[In the following essay, Pearson considers stage representations of The Taming of the Shrew as they reflect the changing social perceptions of women.]

From its first performance in about 1594 to the present day, productions of The Taming of the Shrew challenge actors and directors to provide the audience with a play that supplies entertainment rather than sketches a harsh portrait of Elizabethan patriarchal society. When faced with a “problem play” such as this one, theater companies often avoid the difficulties involved by ignoring the play entirely or substituting an altered version. David Garrick's shortened three-act play, Catherine and Petruchio replaced The Taming of the Shrew for almost one hundred years. With the exception of one three-day run of an operatic version, Garrick's play was the only version produced in England and America from 1754-1844 (Haring-Smith 16-18). This version eliminates the subplot about Bianca and her suitors as well as the Induction. Garrick cut out most of the pure comedic elements to make the play more farcical so that the characters of Catherine and Petruchio become more clearly motivated. Catherine plainly marries in order to tame Petruchio, but is beaten at her own game. Garrick makes the play acceptable by indicating unmistakably that Petruchio is not a tyrannical household ruler and Cate, although tamed, is not humiliated; the couple shares a happy, compromising marriage.

In contrast, Michael Bogdanov's modern dress production by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1978 emphasized the moral and physical ugliness of a male-dominated society. A review in the Guardian questioned “whether there is any reason to revive a play that seems totally offensive to our age and our society” (qtd. in Thompson 17). Admittedly, the play can easily be distasteful to the feminist awareness of the 1990s, and if a way is not found to make the text compatible to the sensibilities of a modern audience, performances of it will cease, and the text will sink into obscurity, to be read only by the most dedicated Shakespeare scholars. The Shrew has many redeeming qualities, including some hilarious scenes, that make the search for an acceptable production worthwhile. Somewhere between Garrick's revision and Bogdanov's dark commentary lies an entertaining and thought-provoking evening of theater.

One of the major obstacles to a satisfactory modern production of the play is Katherine's speech in the final scene:

I am asham'd 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.

(5.2.161-64)

At a first reading, it seems to be her final capitulation to Petruchio's taming, and a subservient reiteration of the ideal Elizabethan woman's loyalty to her husband. England, however, had Elizabeth I for a ruler at this time, a ruler who in no way could be labeled inferior or submissive to anyone. In addition, many medieval ideas about marriage were beginning to be attacked by such critics as Heinrich Bullinger, Robert Cleaver, Juan Luis Vives, and Erasmus. Some ideas under fire included sex for procreation purposes only, woman as idealized in the classic romance, wife as drudge and servant, and male autocracy in the household (Bean 69). In his “Commentary on Ovid's ‘Nut Tree,’” Erasmus writes that “in those days the object of matrimony was offspring, but nowadays most people take a wife for pleasure, and a woman who produces many children is called a sow” (139). Surely Shakespeare would have been aware of these trends in his society, which included the ancient Biblical idea that the relationship of a wife and husband is second only to the bond owed to God. Considered in this light, Kate's final speech takes on an entirely different hue. Attention to certain details throughout the text, however, must lead up to and build to her act 5 speech to create a believable transition from the unruly Kate in her first scene to the supportive and loving wife in her last.

Perhaps one of the fascinations of The Shrew is the very difficulty of enjoying it while also feeling uncomfortable with it. We are amused by many of the comic scenes, especially between Christopher Sly and his page/wife and between Bianca and her suitors in disguise, but at the same time we are horrified by the mercenary comments offered by most of the male characters. In addition, Petruchio does not choose the most gentle means to shape his wife's character. His behavior may be softened or hardened through directorial choices; however, downplaying the taming process too much eliminates the discordance between his methodology and his seeming charm and love for Katherine. Some may argue that Petruchio's love for Kate is really his love for her dowry. What could be the importance of a dowry to a man who has just inherited his father's estate and claims “Crowns in my purse I have, and goods at home, / And so am come abroad to see the world” (1.2.57-58). The added responsibility of an estate makes his need for an heir more urgent. Petruchio realizes he must marry quickly and if money comes along with a wife, then so much the better. Most marriages of the time were for necessity, not love; Petruchio, product of a society in which men took care of women and expected absolute obedience, is no different. Nor did his requirement die with Shakespeare; dominance and submissiveness in marriage continue in our own time. The perceived opposition of violence and slapstick, darkness and comedy, reflects our own changing feelings towards the roles of men and women and raises questions that can only be generated by a complex play that requires careful thought and staging.

