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The Taming of the Shrew

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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

The Taming of the Shrew: Introduction

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Historical Context of The Taming of the Shrew

Other books related to the taming of the shrew.

• Full Title: The Taming of the Shrew
• When Written: Early 1590s
• Where Written: England
• When Published: 1623
• Literary Period: English Renaissance (also called the early modern era)
• Genre: Elizabethan Comedy
• Setting: The main action occurs in Padua, Italy and Petruchio's country home. (Though the main action is actually a play-within-a-play, and the frame of the play regarding Christopher Sly occurs at the home of an anonymous English lord.)
• Climax: There are multiple climaxes for the various plot-threads of the play. For Petruchio and Katherine, the climax comes when they are journeying to Padua and Petruchio makes her say that the sun is the moon, showing that he has achieved complete mastery over Katherine's wild nature. For the rest of the characters, it is in act five, scene one, when Lucentio's real father Vincentio confronts the merchant who was disguised as Vincentio at Lucentio's house in Padua. Lucentio is forced to reveal his true identity (and the identity of Tranio) to Baptista. All of the characters' various disguises are put aside, and Baptista and Vincentio approve of the marriage between the real Lucentio and Bianca.
• Antagonist: For Lucentio, the antagonists are all those who stand between him and Bianca: Hortensio, Gremio, and Baptista. Petruchio and Katherine may be said to be each other's antagonist, as Petruchio tries to tame her and she struggles against his abusive dominance.

Extra Credit for The Taming of the Shrew

Adapting the Shrew. The Taming of the Shrew has been prone to adaptations since the 17th century. In the early 1600s, John Fletcher wrote a sequel called The Tamer Tamed in which Petruchio is himself tamed by a new wife. In 1948, Cole Porter adapted Shakespeare's play into a musical comedy called Kiss Me, Kate . And in more recent years, the 1999 movie 10 Things I Hate About You moved Shakespeare's romantic comedy from Renaissance Italy to Padua High School, where characters scheme to take the sisters Kat and Bianca to the prom.

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The taming of the shrew.

Kate Eastwood Norris (Kate) and Cody Nickell (Petruchio) in The Taming of the Shrew , directed by Aaron Posner, Folger Theatre, 2012. Photo: Carol Pratt.

Introduction to the play

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

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

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The Folger Shakespeare

Our bestselling editions of Shakespeare's plays and poems

I come to wive it wealthily in Padua; If wealthily, then happily in Padua.

If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

The Taming of the Shrew in our collection

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Essays and resources from The Folger Shakespeare

Learn more about the play, its language, and its history from the experts behind our edition.

About Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew An introduction to the plot, themes, and characters in the play

Reading Shakespeare’s Language A guide for understanding Shakespeare’s words, sentences, and wordplay

An Introduction to This Text A description of the publishing history of the play and our editors’ approach to this edition

Textual Notes A record of the variants in the early printings of this text

A Modern Perspective An essay by Karen Newman

Appendix: Framing Dialogue in The Taming of a Shrew (1594)

Further Reading Suggestions from our experts on where to learn more

Shakespeare and his world

Learn more about Shakespeare, his theater, and his plays from the experts behind our editions.

Shakespeare’s Life An essay about Shakespeare and the time in which he lived

Shakespeare’s Theater An essay about what theaters were like during Shakespeare’s career

The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays An essay about how Shakespeare’s plays were published

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Teaching The Taming of the Shrew

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Early printed texts

The Taming of the Shrew was first published in the 1623 First Folio, and that text is generally the source for subsequent editions. The only complication is a 1594 quarto titled  The Taming of A Shrew that is not ascribed to Shakespeare and which has an uncertain relationship to  The Shrew . While there are plot similarities, much of  A Shrew is different from  The Shrew , including character relationships, names, and much of the language. But since the framing story of Sly is continued throughout A Shrew , instead of being dropped after the initial scenes as in  The Shrew , editors sometimes wish to include those Sly scenes in their edition. The Folger edition, like all modern editions, is based on F1, and does not include any additions from  A Shrew .

