The Taming of the Shrew (Norton Critical Edition)

Shakespeare’s comic play-within-a-play gets taken to new levels of enjoyment (for some) and understanding with the Norton Critical edition. I’ve reviewed a couple of Norton editions before, but I don’t think I’ve expressed how good they actually are, particularly for texts that are written in older forms of English or indeed general craft. Norton Critical editions, for texts that can be challenging to read such as Shakespeare’s or Medieval forms of poetry or whatnot, are pretty valuable for the avid and invested reader because they provide a laundry list of translations, interpretations, and modernisations that really help in not just understanding the central plots of the stories, but gaining further insight into their histories, the influences of the authors, and other stuff. Some of the critical essays, different versions of the stories, and translations are really interesting and they do help to widen the mind and make it think just that little bit more critically, theoretically, and creatively about texts. So brava for Norton! 

Beautiful, pure, and perfect Bianca, daughter of a wealthy merchant, is the centre of much fawning from the men in town. With so many suitors bidding for her, her father arrives at a method by which to determine whom she shall wed. Whoever can find a suitor for her sister, the stubborn, fiery, opinionated, and disagreeable ‘shrew’ Katherina, shall have Bianca’s hand in marriage. Thus one clever suitor persuades the arrogant, stubborn, and cunning Petruchio to ‘tame’ Kate, gain her hand in marriage, and make her the perfect wife. 

Taming of the Shrew is a timeless battle of the sexes that has been revamped and remodelled time and time over. We see remnants of it everywhere in popular culture from the modern version of the 90s, 10 Things I Hate About You to even the Tracey and Hepburn classic Adam’s Rib, not to mention many references to it in David Williamson’s Dead White Males. 

A comic play-within-a-play, what makes Taming of the Shrew (indeed practically all of Shakespeare’s works) so timeless is the fact that pretty much any type of reading can be applied to it: Feminist, postmodern, Marxist, queer theory, and that is what makes the Norton edition so special because it allows you to think about the play in all these ways, which then bring further meaning to it. Though I have to make the point that I don’t think Shakespeare ever intended for such analysis to be applied to his works, he was popular writer after all and not about literary critical acclaim so much as just writing for the masses. 

Filled with drama, romance, trickery, comedy, and feminist, Marxist, queer, and other such readings, The Taming of the Shrew (Norton Critical Edition) still stands as a classic in the literary canon and when you’re presented with all the other readings, translations, and interpretations in this edition, you can see why.