Blackwell Reference Online

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A common view about The Taming of the Shrew is that changing attitudes about women have made it impossible to enjoy what once gave pleasure to all ( Garner 1988 : 106, 117). This view ignores signs that neither time's passage nor the rise of feminism made the play provocative. Although Taming was frequently staged from its first recorded performance in 1594 to the closing of the theatres ( Haring-Smith 1985 : 7–8), it does not follow that universal applause fueled this demand. Like Lina Wertmuller's Swept Away or David Mamet's Oleanna , Shakespeare's comedy was tailormade to split spectators into factions. This essay situates the play in a field of popular comic texts to show that Shakespeare radically altered the shrew tradition in order to make some women playgoers targets rather than sharers in the comedy, fomenting dissension and debate as well as laughter. Some of the best-known studies of early female spectatorship have focused on whether and how playwrights sought to please or placate women ( Orgel 1989 : 8; Gurr 1987 : 149; Levin 1989 : 168–73). Taming plays by a different set of rules, making it germane to ask what would have set their teeth on edge. Certainly the play is a virtual catalog of male offenses in the eyes of early modern women, including the violence of drunken rogues and despotic husbands, the predatory greed of fortune hunters, the callousness ... log in or subscribe to read full text