. The sets (moveable mirrored cupboards that allowed actors to appear and disappear) and the props and costumes (a mix of contemporary and traditional) created a dream-like world. This surreal world created by the director and the play-within-a-play framework helped to distance the production from the script's politically incorrect issues. Hall's Kate was broken by Petruchio's taming tactics, and delivered her final speech as a brainwashed shell of a woman.

Audiences may have been more able to witness Kate's torture and engage in a production in which the character was played by a man. British theater critics saw correlations between the production's disturbing tactics of taming to the tactics of torture being utilized in the current war on terror. The same playwright and the same words have been understood and approached in countless ways through four centuries. Actors will continue to explore the themes and gender politics of Shrew as the world and its attitudes continue to evolve. Each time a director approaches Shakespeare, he or she hopes to bring to light something previously hidden. And what is quite remarkable about Shakespeare's art is that, 400 years later, they can still succeed in doing just that. – Contributed by the CST Education Department SparkNotes: The Taming of the Shrew: Character List The Taming of the Shrew William Shakespeare Plot Overview Analysis of Major Characters Katherine - The “shrew” of the play’s title, Katherine, or Kate, is the daughter of Baptista Minola, with whom she lives in Padua. She is sharp-tongued, quick-tempered, and prone to violence, particularly against anyone who tries to marry her. Her hostility toward suitors particularly distresses her father.

But her anger and rudeness disguise her deep-seated sense of insecurity and her jealousy toward her sister, Bianca. She does not resist her suitor Petruchio forever, though, and she eventually subjugates herself to him, despite her previous repudiation of marriage. Read an in-depth analysis of Katherine. Petruchio - Petruchio is a gentleman from Verona. Loud, boisterous, eccentric, quick-witted, and frequently drunk, he has come to Padua “to wive and thrive.” He wishes for nothing more than a woman with an enormous dowry, and he finds Kate to be the perfect fit. Disregarding everyone who warns him of her shrewishness, he eventually succeeds not only in wooing Katherine, but in silencing her tongue and temper with his own. Read an in-depth analysis of Petruchio. Bianca - The younger daughter of Baptista. The lovely Bianca proves herself the opposite of her sister, Kate, at the beginning of the play: she is soft-spoken, sweet, and unassuming. Thus, she operates as Kate’s principal female foil. Because of her large dowry and her mild behavior, several men vie for her hand.

Baptista, however, will not let her marry until Kate is wed. Baptista - Minola Baptista is one of the wealthiest men in Padua, and his daughters become the prey of many suitors due to the substantial dowries he can offer. He is good-natured, if a bit superficial. His absentmindedness increases when Kate shows her obstinate nature. Thus, at the opening of the play, he is already desperate to find her a suitor, having decided that she must marry before Bianca does. Lucentio - A young student from Pisa, the good-natured and intrepid Lucentio comes to Padua to study at the city’s renowned university, but he is immediately sidetracked when he falls in love with Bianca at first sight. By disguising himself as a classics instructor named Cambio, he convinces Gremio to offer him to Baptista as a tutor for Bianca. He wins her love, but his impersonation gets him into trouble when his father, Vincentio, visits Padua.

About The Taming of the Shrew About The Taming of the Shrew Bookmark this page Manage My Reading List The Source for The Taming of the Shrew Although it is impossible to date The Taming of the Shrew exactly, evidence marks it as one of Shakespeare's earliest comedies, written most likely in the late 1580s or early 1590s. In the Shakespeare chronology, Shrew appears to have been written about 8-10 years before Much Ado About Nothing (1598), another comedy to which it is often compared. Although the plots themselves are dissimilar, each play gives us a bold and saucy pair of protagonists who enter into a battle of wits. Much of the cleverness and verbal acumen found in Much Ado is already apparent in Shrew, suggesting that, even early in his career, Shakespeare was extraordinarily skilled in character development, able to pit a headstrong hero and heroine against each other with fantastic results. Shrew shows us a dramatist who is sophisticated in his characterization and his ability to deal with multiple plots, as well as to address socially relevant topics, bringing them to the forefront for our consideration and discussion.

Like all of Shakespeare's other plays, The Taming of the Shrew can be traced to a variety of sources. Unlike most other plays, however, specific texts are difficult to pinpoint. We know that the primary plot, the story of Katherine and Petruchio, finds its roots in folk tales and songs common in Shakespeare's day. In fact, while growing up, Shakespeare was surrounded by a very public debate over the nature of women, including specific arguments on a woman's duty and role in marriage. Shakespeare drew heavily from this debate. Just as the main story line has its roots in popular debate, so too does the play's Induction. Although inductions were not uncommon in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dramas, The Taming of the Shrew is the only play in which Shakespeare features this particular framing device. For The Taming of the Shrew's Induction, Shakespeare features the tale of a beggar who finds himself mysteriously in power in a rich man's world. Like the tales of shrewish wives, tales of beggars miraculously transformed were featured in a London jest-book (1570) and were commonly featured in sixteenth-century English ballads of which Shakespeare was quite likely familiar.

