CRITICISM

Brooks, Charles. “Shakespeare's Romantic Shrews.” Shakespeare Quarterly 11, no. 3 (summer 1960): 351-56.

Suggests that Kate is based on the same notions of feminine nature as Shakespeare's more immediately sympathetic comic heroines, and that she possesses a keen wit, a passionate nature, and a strength of will that audiences admire.

Christensen, Ann C. “Petruchio's House in Postwar Suburbia: Reinventing the Domestic Woman (Again).” Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities 17, no. 1 (fall 1997): 28-42.

Considers mid-twentieth-century adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew, including Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate and Franco Zeffirelli's 1966 film version of the play, as they depict new definitions of domesticity in the postwar era.

Culpeper, Jonathan. “A Cognitive Approach to Characterization: Katherina in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.” Language and Literature 9, no. 4 (November 2000): 291-316.

Probes the nuances of Kate's character in The Taming of the Shrew through the application of contemporary social and cognitive psychology, arguing that she does not represent a reductively schematic shrew figure.

Dolan, Frances E. Introduction to “The Taming of the Shrew”: Texts and Contexts, edited by Frances E. Dolan, pp. 1-38. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1996.

Places The Taming of the Shrew within the context of social history, focusing on the play's depiction of male anxieties regarding feminine power.

Graeber, Laurel. Review of The Taming of the Shrew. New York Times (16 August 2002): E35.

Admires a mostly farcical abridgement of The Taming of the Shrew directed by Stephen Burdman and performed at the New York Classical Theater in 2002.

Hodgdon, Barbara. “Katherina Bound; or, Play(K)ating the Strictures of Everyday Life.” PMLA 107, no. 3 (May 1992): 538-53.

Analyzes the prevalent gender stereotypes that inform The Taming of the Shrew from the point of view of late-twentieth-century feminist criticism, with particular emphasis on modern productions of the drama.

Jayne, Sears. “The Dreaming of the Shrew.” Shakespeare Quarterly 17, no. 1 (winter 1996): 41-56.

Focuses on staging problems associated with the figure of Christopher Sly in The Taming of the Shrew, and maintains that the play should be performed as if it were Sly's dream, with Sly playing the role of Petruchio.

Mikesell, Margaret Lael. “‘Love Wrought These Miracles’: Marriage and Genre in The Taming of the Shrew.” Renaissance Drama, n.s. 20 (1989): 141-67.

Studies Shakespeare's revisions of his source material for The Taming of the Shrew, and contends that the play conforms to a late-sixteenth-century Protestant view of marriage.

Morris, Brian. Introduction to The Arden Edition of the Works of William Shakespeare: “The Taming of the Shrew,” edited by Brian Morris, pp. 1-150. London: Methuen, 1981.

Probes the principal themes of The Taming of the Shrew, including education, transformation, and the relationship between love and marriage.

Phillippy, Patricia Berrahou. ‘“Loytering in Love: Ovid's Heroides, Hospitality, and Humanist Education in The Taming of the Shrew.” Criticism 40, no. 1 (winter 1998): 27-53.

Examines The Taming of the Shrew in relation to Ovid's Heroides as transmitted by George Turberville in his Heroycall Epistles (1567), contending that these works demonstrate a tradition of hospitality and humanist education that require women to submit to men's pleasure.

Sealy, Roger C. “The Psychology of the Shrew and Shrew Taming: An Object Relations Perspective.” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 54, no. 4 (December 1994): 323-38.

Offers psychoanalytic readings of Kate, Bianca, and Kate's taming by Petruchio in terms of behavioral patterns suggested by contemporary object relations theory.

Yachnin, Paul. “Personations: The Taming of the Shrew and the Limits of Theoretical Criticism.” Early Modern Literary Studies 2, no. 1 (1996): 21-31.

Categorizes and critiques various theoretical approaches to The Taming of the Shrew, including materialist-feminist theories, intentionalist, metatheatrical, and deconstructive approaches, and new historicist readings.