The Taming of the Shrew

Baptista of Padua will not let his gentle younger daughter Bianca marry until her fierce, sharp-tongued older sister Katherina is wed first. Enter Petruchio, a fortune-hunting gentleman who takes on the challenge, marries Kate, and then sets out to “tame” her through a campaign of contradiction, deprivation, and psychological gamesmanship. Around this central battle spins a comic tangle of disguised tutors and rival suitors all pursuing Bianca. One of Shakespeare’s earliest and most boisterous comedies, it has also become one of his most argued-over, thanks to Kate’s closing speech on wifely obedience, which productions have played as sincere, ironic, or bitterly satirical. Whatever the reading, its wit and headlong energy have kept it on stage for four centuries. This free edition is available as a PDF and EPUB.