The Bianca subplot also has its roots in sources with which Shakespeare would have been familiar. Unlike the Kate/Petruchio plot, which can only be traced to general pamphlets and debates, the Bianca subplot comes from George Gascoigne's Supposes (1566, 1573), a translation of Ariosto's I Suppositi (1509). Regardless of where Shakespeare drew the basis for the text, the fact remains that he masterfully presents us with a well-founded, carefully developed drama that can't help but get us talking. From the Induction, which seems to end mysteriously and abruptly, to Katherine's final speech on wifely duty, we can't help but find layer upon layer of meaning buried in this early, but great, comedy. Shakespeare uses his skill expertly, bringing out themes we still debate today, over 400 years later. Performance History of The Taming of the Shrew Largely because of the themes addressed in The Taming of the Shrew (marriage, duty, identity, family, and so on), the play has experienced great popularity through the years, although tracing the play's exact performance history is difficult.

Little evidence of early productions survives, though we know the play was popular at least into the 1630s. Dramatist John Fletcher created a sequel to Shakespeare's work with his 1611 play The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed wherein Petruchio, now a widower, marries for a second time only to have his wife treat him much the way he initially treated Kate. Aside from contemporary spin-offs, in 1663 the Restoration stage became home to a popular production of Shakespeare's Shrew. After 1663, though, The Taming of the Shrew slipped off the boards, and we have no record of a production in its original form again until 1844. In the meantime, however, a number of adaptations flourished. John Lacy's Sauny the Scot (1667), a crude farce, was popular for about a century. Although Lacy opted not to include the Christopher Sly scenario, Charles Johnson included it in his 1716 largely political work, The Cobbler of Preston.

It wasn't until David Garrick's abbreviated version of Shrew entitled Catherine and Petruchio (1754) that Lacy's Sauny was fully replaced. Garrick's work eliminated the Induction, as well as the Bianca subplot. This adaptation also maintained its popularity for about a hundred years. Noted Shakespearean actor John Phillip Kemble also produced an abbreviated version of Shrew which competed directly with Garrick's and featured what would become one of Petruchio's trademarks during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: cracking a horsewhip to demonstrate his ability as shrew-tamer. Shakespeare's version of The Taming of the Shrew was revived in 1844, over 180 years after it had last been produced. By the end of the nineteenth century, Shakespeare's Shrew was favored over adaptations by audiences all over the globe. Since then, Shrew has been produced countless times for the stage, as well as for film and television. Although the advent of feminism has caused some audiences to question the relevance of Shrew, the play's eternal popularity suggests that this well-written and developed play possesses a timelessness which delights audiences, generation after generation.

Shakespeareances.com: Taming of the Shrew Sexist? Nah! Who Is the Misogynist Monster: Petruchio, Shakespeare, or You? Every year we seem to see one Shakespeare play in bunches, and this year it was the time of The Taming of the Shrew. With it, came all the post-feminist consternation about the play’s alleged sexist tone. “You are such a monster!” one guy in a talk-back session after a Folger Theatre performance said to Cody Nickell, who played Petruchio. Nickell shrugged in semiagreement, but nearer to us another man asked, “Is he really, though?” He asked too quietly for many others to hear because, you see, those of us who don’t see this as a blatantly sexist play and who have a measure of respect for Petruchio tend to sit by meekly abiding the unameliorated tide of feminist furor. I’ve noticed, though, that most of that furor and the denigration of this play as Shakespeare at his most misogynistic comes from men.

Perhaps they are taking to heart George Bernard Shaw’s comment that no man “with any decency of feeling” could watch the play’s last scene in the company of a woman “without feeling extremely ashamed.” Or perhaps these guys are just trying to build their own sensitive-man cred. But they and Shaw and many directors fail to grasp Shakespeare’s own feminist side in this play and beyond. And let me be clear here, by “Shakespeare’s feminist side,” I don’t apply an ironic reading to The Taming of the Shrew. Shakespeare unabashedly wrote a play about a macho Petruchio successfully "taming" a shrewish Kate. But through that device he also presents the portrayal of a relationship built on trust, “built” being the operative word. In fact, Petruchio is the only man in this play who gets women (and, consequently, got the woman, heart and all). All you Mr. Sensitives might as well stop reading now and tag me as a Neanderthal lout. The rest of you, remember that I’ve been married 20 years to a woman who attained the rank of colonel in the Air Force, so hear me out.

It’s easy to dismiss The Taming of the Shrew—and Shakespeare’s frame of mind upon its writing—as one of his earliest works (therefore, he was immature) or to regard it as simply a farce performed as a joke for a drunk tinker (therefore, it has no intentional substance). Even if both counts are true, they miss the point. On the latter, the theme of a husband’s domination over his wife is touched on in the Induction (where Sly, the drunk tinker, is featured and is in no way meant to be a role model). On the first point, not only is Shrew one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, I adhere to the scholarship that places it as his very first play. Its poetry is simple and formulaic and the characters all stock figures—except, perhaps, Kate and Petruchio. This seems the work of a clever someone launching his career on the firm footing of a tried formula. The Taming of the Shrew also launches Shakespeare’s career-long study of relationships, especially male-female romantic relationships.

The battle of the sexes, as this play so often gets tagged, is carried out specifically in two more comedies: Much Ado About Nothing in mid-career and All’s Well That Ends Well in later career. Put them together, and you have an arc: In Shrew the man manipulates the woman to his will; in Much Ado, Beatrice and Benedick pretty much end in a draw (we could subtitle it “The Taming of Two Shrews”); in All’s Well, the woman manipulates the man to her will (i.e., “The Taming of the Jerk”). I’d love to see a theater run these three plays in repertoire, the same two actors playing the battling male and female leads, and I bet we’d see some common themes emerge. Meanwhile, I can already hear the chatter from people who would declare that this arc merely indicates that Shakespeare grew wiser as he grew older. So, back to Shrew and a closer look at the lines and circumstances within that play. I find it ironic that modern audiences call Petruchio the monster and Kate the victim. Really? Have you listened to this woman? She insults everybody.