Many modern productions choose to cut the Induction, thus eliminating the entire idea of a play within a play. To do so, however, is to lose an important dimension: the real audience watching a group of actors who are playing actors performing in front of another group of actors who are pretending to be spectators. Several productions, including those at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1954, 1962, and 1967, exaggerate the point by heralding the actors before the play proper begins and making the players clear the stage of props and pieces of the set after the play is over. Often the actors playing Hortensio and Katherine are paired, as are those who play Petruchio and Bianca, in this mimed afterword that further calls attention to the play as a piece of theater rather than a slice of real life (Sprague and Trewin 54). The Induction thus serves as a distancing device; the play within the play, a farce created for the benefit of Christopher Sly, can more easily be seen as an illusion. The traditional suspension of disbelief is eliminated, as the actual audience is reminded they are watching a play.

Many parallels between the Kate/Petruchio plot and the Christopher Sly/Lord plot are lost when the Induction is cut. The Lord tells all, “Sirs, I will practice on this drunken man” (Ind.1.36). In a similar fashion Petruchio plays games with Kate's mind. Where Sly is confused about which is his true role, beggar or lord, “Am I a Lord, and have I such a lady? / Or do I dream? Or have I dream'd till now? / I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak,” Katherine finds herself in a similar state, “… she, poor soul, / Knows not which way to stand, to look, to speak, / And sits as one new risen from a dream” (Ind.2.68-70, 4.1.184-86). Each character goes through some sort of transformation. Although Katherine's seems to be permanent, we know Sly will be returned to his beggarly state after the lords and hunters tire of their game. Sly's new “wife,” the page, states “My husband and my lord, my lord and husband, / I am your wife in all obedience” just as Kate, in her final long speech, claims to be subservient to her so-called master, Petruchio (Ind.2.106-07). However, at the beginning of the Induction when the hostess throws Sly out of the pub, he is portrayed as inferior to women although he does not view himself that way. A parallel between Petruchio and Sly here should put a question in the audience's mind: is Petruchio really superior, or does Kate just let him think so? (Kahn 87).

Many critics complain that The Shrew is incomplete because it lacks the closure of an epilogue. An earlier, anonymous version of the play dating back to 1589, The Taming of A Shrew, has an afterword in which Sly announces to the audience that he is going to use the methods he just learned in this “dream” to go home and tame his own wife. Irving Ribner argues that there is no need for such an obvious closure because V.ii acts as an epilogue; the play proper is over with Kate's capitulation in the previous scene, and this final scene merely illuminates the true characters of the other players. Bianca and the widow are revealed as the true shrews, while Kate is the loving wife (175). It is true that the Induction is confusing; there is no indication of an exit for Sly and his group, merely: “They sit and mark” (1.1.254). It is up to the director and the actors to decide exactly when Sly and company leave the stage. In many productions, he is carried off soon after, but in some he remains on stage as a spectator throughout the performance.

The attention given to actors and role-playing in the Induction influences the rest of the play. George Cheatham claims that two criteria must be satisfied before a character can truly play a role: the role must be compatible with an original characteristic, and the parties involved must exhibit a certain amount of selflessness (225-27). Petruchio, after all, falls in the mud with Kate and refuses to eat the burnt meat with Kate. He acts as a director teaching Katherine to play roles other than the shrew: wooed maiden, wife with jealous husband, wife with tyrannous husband, wife with loving husband. Through examples of buyer, wooer, tamer, and husband, he shows her the possibilities of her personality, her ability to be any woman she chooses to be (Henze 232-33). She is defined not only as Baptista's daughter or Petruchio's wife; she is an intelligent woman who can play any role she, her husband, or any other person requires her to play. Other characters do not have this ability; they are more one-dimensional.

