The Taming of the Shrew (Vol. 31) | Margaret Loftus Ranald (essay date 1994)
Margaret Loftus Ranald (essay date 1994)
SOURCE: "The Performance of Feminism in The Taming of the Shrew, " in Theatre Research International, n.s. Vol. XIX, No. 3, Fall, 1994, pp. 214-25.
[In the following excerpt, Ranald provides a brief review of the play's performance history, focusing in particular in how the relationship between Katherine and Petruchio has been handled.]
Performance is ideology! This is particularly true of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, one of his two comedies concerning the behaviour of husband and wife after the marriage ceremony—the other being The Comedy of Errors. Here he makes use of what may well be the longest-running English female stock character, the recalcitrant wife, who goes back to Mrs Noah, the disobedient woman of the mediaeval religious cycle plays. But at the same time he adapts the technique of classical farce to observation of human behaviour, by taking an...
[The entire page is 5213 words long]
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