The Taming of the Shrew
Taming of the Shrew, TheThe most enduringly popular of the early comedies, if also the most potentially offensive, The Taming of the Shrew has sometimes been regarded as Shakespeare's first play—partly on the sentimental grounds that its Induction's allusions to Warwickshire reflect the homesickness of a Stratford man newly arrived in London. Although the sophistication of its dramatic structure and scenic technique compared to those of The Two Gentlemen of Verona make this placing in the chronology unlikely, the play does belong to the very first phase of Shakespeare's writing career: while evidence as to its date is complicated by the existence of a similar play, The Taming of a Shrew, published anonymously in 1594, it seems certain that The Taming of the Shrew was already extant by 1592, when passages without any equivalent in A Shrew were echoed in another anonymous play, A Knack to Know a Knave. In 1593...
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