Before their first meeting, Kate and Petruchio do not seem to be sympathetic characters. On the one hand, we see a man who scuffles with his servant the first moment he is on stage and then announces that he comes to “wive it weathily in Padua; / If wealthily, then happily in Padua” (1.2.75-76). No wonder Kate is shrewish; she is surrounded by men who want to buy and sell her. Baptista, like any smart merchant, wants to get rid of his unpopular goods before selling his prize, Bianca, off to the highest bidder. He even stands by and allows Gremio and Hortensio to insult Kate and doesn't deign to reply to her “I pray you sir, is it your will / To make a stale of me amongst these mates?” (1.1.57-58). Of course, Kate is not the most charming woman in the world. Breaking a lute over Hortensio's head and tying up and striking Bianca earn her her devilish reputation. Unfortunately, many modern productions cut Petruchio's lines about marrying for money, yet include Kate's behavior unaltered (Dash 45-46). In this case Petruchio becomes a more sympathetic character, and Kate is reduced to a one-dimensional shrew.

It is interesting to note that although most directors of this play have been male, their female counterparts have not presented The Shrew in a drastically different way. Margaret Anglin, who directed and played Katherine in 1914, reflected the typical twentieth-century attempt to present Kate and Petruchio as two characters who are learning from and in love with each other. Katherine is truly transformed from Kate the Curst to a Kate who learns a socially acceptable way of controlling her husband (Haring-Smith 93-94). Margaret Webster's 1951 production demonstrated a more recent tendency toward excessive farce. Although her Petruchio and Kate were also portrayed as falling in love with each other, their physical horseplay suggested a certain savagery in the characters, echoed later in Bogdanov's production (137-39). Other directors have used the play as an opportunity to ridicule modern women. Oscar Asche, in a London performance in 1904, had Kate enter dressed in a riding habit. She cracked a whip, led two dogs, and carried dead rabbits from a successful hunt. He marginalized her individuality by presenting her masculine qualities as a negative caricature of the New Woman (83-84).

In this play Shakespeare is only beginning to exhibit his talent for the word games that mature into a cutting wit in Love's Labors Lost, and some productions emphasize Petruchio as a player of games and Kate as a ready learner of his technique. When Petruchio and Kate finally meet in a Royal Shakespeare Company production in 1967, Trevor Nunn had Petruchio pretend to have only one arm. Kate was genuinely sympathetic for a moment, then indignant and amused when she found she had been tricked (Leggatt 55n). This mimed game can be justified by the multitude of verbal games played in the text and a specific reference to Petruchio's arms later in the scene: “So may you lose your arms. / If you strike me, you are no gentleman, / And if no gentleman, why then no arms” (2.1.221-23). Kate is already responding to the games her suitor plays. Even though she asks to be called Katherine, Petruchio calls her Kate eleven times, infuriating her. Sexual puns abound in Petruchio's lines: “Alas, good Kate, I will not burthen thee, / For knowing thee to be but young and light. … What, with my tongue in your tail? Nay, come again, / Good Kate; I am a gentleman—” (2.1.202-03, 218-19). And a gentleman he is, for when Kate strikes him, he has only a verbal threat to give her. By the end of their scene, she recognizes his words as the verbal tricks they are and asks, “Where did you study all this goodly speech?” (2.1.262). He is the master of the game, but through listening to him, she will equal, if not surpass, his ability later in the play.

Beginning to soften, Kate must feel hints of emotion for Petruchio, who is quite a different man than any she has met before. While waiting for him at the wedding, she admits, “Would Katherine had never seen him though!” The line could be interpreted as just another angry retort but the stage direction following, “Exit weeping” (3.2.26), suggests that the wedding day is important to her. Petruchio finally shows up, though late and poorly dressed. After the wedding, in a 1902 London production, Petruchio “used to carry a kicking Katherine right off on one shoulder.” This type of heavy-handed physical behavior, which seems out of keeping with the man who would not hit Kate earlier in the wooing scene, is often seen. Even more exaggerated was an 1848 production in which the “promptbook reads: ‘The Ladies give a faint scream and cling to the gentlemen. The Servants retreat’—to which is added in a later hand; ‘Hortensio and Baptista draw and attack Petruchio who defends himself and at the same time pulls Catherine up stage Business and Change Scene’” (Sprague 57). This same man, however, has the decency to respect Kate's person on the wedding night, choosing to lecture her on continence rather than enter the marriage bed. Surely this is an action from a many-faceted, sensitive character. Such kindness from a husband was not often the case in Elizabethan or later times; many women were forced to perform in the bridal bed before they were ready (Dash 54-56).