Even when she meets someone for the first time, her first comment is a put-down. She might be fun to watch on Bravo, but would you want to marry her? Of if you did marry her, how long before you would want to “curb her mad and headstrong humor” that inspires her incessant hissy fits? Furthermore, Shakespeare doesn’t give us testimony before we see her—she appears in the first scene and immediately threatens to “comb [Hortensio’s] noddle with a three-legged stool.” Oh, poor Kate. This is a woman engaging in antisocial behavior by any definition and no matter the motivation. Meet her and tell me you would marry her, you would hire her or work for her, or you would want her as your friend. Petruchio, of course, wants to marry her, but primarily for her dad's wealth. Absolutely he’s a sexist dude and sees a wife as a means for economic advancement. In that regard he’s no different from any of the other men in this or many other Shakespeare plays—even Lucentio: he is smitten with Bianca’s beauty, perhaps, but that beauty is an obvious manifestation of her wealth.

Petruchio is simply bolder and more impetuous than the other men in achieving his intentions. Misogynist, though? The play would prove this not so. He tells us beforehand he will woo her by layering on the compliments, and he starts out doing that but soon finds himself in a wit-battle with Kate. Unlike the other men, he engages her wit and even appreciates it. Kate is obviously the most intelligent individual in this play, and only Petruchio respects that fact. Does he fall in love with her at first sight or, at least, in that first meeting? Every production I’ve seen has him doing so. I don’t read this in the text, though admiration certainly is there, but he is obviously entirely in love with her by play’s end.

After Kate passes the first trial of obedience at the wedding banquet and leaves to fetch the other women, Hortensio says “I wonder what it bodes.” “Marry, peace it bodes,” replies Petruchio, “and love, and quiet life; an awful rule and right supremacy, and, to be short, what not that’s sweet and happy.” Seems to me, from what we've seen of Petruchio in the first couple acts, that a quiet home life was not his ultimate goal: It was get the bride, control her money, lock her away except when you need to show her off, and hang out at the club and brothels. But, no, Petruchio desires a home life to share with Kate. “Awful rule and right supremecy” sounds sexist, and may be ("awful," by the way, means commanding due respect); after all, he speaks this to the other men in the room and at least sounds like a display of machismo. But pointedly, these lines have no gender, nor does "awful rule and right supremecy" specifically mean him.

To be sure, Petruchio does tell us earlier after taking Kate home that “thus have I politicly begun my reign,” but the word “politicly” is not only a telling inclusion but makes for an unmetrical line, a signal of significance for the actor. Because of Petruchio’s “wive it wealthily” comment back at the beginning of the play, some people believe he sees Kate as his property, and cite his speech in the wedding scene as further evidence. But that speech expressly illustrates he does not see her as property. He seems to equate her to his possessions, but at the end of his inventory of goods, chattels, house, household-stuff, field, barn, horse, ox, and ass, he says, “She is my anything,” a possession equal in value to any and all he has. Really, her wealth as offered by Baptista does not amount to all that, so in a riddling way he seems to be professing that he sees more in her than property value by that point.

The meeting: Maggie Siff as Kate and Andy Grotelueschen as Petrruchio in the Theatre for a New Audience production of The Taming of the Shrew at The Duke on 42nd Street in New York. Photo by Henry Grossman, Theatre for a New Audience. Before we come to the significance of Kate’s final speech on obedience, we need to track the true purpose of Petruchio’s taming her. I can’t defend his methods of food and sleep deprivation (methods of enforced cooperation that these days are banned by international laws) except to point out that he specifically tells us he is going to use the method by which hawks are trained in the sport of hawking; and, well, that’s cruel to hawks, too. But let's be clear that he doesn’t visit any violence on her (the only time he threatens to do so is after she strikes him), and if he were such a monster his methodology could have been far more abusive. Let’s instead turn to the lesson he wants to impart on Kate, a lesson that is not necessarily that he is her lord and master. He realizes from the beginning that intelligent and spirited though she may be, she has no respect for him or anyone else.

Is she a spoiled brat starved for her father’s love as the Theatre for a New Audience portrayed her this year? Is she grieving the loss of her mother and is a product of a wealthy society’s excesses as Synetic portrayed her this year? Is she a tomboy hellcat as Folger portrayed her this year? Whatever backstory you want to give her, the bottom line in the text is she is selfish and has an utter disregard for others. It is Kate herself who reveals this trait: she “who never knew how to entreat, nor never needed that I should entreat.” Starting with the wedding—he arrives late, he dresses in wild apparel—Petruchio throws utter disregard right back at her. Once at his home, he displays the trait to his servants and the tailor while reversing course in his behavior toward her by going to the extremes of utter regard, depriving her of food and sleep “under name of perfect love.” Once he establishes this bottom line, Petruchio begins to build their relationship step by step.

He starts with regard, offering her a meal he prepared himself, but taking it away until she finally deigns, for the first time in her life, perhaps, to say “thank you.” He then moves to respect. After dismissing the tailor, Petruchio gives a wonderful speech about personhood: “Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor, for ’tis the mind that makes the body rich, and as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honor peereth in the meanest habit.” Note his use of the first-person plural: He is talking about himself as much as her. The taming: Irina Tsikurishvili as Kate and Ryan Sellers as Petruchio in Synetic Theater's The Taming of the Shrew at the Lansburgh Theatre in Washington, D.C. Petruchio and his feasting friends kept Kate from getting any food in this all-dance production of the play. Photo by Johnny Shryock, Synetic Theater. His final lesson is trust.

