The Taming of the Shrew (1623)

This play was the first time that I started to see Shakespeare in a totally different light than I was used to. I always saw him as being very of the time and not pushing the boundaries at all, yet I had always been told that this was not the case. When we were introduced to Kate and Petruchio, I really did see that she was a strong woman and that they were equals rather than Petruchio simply overpowering Kate and her succumbing to his will. I also was introduced to the concept of Comedy, which I had never bothered to take note of prior to reading this book. I found the use of Comedy is not to make people laugh, but to get a point across subtly and artfully, rather than slamming it in someone’s face. There are a few times in this play when a person would really be like “wow, party foul” but Shakespeare mastered the ability to take the shock factor’s potency away.

One of the most controversial and problematic of all of Shakespeare's plays, The Taming of the Shrew is a typical Elizabethan domestic comedy written around 1592. Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona, arrives in Padua and announces to his friends that "I come to wive it wealthily in Padua; / If wealthily, then happily in Padua". He soon finds that a group of men keen to marry Bianca, the younger daughter of rich old Baptista, are frustrated by her elder, "shrewish" sister, Katherine. There is much subsequent hilarity as Bianca's suitors make a bet with Petruchio that he cannot "tame" and marry Katherine. Despite Katherine's protestations, Petruchio goes ahead with the match, using deliberately unorthodox behaviour to confuse Katherine (including a scene where he starves her), claiming that "this is the way to kill a wife with kindness". The play culminates with a scene of Katherine's apparently spontaneous subjection to her husband's will, where she places her hand beneath her husband's foot, and tells the other wives present that "thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper". The play's gratuitous scenes of women being abused and vilified in the name of "comedy" has made many directors and critics very uncomfortable with the play, and many feminist critics have condemned contemporary productions of the play as reproducing certain 16th-century stereotypes concerning women who speak out against male authority. --Jerry Brotton

A major new edition of this perennially succesful play which continues to entertain and perplex modern audiences. The play is discussed in its critical and theatrical contexts and Hodgdon, a leading feminist scholar, opens up new readings for modern audiences and students.

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

For English literature class we read the book and went to the theatre to see the play.
First: the reading was difficult, since I do not really fancy reading plays (the one the I tried to read by Stephen King was equally difficult, despite it was written in a whole different time) and second: it was OLD language.
I'm a bit more used to reading older language now than I was back then. I'm not going to judge the book by its language, since that's not fair. I just liked the play (which more or less faithfully followed the written edition we read).
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