Some of the most difficult scenes to play are those in Petruchio's house. His behavior can easily be portrayed as cruel and tormenting, even as a type of brainwashing, but in such a portrayal the play loses its multiplicity and is no longer an entertaining examination of marriage and society. In the 1902 production referred to above, when Kate is denied the “burnt” meat even though terribly hungry, she “snatch[es] up a knife and raise[s] it to strike Petruchio, when the sight of his mocking face, quite unruffled by her fury, breaks down her proud spirit, and plunging the knife into the table, she sinks sobbing at his feet” (Sprague 60). If it were not for the fact that Petruchio joins her in deprivation of food, Kate would become a woman completely defeated by a tyrant. Petruchio's recognition that he is as volatile as she softens his behavior considerably: “And better 'twere that both of us did fast, / Since of ourselves, ourselves are choleric, / Than feed it with such overroasted flesh” (4.1.173-75).

Kate who can later berate Petruchio obviously has plenty of spirit and spunk left in her. She is not tamed, nor does it seem her tongue will ever be:

Why, sir, I trust I may have leave to speak,
And speak I will. I am no child, no babe;
Your betters have endur'd me say my mind,
And if you cannot, best you stop your ears.
My tongue will tell the anger of my heart,
Or else my heart concealing it will break,
And rather than it shall, I will be free,
Even to the uttermost, as I please, in words.

(4.3.73-80)

Although Petruchio denies her the new dress in this scene, he asks Hortensio to pay for it in an aside. His brawling behavior is a part of the game he's playing with Kate. In an effort to make his character more sympathetic, Maurice Daniels, in a 1962 RSC production, had Petruchio give Kate the “paltry cap” in a mime at the end of the scene (Leggatt 55). From his first entrance, he plays at visual tricks and word games with everyone; Grumio, for example, if so directed, can go along with the “knock me soundly” game he plays with his master. Then Petruchio can be developed into a gamester and master of the language rather than just a brute (1.2.5-19).

Kate finally learns the game well enough to challenge her husband's wit when they are travelling on the road to her father's house, a road that signifies a transition for her. It takes a blatant explanation from Hortensio to make her aware of Petruchio's game: “Say as he says, or we shall never go” (4.5.11). Her immediate capitulation surprises both men, and Petruchio tests her further to prove to himself that she really does understand the game.

PET.
I say it is the Moon.
KATE
I know it is the Moon.
PET.
Nay, then you lie; it is the blessed sun.
KATE
Then god be blest, it [is] the blessed sun,
But sun it is not, when you say it is not;
And the moon changes even as your mind.
What you will have it nam'd, even that it is,
And so it shall be so for Katherine.

(4.5.15-22)

If we see a Kate who is beginning to enjoy beating Petruchio at his own tricks, we can interpret her actions as a compromise between obedience and intellectual freedom (Kahn 96). The liberation of her imagination transforms her into a skillful partner and player who can further exaggerate and who is perfectly capable of competing with Petruchio. His challenge in reference to the old Vincentio, “Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too, / Hast thou beheld a fresher Gentlewoman,” is surpassed by her retort:

Young budding Virgin, fair, and fresh, and sweet,
Whither away, or [where] is thy abode?
Happy the parents of so fair a child!
Happier the man whom favourable stars
Allots thee for his lovely bedfellow!

