Taming of the Shrew Critics 2026

Germaine Greer

• 'The Taming Of The Shrew is not a knockabout farce of wife-battering but the cunning adaptation of a folk-motif to show the forging of a partnership between equals'.

• "There is no romanticism in Shakespeare's view of marriage"

• 'Lucentio finds himself saddled with a cold, disloyal woman who has no objection to humiliating him in public.'

• "Kate has the uncommon good fortune to find Petruchio, who is man enough to know what he wants and how to get it." (1970)

Michael Bogdanov

• "I believe Shakespeare was a feminist." (1988)

• "Shakespeare shows women totally abused - like animals - bartered to the highest bidder...there is no question of it, his sympathy is with the women, and his purpose, to expose the cruelty of a society that allows these things to happen."

Michael Billington (The Guardian)

"There is, however, a larger question at stake...whether there is any reason to revive a play that seems totally offensive to our age and society" (1978)

Susannah Clapp (Observer)

“Meagrely written and deals with the squashing of a human's high spirits...one of Shakespeare's most miserable plays." (1999)

Helen Reid

"A rumbustious, politically incorrect comedy"

Jonathan Miller

"Shakespeare underwrote the idea that the state, whether it was the small state of the family or the larger state of the country, required and needed the unquestioned authority of some sort of sovereign" (1981)

Penny Gay - Lack of ethics within comedy

"We see that good comedy is never simplistic, and its relation to conventional morality is often ambivalent."

Emma Smith

"Uses costume to signal heirarchies and to impose authority."

Marilyn French on reason for Kate's behaviour

"Disguise forced on her by a neglectful father, a sly sister and an unsympathetic society."

Rachel de Wachter

• "To see it (taming) as nothing better than ridiculous and barbaric."

• "Much of Petruchio's power stems from his willingness to socially humiliate Katherina."

• "Uncomfortable correlation which his male characters make between hunting and the treatment of their social inferiors either due to their class or gender."

Arthur Halliarg

• "When a woman is defiant, she is made to seem masculine, frightening and funny."

• "Women are most threatening when they attempt to assert their independence through language."

Catherine Bates (anthology)

"legitimates the most violent, cooercive not to say outrageously sexist behaviour."

JD Houston

Petruchio's behaviour is unwarranted, labelling it "psychological rape"

Sly link to Kate RSC programme note

"This shrew was being played as Sly's dream, a male supremacist's fantasy of revenge upon women."

Robert B. Heilman

Petruchio's behaviour is in best interest - "Generous and affectionate fellow whose basic method is to bring out the best in his fiance."

Natasha Korda (Marxist critic)

"The only characters in Shrew with self-determination are the ruling class while the rest of the characters are vulnerable to their tyrannical behaviour."

Karen Newman (anthology)

"It is that silence which has insured Bianca's place in male economy of desire and exchange."

Catherine Bates (anthology)

"Shakespeare's play announces a resigned return back to the beginning."

Jeane Roberts

"A great deal of the humour of the first meeting between Kate and her suitor [...] depends on the determination of each to reduce the other to subhuman status."

Daniell

"Kates final speech is a statement of contemporary doctrine, of male fantasy, or of almost unbelievable sustained irony"

de Beauvoir

''One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman'- the starting point for many feminist interpretations”

Stevie Davis about classical references

The pictures of Sly's classical artwork when its described to him notes that all depict scenes of transformation and sexual violence in classical mythology

Addison Roberts

Explores the Ovidian connections of the play, and Shakespeare, like Ovid puts the narrative in the hands of historically voiceless, mistreated, or overlooked women

The 1929 Film version shows Katherina overhearing Petruchio's soliloquy in Act 4 so...

... Katherina undermines Petruchio's 'taming' and manipulates him.

American Conservatory Theater 1976...

...uses sound effects and masks (for background players) to emphasise the influence of commedia dell'arte

In the 1980 BBC Shakespeare Plays version, Petruchio gives his 4.1 soliloquy...

...not triumphantly, but quietly and as if tired from completing a hard duty.

In the New York City Shakespeare Company's 1978 production at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, when Petruchio woos Katherina he...

...alternates between flirtatious and erotic, and sinister and threatening.

Critic Kahn: 'Though [Katherina] commits four acts of physical violence onstage... in each instance the dramatic context suggests that...

...she strikes out because of provocation or intimidation resulting from her status as a a woman.'

1986 production by Yurcel Enten turned the play into a tragedy...

...wherein Katherina commits suicide, dying after delivering her final monologue.