Shakespeare is brilliantly subtle in the way he unspools this lesson, because it looks as if Petruchio is the obstinate lunatic when, in fact, he is building up for a payoff, figuratively at first, literally in the end. First he insists that the time will be what he says it is, regardless of the clock. Then he insists that the sun will be the moon and the moon will be the sun if that is his desire. “Look what I speak, or do, or think to do, you are still crossing it,” he says. This sounds like despotism, especially as it’s Hortensio who observes that “this gallant will command the sun.” But Petruchio’s true motive becomes clear after Kate finally gives in and he puts her to a very public test: Greeting Vincentio as a young mistress. Does Petruchio humiliate Kate in this sequence? Say yes and admit that he humiliates himself first, for he opens by greeting Vincentio as a maiden before he gets Kate to do the same. When she follows him, he reverses, forcing her to admit her mistake, too (getting a sly dig in at Petruchio as she does so).

Ater Petruchio quickly assuages Vincentio from feeling any insult, something magical happens in the context of this play: Vincentio calls Kate “my merry mistress.” This is the first person other than Petruchio to pay Kate a compliment, to not see her as a curst shrew. Given what we’ve seen of Kate to this point, that has to have a huge impact on her. Thus we come to the wedding banquet and the wager over which wife is most obedient. For modern audiences, commentators and some directors, this is Kate’s crowning embarrassment. But they haven’t been paying close attention to the journey she's taken. They also are giving Kate as little respect as they claim Petruchio has for her; after all, he has enough confidence in her to say of the 20 crowns offered in the wager, “I’ll venture so much of my hawk or hound, but twenty times so much upon my wife.” (Are you noticing that Petruchio phrases things so that they sound one way but could actually mean something altogether different? He's politic indeed.) A key moment in the scene comes right before the test of obedience when the Widow insults Kate.

As Kate is a woman who not only has constantly threatened violence on people but has hogtied and attacked her sister, slapped Petruchio, and teed off on Hortensio’s head with a lute, you can sense what might be coming when she responds to the Widow with the line, “And I am mean indeed respecting you.” But the altercation seems to be cut off when Petruchio and then Hortensio start encouraging their wives on. This can lead to different stage interpretations, from the wives showing disgust at their men to the wives engaging in fisticuffs, but Shakespeare himself gives no guidance in the way of stage direction. Shortly thereafter, the two women along with Bianca leave together, apparently in a sense of sisterhood. The mating: Kate Eastwood Norris as Kate and Cody Nickell as Petruchio in the Folger Theatre production of The Taming of the Shrew in Washington, D.C. In this Wild West-set version, Kate starts off as a Calamity Jane-type, gun-toting wildcat. Photo by Jeff Malet, Folger Theatre. Let’s follow them offstage and, instead of watching the men send for their wives, let’s watch the wives by the parlor fire being sent for.

Biondello comes in and reports that Lucentio has sent for Bianca. She’s already peeved and says no. Biondello returns, but this time he says Hortensio entreats his wife to come to him. The Widow retorts that her husband probably has “some goodly jest in hand” and sends Biondello back with an order to send Hortensio to her. Kate, the most intelligent person in the play, remember, will catch on to the Widow’s assessment, especially when Grumio shows up and tells her that Petruchio commands her presence. She knows he’s up to something, and she has to figure there is a payoff worth pursuing. Of course she’s going to go to him. This isn't mere obedience; this is common sense in a woman who has come to trust her husband. The payoff is bigger than she could have anticipated, far beyond seeing all the money in the wager. Petruchio orders her to retrieve Bianca and the Widow, and if they don’t come “Swinge me them soundly forth.” Kate has just been given public license to get even with the sister who has been a thorn in her side and the Widow who just insulted her.

That’s a duty she’ll willingly do. As Kate retrieves the other two women, Petruchio brags to the other guys in the room how he’ll further show off his wife’s obedience. And what is the most humiliating thing he comes up with? He orders Kate to throw her cap underfoot, but he adds a qualifier: It “becomes you not,” he says. Let the Widow and Bianca be shocked, let the men be impressed. Meantime, Kate and Petruchio play out a shared history the others (except maybe Hortensio) know nothing of. This, after all, is Petruchio saying it “becomes you not,” he who arrived at their wedding in eccentric clothes, who talked of poor garments but rich minds. If this is not a statement of validation for her true personhood, then it is, at least, an inside joke. Indeed, the cap could be the mean one she had to wear after he sent the tailor off.

Given what they know—and what the audience knows—the Widow and Bianca are cast in an ironic light when the former protests that she never " be brought to such a silly pass” and the latter cries, “Fie, what a foolish duty call you this?” Taken out of this context, Kate's speech on obedience given on Petruchio's command, has reason to rile up Shaw and others. However, consider not just the context of the scene (Petruchio specifically wants her to set herself above the other women who for so long had been placed above her), but also the context of Shakespeare’s time. This speech draws heavily from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians on the place of women in a marriage. Though priests and ministers try to explain away the inherent sexism of these verses as an allegory for man’s relationship to the church and God, this passage of Scripture has been generally banned by women in their weddings. In Shakespeare’s time, it was dogma; he's not going to undermine it.