(4.5.28-29, 37-41)

And when he points out her mistake, her reply reflects the joy she feels: “… my mistaking eyes, / … have been so bedazzled with the sun, / That every thing I look on seemeth green” (4.5.45-47). She is not sad; her spirit is not broken, else Vincentio would not be able to observe that she is a “merry mistress” (4.5.53). She has discovered an intellectual freedom unavailable to many Elizabethan women, a freedom encouraged by her playful, though sometimes domineering, husband.

Katherine's assertiveness begins to shine; when they arrive in Padua it is she who suggests they follow to see what will happen to Bianca, Lucentio, Baptista, Vincentio, and all the imposters. It is the first time she is not merely responding to Petruchio's cue; she offers her own idea: “Husband, let's follow, to see the end of this ado” (5.1.141). Characteristically, Petruchio tests her sincerity to see how far she will let him go and asks for a kiss in the street. Although she is hesitant to kiss in the midst of the street, she agrees in order to avoid the consequence that they will go home again if she does not. But there is more to it than that; she calls him “love” for the first time. Has our boisterous Katherine fallen in love with her supposed tamer? Petruchio seems somewhat smitten as well: “… Come, my sweet Kate: / Better once than never, for never too late” (5.1.149). It is the beginning of a relationship based on mutual respect, as well as mutual admiration of intellect (Dash 60-61).

The test of a good production of The Shrew is Katherine's final long speech, which may appear to be a sermon on the good Elizabethan wife. If Kate has been yielding slowly throughout the play, her speech becomes the ultimate acquiescence to her husband's authority. If she has not been portrayed as the surrendering type, and the speech is delivered seriously, then Kate's character takes an unbelievable turn. However, a close look at the text reveals another option. She chooses to emphasize positive aspects of woman in the context of marriage: softness, beauty, and woman's strength as complement to her husband's. Though it can be argued that softness is merely an indication of weakness, it carries images of comfort, love, and care as well. Kate recognizes the power she has within the confines of her society and her marriage, contrasting it with the powerlessness of her role in Baptista's house (Bean 69).

The well-developed political analogy she uses illustrates the depth of her intellect.

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
.....Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel,
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?

(5.2.151-52, 160-65)

Note that it is an “honest will” she serves; a people/wife are more willing to serve a benevolent king/husband than a tyrant because of the fair treatment received (Bean 69). Often the two types may be performing the same underhanded, dirty deeds, but the people are more willing to make excuses or accept the behavior as right if they are being treated well. Discomfort and dissatisfaction lead to revolution, not affluence and a content society. If most people are happy, those in power are more likely to be able to function without trouble.

Though Petruchio's way of life may not be the best or the only way, his is the better way within the context/reality of the play. He is the only husband who gains a true wife; Hortensio and Lucentio are left with disagreeable women who do nothing in the final scene that could portray them in a positive light (Henze 238). Kate also recognizes the strange changing relationship between illusion and reality: “That seeming to be most which we indeed least are” (5.2.175). She realizes that she would not have recited such a speech for anyone earlier in the play. The always sure Petruchio even hesitates to ask this performance of her; he recognizes the risk he is taking by pushing her perhaps too far, and knows that her play with him is more important here than at any other time. When he says “The fouler fortune mine, and there an end,” he acknowledges that her refusal to play will mean his defeat, and for both of them a loss of hope for happiness in the marriage (5.2.97).

Her words dominate the scene, even quieting the ebullient Petruchio. The sermon she delivers mocks and surpasses all of her husband's earlier tirades (Kahn 98). Just as Petruchio enjoys making the bet, so Kate enjoys helping him win as the length and care of her performance demonstrate (Leggatt 61). In an Ashland production in 1978, Kate was the only character who stood and moved around in the final scene, thus creating her own visual superiority. She also conveyed an alliance with Petruchio that they had been developing throughout the play. He was so moved and subdued by her final speech that when she started to kneel, he knelt too, catching her hand. They rose up together, equals, face to face, and went on to bed (Andresen-Thom 123, 139).