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The Taming of the Shrew Introduction

The Taming of the Shrew is the story of how Petruchio, the money-grubbing wife hunter, transforms the aggressive and bad-tempered Katherine Minola into an obedient, honey-tongued trophy wife. Written by William Shakespeare between 1590 and 1594, it's one of Shakespeare's earliest Comedies – it's also one of his most controversial works. For modern audiences (let's face it, we're a lot more sensitive to social injustices), the play's critical controversy is perhaps second to that of The Merchant of Venice ( Merchant of Venice is a play that portrays and analyzes blatant anti-Semitic attitudes and has sparked heated debate over its complex depiction of Shylock , the demonized Jewish villain that is forced to convert to Christianity at the play's end.) The Taming of the Shrew has been criticized for its representation of abusive behavior and misogynistic attitudes toward women, and the play has pretty much been dogged since it was first performed. There's much evidence that Shrew made even Shakespeare's contemporary audiences more than a little squeamish. The playwright John Fletcher was particularly keyed to potential objections to Petruchio's behavior – so much so that he wrote a play in response called The Woman's Prize or, The Tamer Tamed (c. 1616). Fletcher's play fast-forwards many years from the end of Shrew , when Petruchio is a widower and has remarried the shrewish Maria, who gives him a dose of his own medicine. Though Shrew continued to be staged and adapted, in the late 1890s, Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw wrote that "No man with any decency of feeling can sit [the final act] out in the company of a woman without being extremely ashamed" ( source ). On the other hand, the play has also been adored by many fans from the get-go. There's no denying that Shrew portrays patriarchy at its worst – the question is, what is the play's attitude toward such action and behavior? Does it condone domestic abuse and celebrate painful and humiliating tactics to reform "shrewish" behavior? Or, does it satirize (mock and ridicule à la Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert ) unfair social attitudes toward women? Or, is it merely a light-hearted farce that is not meant to be taken seriously at all? These are important questions that have sparked centuries of debate. Whether or not one thinks the play is vile, hilarious, or some combination of the two, asking tough questions and thinking hard about the problems posed by the text are good things. For all its controversy, Shrew remains one of the most performed and adapted plays in Shakespeare's body of work. (The most popular adaptations include Cole Porter's 1948 Broadway musical Kiss Me Kate , the 1999 teen flick 10 Things I Hate About You , and the popular BBC production ShakespeaRe-Told: The Taming of the Shrew , 2005. One of the most famous film versions of the play is Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 production starring Elizabeth Taylor .) Given that the text is subject to so many interpretive possibilities, it's pretty common for one performance of the play to look completely different from the next. (This is why you shouldn't watch the movie as a mere replacement for reading the play. You should do both.) One director might play up the text's farcical elements – lots of silly, slapstick humor that undermines any seriousness in the play. Another director might emphasize the play's darker elements to highlight Petruchio's abusive behavior. Really, the staging possibilities are endless. Of course, the play is also regarded as one of the great grandfathers of the "battle of the sexes" story line, a formula that has inspired countless movies ( Mr. and Mrs. Smith , The War of the Roses , etc., etc.) and television series (take your pick, but see especially a young Bruce Willis go toe-to-toe with Cybill Shepherd in the old-school Moonlighting ).

What is The Taming of the Shrew About and Why Should I Care?

A lot of movie producers like to call The Taming of the Shrew the classic "battle of the sexes" story. They're right, in a way, and it's true that Shakespeare's play has inspired a ton of films and televisions shows that fit this genre. Katherine and Petruchio do in fact go toe-to-toe when they first meet and they do fight for the upper hand in their marriage throughout most of their honeymoon. It's also true that many of these scenes can be hilarious, especially when Kate holds her own with Petruchio. But, anyone who has read the play knows that it's by no means a simple story about a bickering couple. They also know that the fight is hardly equal or fair. The truth is that Kate is subject to some really brutal treatment because she refuses to be the silent, obedient, and mild-mannered wife that society demands. Unlike Angelina Jolie 's character in Mr. and Mrs. Smith , Katherine Minola doesn't get to parade around in stilettos and a killer black dress with a revolver strapped to her thigh. It's true that Kate puts up a pretty good verbal fight, especially when she first meets Petruchio, but The Taming of the Shrew actually ends with Kate on her knees telling Petruchio that he is her king. Seriously – here's a little excerpt from Kate's final monologue: I am ashamed that women are so simple To offer war where they should kneel for peace, Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway When they are bound to serve, love, and obey. (5.2.177-180) Whether or not Kate actually believes any of this is up for debate. (You can read what we have to say about the final speech in " What's Up With the Ending? " but come right back.) The point is that Katherine really doesn't have any other choice in the matter. She has to give this speech if she wants any kind of tranquility in her marriage because she has no legal rights as a 16th-century wife – she's basically her husband's property, which means she has to play nice if she wants Petruchio to let her eat, sleep, or pick out her own clothes. The play makes us stop and think about what it means to portray men and women duking it out on stage, film, TV, whatever. We also dig the way it forces the audience to question their assumptions about "proper" gender roles and their attitudes about the power dynamics between romantic couples (friends and blood relatives, too). Ever felt pressured to conform to somebody else's expectations and values (at school, home, in a romantic relationship)? Ever been told to act more like a "good girl," or to be a "man"? We thought so. And we think you'll like the way this play makes you think about what that means.

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