Yet Shakespeare nevertheless has Kate expound as well on the husband’s duty to the wife and expressly refers to a relationship built on the husband's “honest will.” As Cody Nickell pointed out in the talk-back at the Folger, if you remove the gender in this speech, it is a solid piece of counsel on relationships. It is here spoken by Kate regarding Petruchio, and it could just as easily be spoken by a man regarding his Air Force colonel wife. That is the lesson of this play, one that Shakespeare would revisit in Much Ado and, in a more obtuse way, in All’s Well: Regard is the duty of all men and women, respect is a necessity for one to truly love another, and trust is the foundation of a rich relationship. Call it misogyny, call it feminism. I call it Shakespearean truth. That may be the real monster in this play, since so many people, especially Mr. Sensitives, seem to be afraid of it.

Eric Minton SparkNotes: The Taming of the Shrew: Act II, scene i (page 2) The Taming of the Shrew William Shakespeare Act II, scene i (page 2) → Act II, scene i, page 1 Act III, scene i page 2 of 2 Analysis: Act II, scene i Although the turning point of the action in a Shakespearean play usually occurs in the third act, here, in Act II, we already witness an emotional turning point for Kate when she fails to refute Petruchio’s assertion that they are engaged. Her silence at the end of this scene is remarkable. She has always used her tongue liberally to get her way, and here, when Petruchio seems to force marriage upon her, a decision that will affect the rest of her life, she lapses into silence. As before, when Baptista is present, the men ignore Kate, talking about her, not to her. In the same way, Petruchio treats her like she doesn’t exist when telling the others of their wedding plans.

In fact, Petruchio thinks so little of what Kate replies that Gremio, fearing that Petruchio’s presumptuous confidence will impede his own chances of marrying Bianca, reiterates what Kate initially says to him: “Hark, Petruchio, she says she’ll see thee hanged first” (II.i.292). Inexplicably, when Petruchio persists, she actually complies. Kate’s compliance with Petruchio’s decree may surprise us, but if we consider her as essentially misunderstood by the other characters, her behavior may appear more understandable. The men view her as a shrew, but they care very little about the origins of her shrewish nature. Nor do they wonder why Kate chooses to maintain her behavior. If her temper results from her frustration with the dim-witted qualities of the men around her, one easy explanation for her acceptance of Petruchio would be that he is her equal in wit and willpower. Indeed, compared to the other suitors who simply run from Kate’s temper, Petruchio fires a countering shot at each and every one of her arrows.

Petruchio displays an admirable wit, and, in this verbal duel of puns and double entendres, we see quintessential Shakespeare inventiveness and linguistic skill. On the other hand, Petruchio does not respect Kate, or at least he pretends to disrespect her for the sake of the game. It seems strange that Kate’s independent personality would be willing to accept someone who gives her just as little credit as did the other suitors merely because he can match her wit. At the beginning of the scene, though, Kate shows that she may have another motive for complying with Petruchio. When fighting with Bianca, she admits that she is jealous because of the fact that her sister is being courted and will probably soon marry. She says to Baptista: “She [Bianca] is your treasure, she must have a husband. / I must dance barefoot on her wedding day, / And for your love to her lead apes in hell” (II.i.32–34).

(Leading apes in hell refers to the lot of women who die old maids, unmarried.) Here, Kate appears to be frustrated by the fact that her biological clock is ticking, but she finds herself caught in a vicious circle: she hates the suitors because they do not want to marry her, and men will not marry her because she makes it so obvious that she hates them. Perhaps Petruchio’s indefatigable nature has broken the cycle, or it may be that he is the first man to speak kind words to her, even if he did not truly mean them. Whereas Hortensio and Gremio make it very clear when they are put off by Kate’s sharpness, Petruchio amiably covers it up with praise: “For she’s not froward, but modest as the dove. / She is not hot, but temperate as the morn” (II.i.285–286). After Petruchio invokes this simile, Kate’s resistance falters. It will return, but Petruchio clearly did not miss the mark with his strategy, which capitalizes on her need for acceptance.

In this scene, Kate shows that she is doubly miserable in her existence as an unmarried girl, having alienated herself from the society she despised. It may be that marriage represents a new beginning for Kate, a chance to take on a new social role and possibly find a more satisfying way to integrate herself into her surroundings. Chicago Shakespeare Theater: The Taming of the Shrew adapted and directed by Rachel Rockwell What Critics Have Said God hath given to the man great wit, bigger strength, and more courage to compell the woman to obey by reason or force: and to the woman, bewtie, a faire countenaunce, and sweete wordes to make the man to obey her againe for love. Thus each obeyeth and commaundeth other, and they two togeather rule the house. – Thomas Smith, 1583 Catharines harangue to her sister and the widow on the Duty of Wives to their Husbands, if the ladies wou’d read it with a little regard, might be of mightly use in this age. – Charles Gildon, 1710 The part between Catharine and Petruchio is eminently spritely and diverting.

At the marriage of Bianca the arrival of the real father, perhaps, produces more perplexity than pleasure. The whole play is very popular and diverting. – Samuel Johnson, 1765 Catharine takes an occasion...of reproving another married woman in an admirable speech; wherein the description of a wayward wife, with the duty and submission which ought to be shewn to a husband, are finely set forth. – Elizabeth Griffith, 1775 The Taming of the Shrew is almost the only one of Shakespear’s comedies that has a regular plot, and downright moral. It is full of bustle, animation, and rapidity of action. It shews admirably how self-will is only to be got the better of by stronger will, and how one degree of ridiculous perversity is only to be driven out by another greater still. – August Wilhelm Schlegel, 1811 For the actress of Katharine, the wooing scene is the difficult point; for the actor of Petruchio, the course of the taming.