What a contrast with Michael Bogdanov's modern dress production of the same year. An ornate set greeted the audience, but when a “drunk” in the audience started a ruckus with an “usherette”—“I'm not having any bloody woman tell me what to do”—a riot ensued and ended up on stage, destroying the set and revealing a complex set of catwalks, iron staircases, and scaffolding. Later the audience found out the drunken man was Christopher Sly, and still later discovered that the same character was playing Petruchio. He violently kicked and slapped, threw Kate to the ground and pinned her by the wrists in the wooing scene, while Grumio covered their getaway from the wedding with a switchblade. The final scene took place in an atmosphere of cigars, brandy, and poker chips. Katherine relished her new-found servitude in a perverse, masochistic way that bothered even Petruchio. He snatched his foot away nervously before she could kiss it; the other characters were horrified and disgusted as well (Haring-Smith 120).

Bogdanov was trying to offer a feminist interpretation of the play and illustrate that the differences between the status of modern woman and Elizabethan woman are not as marked as some might believe. However, most critics, while admittedly admiring the daring of the piece, complained, along with Lorna Sage of the Times Literary Supplement that it was,

an interesting and courageous (not to say feminist) way to interpret the play, but though it works in theory, I am not so sure in practice. It is very difficult to accept an emotional curve that starts with exhilaration and ends in depressed deadlock.

(qtd. in Haring-Smith 122)

Sage goes on to observe that audience members seemed to enjoy the beginning of the play, but the implications of the world created on the stage eventually led to a certain amount of discomfort (122). The production became a satire of commercialism, romantic love, and the oppression of women, rather than a play whose sympathetic characters could make the audience think about their own lives.

Kate and Petruchio are two of only a few characters who do not rely on disguise or deception to develop their relationship (Daniell 25). Masters of the overstatement, they join in marriage while retaining their individual personalities, rather than exist as individuals concerned with their own self-gratification. Joined in battle against an unyielding society that can accept without question a Baptista who sells his daughters and a Gremio who shops for a bride, Petruchio and Kate offer new ideas and change to the established society of Padua. Their relationship, though rocky and unpredictable, is based on mutual trust and dependence (Andresen-Thom 140). They play a game in which only they know the rules (Berry 70). As a result, Petruchio can bet on his wife's willingness to perform tasks that she realizes are only a part of their play. Visually, a production in Ashland easily amplified the difference by dressing the couple in plain, buff clothes for the final scene in contrast with the rich reds, satins, and velvets of the other characters (Andresen-Thom 138). This directorial choice is justified by the text; Petruchio has much to say about clothing and its relationship to people's character:

To me she's married, not unto my clothes.
Could I repair what she will wear in me,
As I can change these poor accoutrements,
'Twere well for Kate, and better for myself.
.....Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor,
For 'tis the mind that makes the body rich;
.....What, is the jay more precious than the lark,
Because his feathers are more beautiful?

(3.2.117-20, 4.3.171-72, 175-76)

Productions from different eras mold Kate's character to reflect the role of contemporary women. In the nineteenth century, to tame a Kate would be to do her a favor; her final speech delivers the morality of the time, a definition of the true feminine woman (Haring-Smith 24). Many twentieth-century performances try to minimize the ugliness of the play, making Katherine a woman who can subtly control or one who capitulates to Petruchio out of her love for him (123-24). Directors attempt to distance the play from these problematic choices by making it more farcical. Unfortunately, this technique often obscures the humanity of the characters, making them flat and one-dimensional caricatures to whom the audience cannot relate (146). The play is reduced from the multidimensionality that most people associate with Shakespeare's writing to a singular circus from which the audience leaves having learned nothing. Noting the failure or semi-success of other slapstick productions, directors tend to make the play more and more farcical, rather than returning to the genre of comedy for inspiration. It is this same loss of subtlety that undercuts any chance for the audience to perceive a victory for Kate. A production in Stratford-upon-Avon presented a Petruchio who stroked Kate's calves at the end of their first scene; they gazed into each other's eyes like young lovers. Thus, the audience could too easily believe that they would live happily ever after. Interaction between a man and a woman is rarely so simple (Sprague and Trewin 182).

