The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare, Signet Classic) Mass Market Paperback – April 1, 1998

Love this book easy to read

This is a super edition. It is especially designed and notated for reading groups but would be invaluable for any one who really wants to understand the play.

It’s easy to dismiss the Taming of the Shrew as an example of early modern patriarchy. I even thought that the scenes where Petruchio insists to Katherine that the sun is the moon or night day—and then compels her to agree with him—seem more reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn than Shakespeare.But that would be to miss the major storyline of the play. It has been imitated so much that reading it anew is an arduous task in itself. Shakespeare set the tone at the beginning of modernity for the training of a potential spouse, male or female, to be one’s lifelong mate. Even outside of literature, one must acknowledge that this type of education goes on today throughout the world—creating many a happy marriage.While Kate’s final monologue and many of Petruchio’s tactics belong thoroughly in the past, the play can still be enjoyed without endorsing them. It was obviously meant by Shakespeare to be a light romance in which love, once again, conquers all.And, like many of Shakespeare’s comedies, the imagined world is more zany than believable. Are we really to think that Petruchio’s beating of his servants is meant to be taken by Shakespeare as realistic comedy? No more than the beatings which take place in children’s cartoons. Still less are Petruchio and Kate meant to be full-bodied characters.Sometimes one must simply accept the conventions of an age, both good or bad, to enjoy a work of literature. Who knows what barbarisms the future will see in the works of today? It may not be Shakespeare’s best comedy but it is humorous—even if the mores of a different era can be grating.

I love The Taming of the Shrew! I'm not big on Shakespeare to begin with (I can't say I'm an expert by any means) but I could read Taming over and over again. At first it was a little disgusting--me being female--but after digging deeper I really fell in love with it. The witty humor that Shakespeare offers is fabulous and the outlandish Petruchio makes it for me! Him and his lusty wench! Kate. I've watched a couple different movie versions, as well as the modern 10 Things I Hate About You, and it never gets old. In this specific version of the book I like how all of the characters with a small description of each are listed in the beginning. The critic reviews in the back of the book were great as well. They were able to be used as test/essay questions.

Shakespeare would be so pleased with this edition! Williams couldn't have supplied with the reader with anymore possible facets of background knowledge to support the reading of this play. Can't wait to share with my friends.

I love this play and of Shakespeare's works, The Taming of the Shrew is by and large my favorite comedy.At the end of the day however, this edition is a very bare-bones copy of the play. Everything is legible and there are some footnotes but line numbers are non-existant. I would not recommend this edition if you were writing a paper on this play.

Shakespeare doing what only he could do. To make a comedy so deep and profound. It ends in marriage but it is in all other accounts, a deep sadness.

This version of the script is utterly useless. Not only is it "illustrated" by using super low-res images of classic art (including a portrait of George Washington?!), it's fully missing Acts 2 and 3.The formatting makes it impossible to orient yourself (no line numbers, but also, the titles of acts and scenes are often jambed up against the end of actual dialogue, with occasional signifiers like SC_2 that have no meaning and no context is provided).We purchased this book because we're in a Shakespeare read-aloud group and wanted to use a book instead of a screen to read from. We purchased it over a month ahead of time, which unfortunately means it can't be returned at this point, so I'm hoping that this warning to others will be helpful.DO NOT BUY THIS COPY. You'd be better off going to MIT's online collection and just printing it off.