The latter might appear wholly as an exaggerated caricature: but he who is capable of giving it the right humour will impart to this extravagance something of the modesty of nature. – G.G. Gervinus, 1849 It might be suspected that The Taming of the Shrew was not altogether the work of Shakespeare’s hand. The secondary intrigues and minor incidents were of little interest to the poet. But in the buoyant force of Petruchio’s character, in his subduing tempest of high spirits, and in the person of the foiled revoltress against the law of sex, who carries into her wifely loyalty the same energy which she had shown in her virgin sauvagerie [wildness], there were elements of human character in which the imagination of the poet took delight. – Edward Dowden, 1881 Unfortunately, Shakspear’s own immaturity...made it impossible for him to keep the play on the realistic plane to the end; and the last scene is altogether disgusting to modern sensibility.

No man with any decency of feeling can sit it out in the company of a woman without feeling extremely ashamed of the lord-of-creation moral implied in the wager and the speech put into the woman’s own mouth. – George Bernard Shaw, 1897 The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew, although Heminges and Condell classed them both as comedies, belong to wholly different dramatic types... The Taming of the Shrew is not a drama of the emotions at all. It is a comedy, or more strictly a farce, in the true sense. It approaches its theme, the eternal theme of the duel of sex, neither from the ethical standpoint of the Elizabethan pulpiter nor from that of the Pioneer Club. It does not approach it from an ethical standpoint at all, but merely from that of the humorous and dispassionate observation. – E.K. Chambers, 1905 To call The Shrew a masterpiece is not only to bend criticism into sycophancy and a fawning upon Shakespeare’s name. It does worse.

Accepted, it sinks our standard of judgment, levels it, and by leveling forbids our understanding of how a great genius operates; how consummate it can be at its best, how flagrantly bad at its worst. – Arthur Quiller-Couch, 1928 The Taming of the Shrew has comparatively few images, but, rather the contrary to what we should expect, a high proportion—nearly one half—of poetical ones, counterbalancing the farce and roughness of the play, which touches of beauty. These are largely due to Petruchio, who uses close on one half of all the images in the play (40 out of 92), for he is a young man of keen perceptions, and observation of nature, and, when he chooses, he speaks with a poet’s tongue. – Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, 1935 The trouble here is that Shakespeare over-reached himself—a noble error to which he was always prone—and that...humanity is always disconcertingly breaking in. Farce is no place for the depiction of human beings as they are in the round. – M. R.

Ridley, 1937 Our secret occupation as we watch The Taming of the Shrew consists of noting the stages by which both Petruchio and Katherine—both of them, for in spite of everything the business is mutual—surrender to the fact of their affection. Shakespeare has done this not by violating his form, not by forgetting at any point to write farce, and least of all by characterizing his couple. He has left them man and woman, figures for whom we can substitute ourselves, and that is precisely what we do. – Mark Van Doren, 1939 The Taming of the Shrew belongs in its major plot to a...popular type of comedy of which there are traces in Shakespeare’s early work, comedy for the popular rather than for the courtly portion of his audience. The major plot is a refined treatment of the old farcical theme of the taming of the curst wife, but it is a mistake to conceive of the play n purely farcical terms. Petruchio is no wife-beater. He is a gentle, clever man of the world, a profound humorist and the best of actors.

– Hardin Craig, 1948 While a large part of the action concerns match-making and marriage, it is plain that the predominating conception of marriage is Roman (and sixteenth-century). Marriage is primarily an economic and social institution, and love has little to do with it. – E. C. Pettet, 1949 It is not until [Petruchio] positively declares that the sun is the moon that the joke breaks upon her in its full fantasy, and it is then that she wins her first and final victory by showing she has a sense of fun as extravagant as his own, and is able to go beyond him...After that, victory is all hers, and like most human wives that are the superiors of their husbands she can afford to allow him mastery in public. She has secured what her sister Bianca can never have, a happy marriage.

– Nevil Coghill, 1950 The play ends with the prospect that Kate is going to be more nearly the tamer than the tamed, Petruchio more nearly the tamed than the tamer, though his wife naturally will keep the true situation under cover...This interpretation has the advantage of bringing the play into line with all other Comedies in which Shakespeare gives a distinct edge to his heroine. Otherwise it is an unaccountable exception and regresses to the wholly un-Shakespearean doctrine of male superiority, a view which there is not the slightest evidence elsewhere Shakespeare ever held. – Harold C. Goddard, 1951 The psychology of the Katherine-Petruchio plot is remarkably realistic. It is even ’modern’ in its psychoanalytical implications. It is based on the familiar situation of the favorite child. Baptista is the family tyrant and Bianca is his favorite daughter. She has to the casual eye all the outer markings of modesty and sweetness, but to a discerning one all the inner marks of a spoiled pet. – Harold C.