Although many readers regard the play as satirizing women, some also see it as ridiculing “male attitudes toward women” (Kahn 86). Considering the atmosphere Shakespeare was writing in, a world in which philosophers and scholars alike were beginning to question the traditional roles of women, it seems plausible that he intended to raise difficult questions about the roles society had assigned both men and women. That it is extremely difficult to be an individual while remaining within the acceptable confines of one's society is a concept that Petruchio helps Katherine identify as the cause of her trials. No longer must she be defined as Baptista's shrewish daughter or object of man's ridicule; she knows her own mind and has opinions she is unafraid to voice. Katherine often thinks her husband mad because of the strange statements he claims are true. He labels meat “burnt and dried away,” though she saw with her own eyes that it “was well, if you were so contented” (4.1.170, 69). Later when he insists “'tis now some seven o'clock” she points out that it is obviously “almost two” (4.3.187, 189). He serves as a mirror in the games they play; she perceives his “insane” behavior in the same manner in which men see her “insane” behavior. Yet Petruchio, unlike the other men in the play, enjoys his wife's intelligence and wit, and expends much time and effort encouraging her to use them in a challenging way.

The Taming of the Shrew's diverse and interesting stage history indicates that it is a play that requires careful consideration of the society's changing perceptions of women. The context of the original play must also be reconciled with the vastly different twentieth-century atmosphere; women do have more intellectual freedom and respect, yet they also still feel the repercussions of past subservience. Certainly a play which raises issues such as the battle of the sexes, the changing roles of women, and the constraints society places on individuals will leave its audience trying to sort out these concerns long after the curtain falls. Perhaps one day a director will be brave enough to shift the attention completely to Katherine by making the story originate from her mind, rather than a man's. Kate the career woman could enter before the Induction. She may come home from a long day at work, set down her briefcase, pour herself a glass of white wine, and proceed to fall asleep in her chair. Then the play becomes her dream about Sly dreaming about Kate and Petruchio, and the Russian doll effect goes on and on.

Works Cited

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Bean, John C. “Comic Structure and the Humanizing of Kate in ‘The Taming of the Shrew.’” The Woman's Part: Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare. Eds. Carolyn Ruth Swift Lenz, Gayle Greene, and Carol Neely. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980. 65-78.

Berry, Ralph. Shakespeare's Comedies: Explorations in Form. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972.

Cheatham, George. “Imagination, Madness, and Magic: ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ as Romantic Comedy.” Iowa State Journal of Research 59 (1985): 221-32.

Daniell, David. “The Good Marriage of Katherine and Petruchio.” Shakespeare Survey 37 (1984): 23-31.

Dash, Irene G. Wooing, Wedding, and Power: Women in Shakespeare's Plays. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.

Erasmus, Desidirius. “Commentary on Ovid's ‘Nut Tree.’” Trans. A. G. Rigg. Collected Works of Erasmus. Eds. Elaine Fantham and Erika Rummel. Vol. 7. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989. 125-69. 66 vols.

Haring-Smith, Tori. From Farce to Metadrama: A Stage History of “The Taming of the Shrew”: 1594-1983. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Henze, Richard. “Role Playing in ‘The Taming of the Shrew.’” Southern Humanities Review 4 (1970): 231-40.

Kahn, Coppélia. “‘The Taming of the Shrew’: Shakespeare's Mirror of Marriage.” The Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism. Eds. Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards. Amherst: University of Massachussetts Press, 1977. 84-100.

Leggatt, Alexander. Shakespeare's Comedy of Love. London: Methuen, 1978.

Ribner, Irving. “The Morality of Farce: ‘The Taming of the Shrew.’” Essays in American and English Literature Presented to Bruce Robert McElderry, Jr. Eds. Max F. Schulz, William D. Templeman, and Charles R. Metzger. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1967. 165-76.

Shakespeare, William. The Taming of the Shrew. Riverside Shakespeare. Eds. G. Blackmore Evans et al. Boston: Houghton, 1974. 110-42.

Sprague, Arthur Colby. Shakespeare and the Actors: The Stage Business in His Plays (1600-1905). Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945.

———, and J. C. Trewin. Shakespeare's Plays Today: Some Customs and Conventions of the Stage. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970.

Thompson, Ann, ed. The Taming of the Shrew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.