The Taming of the Shrew

by Shakespeare, William; Mowat, Dr. Barbara A.; Werstine, Paul

• ISBN13: 9780743452977
• ISBN10: 0743452976
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-11-05
• Publisher: Washington Square Press

Summary

"The Taming of the Shrew" is unique among Shakespeare's plays and is a perennial and compelling success in the theatre. Its reception is marked, however, by ongoing polarized debate over the meaning and worth of the play. This edition disengages Shakespeare's exuberant and disturbing marital farce from the tangled history of its reception. It views the two sixteenth-century Shrew plays as textually independent but theatrically interdependent and so includes the full text of "The Taming of A Shrew" in an appendix. While the Introduction and Commentary focus on the critical and theatrical debate surrounding the play, the original and comprehensive editing of the playtext makes available a 'different' Shrew, more open to the reader's interpretation than is usually the case.

Author Biography

Barbara A. Mowat is Director of Academic Programs at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Executive Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, Chair of the Folger Institute, and author of The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare's Romances and of essays on Shakespeare's plays and on the editing of the plays.

Table of Contents

Editors' Preface	ix
Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew	xiii
Reading Shakespeare's Language: The Taming of the Shrew	xvi
Shakespeare's Life	xxv
Shakespeare's Theater	xxxiii
The Publication of Shakespeare's Plays	xlii
An Introduction to This Text	xlvi
The Taming of the Shrew Text of the Play with Commentary	1	(222)
Textual Notes	223	(6)
The Taming of the Shrew: A Modern Perspective	229	(10)
Karen Newman
Further Reading	239	(14)
Key to Famous Lines and Phrases	253