Goddard, 1951 Though in marriage the dominant woman threatens proper ordering of a household, in courtship the woman enjoys a superior position. Courtship is not, then, very good training for marriage. Women who take seriously such lavish expressions of praise and worship as sonnet lovers heap upon them will not take easily to the altered marital situation. – M. C. Bradbrook, 1958 Against the spirit of much of its story, The Taming of the Shrew emerges as a civilizing effort on Shakespeare’s part, one not essentially out of line with the spirit of his later comedies, which tend always to enhance human relationships, to provide for them a foundation of tenderness and mutual respect. – Derek Traversi, 1960 There can be no question about the justice of his tactics, if measured by the end product, for he enables her first to see herself as others see her, and then, her potentiality for humor and self-criticism having been brought out, she is able to discover in herself those qualities he is so sure she possesses.

– Maynard Mack, 1962 It is well to remember that in the First Folio edition of The Shrew there is no mention at all of an ’induction’ and that editors...have disregarded the Folio and have labeled the first two scenes of the play as ’The Induction.’ To the editors of the first surviving edition of The Shrew, then, the prominence of an outer frame may have seemed less important to the play proper and the Sly material itself may have appeared as more intimately a part of the whole play. – Cecil C. Seronsy, 1963 The Shrew is a play about marriage, and about marriage in Elizabethan England. The point needs to be stressed, because its obvious affiliations with Latin comedy and with Italian comedy can easily obscure its concern with what were, when it was first produced, topical and urgent issues in this country, coming home to men’s business and women’s bosoms in the literal sense of both words...There is, in fact, nothing inherently farcical in the initial situation out of which The Shrew develops; it reflects life as it was lived. – George R.

Hibbard, 1964 What happens gradually in the course of the play is that Bianca and Lucentio become more and more realistic, and the Kate-Petruchio relationship moves further and further from reality. Eventually the two lines cross; at the end of the play Bianca is talking back to her husband like an ordinary realistic housewife, scolding him for laying a wager on her docility, and Kate makes a speech urging all women to submit to their husbands. – Sears Jayne, 1966 To see either of these love relations as Shakespeare’s view of marriage we must conclude that he saw the most vital of all human relations either as the act of buying an animal or as the act of beating one into submission. But the real key to Shakespeare’s moral commentary on marriage may perhaps be found in the third story...The Christopher Sly induction is absolutely essential to The Taming of the Shrew because it furnishes the frame of reference in which the other two plots are to be seen, and in this perspective the wooing of Kate is as absurd as the wooing of Bianca.

We do not have, as some suppose, a presentation of two views of marriage, the one finally to be judged more valid than the other; we have the holding up to ridicule of two views of marriage, and as the Petruchio-Kate relation receives the greater dramatic emphasis, it is the one found most wanting. – Irving Ribner, 1967 The subject of the play, the breaking of the spirit of a woman or man who had an evil disposition, was evidently a popular one during the last quarter of the century and is really, in the words of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, ’as old as the hills.’ – W. B. Thorne, 1968 Petruchio, with his rags, demonstrates that roles on the stage of the world, like the clothing any person wears, may be used to disguise or to reveal a person’s true character. – Richard Henze, 1970 It would be simpliste [simplistic] to regard [Katharina’s] statement of total passivity at its face value, and as a prognosis. The open end of The Taming of the Shrew is Katharina’s mind, undisclosed in soliloquy.

And so it is appropriate that the play should end on a faint, but ominous, question mark. – Ralph Berry, 1972 If Petruchio’s conquest of Kate is a kind of mating dance with appropriate strutting and biceps-flexing, she in turn is a healthy female animal who wants a male strong enough to protect her, deflower her, and sire vigorous offspring...The animal imagery in which the play abounds is a prime reason for its disfavor with the critics, who find such terms degrading to Kate and to the concept of matrimony. – Michael West, 1974 [Petruchio’s] aim is not the crude one of the traditional wife-tamer, or to pulverize the woman’s will as well as, in most cases her body. What Petruchio wants, and ends up with, is a Katharina of unbroken spirit and gaiety who has suffered only minor physical discomfort and who has learned the value of self-control and of caring about someone other than herself.

Anne Barton, 1974 Petruchio, Katharina and the Lord have a special vision, an awareness of life as a play or a game, that gives them a power to control not only their own lives but other people’s. They have a sense of convention, and therefore a power to manipulate convention, to create experiences rather than have experiences forced upon them. Alexander Leggatt, 1974 The Shrew dramatizes the traditional Horatian view that the function of comedy is both to please and to instruct, achieving these ends not by directly imitating reality, but by creating exaggerated and distorted images of life which show Sly how wonderful the world could be and show Kate how terrible it could become. – J. Denniss Huston, 1976 At the end of the Middle Ages and in early modern Europe, the relation of the wife—of the potentially disorderly woman—to her husband was especially useful for expressing the relation of all subordinates to their superiors...In the little world of the family, with its conspicuous tension between intimacy and power, the large matters of political and social order could find ready symbolization.

– Natalie Zemon Davis, 1977 This uneasy mixture of romance and farce suggests that Shakespeare’s own sense of purpose is unclear, that he is discovering possibilities of one kind of comic structure while working within the demands of another. – John C. Bean, 1980 Bianca’s rebellion is perhaps the most optimistic sign the play affords us. Even the Good Child, in her new role as wife, calls such an exhibition of obedience ’a foolish duty,’ and refuses to submit. We can see where Lucentio learned to require submission, and we can guess that Bianca has learned defiance from her sister. But Kate herself is a living sacrifice to the pedagogy of patriarchal rule that holds her culture in thrall. – Katherine A. Sirluck, 1991 The Taming of the Shrew appears to tame the critic more than the shrew. Its ability to contain us is vividly evidenced both in its onstage containment of an audience and in its success in engaging critics in debate.

Whether Kate is a shrew or merely a misunderstood young woman, whether Petruchio is a bully or a philosopher, whether the play upholds or undermines degree, is farce or philosophical comedy, should be staged with or without its Induction—all are matters of heated debate in Shakespearean scholarship. – Barbara Freedman, 1991 Looked at with sober late-twentieth century eyes, this is a story in which one human being starves and brainwashes another, with the full approval of the community. Cruelty can be funny—it is the basis of the "practical joke"—as long as one is on the dominant side, and no lasting damage is done to the victim. The Taming of the Shrew argues that the cruel treatment is for the victim’s good, to enable her to become a compliant member of patriarchal society. – Penny Gay, 1994 Power is indeed in Katherine’s hands when she commands the centre of the playing-space. Three leading actors who have recently played the role comment that Katherine’s ’submission’ speech is the scene of her, and their, greatest theatrical power—’the play lands back in Kate’s hands.

It’s her play at the end.’ So while there is no doubt that Katherine is subjected to power, it is also true that she wields an irreducible force of her own. – Paul Yachnin, 1996 The Induction invites the audience of 1592 to decipher an anti-play that is an Elizabethan subversion of the conventional shrew-taming story. But the Induction likewise cannily predicts the play’s reproduction and reception four hundred years after its original performance: in our own time, under feminist scrutiny, the ’pleasant comedy’ announced by the Messenger in the Induction (authorized to call it a comedy, one supposes, by the players themselves) has increasingly been seen as a ’kind of history,’ an intervention in and interrogation of women’s history, and not at all innocent of politics. – Carol Rutter, 1997 When one plays Petruchio there are, I think, roads that it is important not to go down. The text seems to say that you can be as cruel as you like, but if you really start putting on the pressure, being really cruel—for which you have the language and the structure of the speeches to support you—it becomes simply too dark and bleak.

– Michael Siberry, 1998 Katharina is freed from habitual shrewishness by Petruchio’s unrelenting travesty of such waywardness—a robust mode of farcical comedy which is tolerable because Petruchio is clearly acting a part, because he imposes the same privations on himself as on her, and because his underlying delight in her buried self becomes clear. – John Creaser, 2002 I think these are two people fated to be together and they recognize it instantly. They are always inches away from falling madly in love and it is only Petruchio’s strategy that thwarts it. In his mind the shrew will be tamed by love rather than by abuse. I think it’s important that she not be a victim, that she not simply surrender to what’s happening to her. – David H. Bell, 2002 Feminists’ long-standing obsession with The Taming of the Shrew might have been brought swiftly to an end if only they had known that John Fletcher had already relied to Shakespeare himself on their behalf.

What is more, some 350 years ago the two plays used to be presented in a smug double bill—a dialectical take on the equality of sexes, whereby Petruchio eventually gets his comeuppance. – Duska Radosavljevic, 2003 There is no longer a question of "taming"; this is a marriage, one consummated in couplets as well as quips. Attention now shifts to the unresolved elements of the love plot, and thus to the story of Bianca, who has been joined by a nameless (but wealthy) widow, the new bride of Bianca’s failed suitor Hortensio. And here we encounter the second reversal.

For it is suddenly far from clear who is the real "shrew" of the play’s title—and even who is appointed to do the "taming." – Marjorie Garber, 2004 Part of the problem, if it is a problem, is that many modern readers do not want Shakespeare to hold, or to have held, views that are socially or politically incompatible with their own; this is "our Shakespeare"...Evidence in the plays of "antifeminism" or of a hierarchical social model in which husbands rule and control their wives is not the evidence many contemporary appreciators would prefer to find. – Marjorie Garber, 2004 Katherine in The Shrew is the most obvious Shakespeare example of an abused woman. Although New Criticism may interpret Petruchio’s contradictions...as a game, a loving tease with the positive psychological aim of behavior modification, in the twenty-first century it is difficult to find the subjugation of a woman a suitable subject for comic treatment. – Laurie E.

Maguire, 2004 What Katherine actually declares to the other wives is on par with arguments put forward by sixteenth-century Protestant reformers, who held that marriage should be a union of like-minded belief, not domestic tyranny. – Andrew Dickson, 2005 Beginning with The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare uses hawking metaphors to suggest that a husband tame his haggard like wife as a falconer would his bird. – Sean Benson, 2006 On one hand, [The Taming of the Shrew] is a classic "battle of the sexes" comedy, a romantic fantasy in which true love tempers the most combative of pairs. On the other, it is an assault on assertive women, a misogynist fantasy in which the "hero" starves and mentally tortures his wife into submission. – Ben Fisler, 2007 Rather than condemning Katharina’s violence or self-assertion entirely, Petruchio redirects her claims to mastery away from him. The two remain equals with regard to their desire to domineer over their own servants and the outside world. Katharina recognizes only Petruchio as her superior.

In a fairytale logic, then, Petruchio seems to get a wife who is a sheep with him and a shrew to servants and other women. – Fran Dolan, 2008 We might imagine a Petruchio who is routinely violent or one who, in collusion with his servants, stages his own volatility to taming effect. But there is no question that the violence the text describes and implies is directed largely at Petruchio’s subordinates. While it is "not aimed at Kate," she responds as if she is under threat. – Fran Dolan, 2008

Question: 'Petruchio' appears in which play by Shakespeare?
Answer: 'THE TAMING OF THE SHREW'