The Taming of The Shrew - Performance

Performance

The earliest known performance of the play is recorded in Philip Henslowe's Diary on 13 June 1594, as The Tamynge of A Shrowe at the Newington Butts Theatre. This could have been either A Shrew or The Shrew, but as the Admiral's Men and the Lord Chamberlain's Men were sharing the theatre at the time, and as such Shakespeare himself would have been there, scholars tend to assume that it was The Shrew. The canonical Shakespearean version was definitely performed at court before King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria on 26 November 1633, where it was described as being "liked".

That the play was successful in Shakespeare's day is evidenced by the existence of The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed, John Fletcher's pseudo-sequel, perhaps written around 1611. Additionally, the title page of the 1631 quarto states that the play had been acted by the King's Men both at the Globe and Blackfriars, and as the King's Men had only been performing at Blackfriars since 1610, it suggests that the play was still popular enough to be performed at least sixteen years after its debut.

Drury Lane's 1663-1664 production appears to be the only staging of the original play in the latter half of the 17th century. For the remainder of the 17th century, its place in the repertoire was taken by John Lacy's Sauny the Scot. The original play was not performed at all during the 18th century, and instead a range of adaptations held the stage.

After over 200 years of adaptations, Shakespeare's original text returned to the stage in 1844 in a Benjamin Webster production, under the direction of J.R. Planché, with Louisa Cranstoun Nisbett as Katherina. In this production, the Induction was included in full, with Sly remaining at the front of the stage after Act 1, Scene 1, and slowly falling asleep over the course of the play. At the end, as the final curtain falls, the Lord's attendants came and carried Sly off-stage. Major productions then took place in 1847 and 1856, both directed by Samuel Phelps. Phelps left Sly on stage until the end of Act 1, having him carried off between Acts. However, although the play did use Shakespeare's original text, Phelps cut much of Katherina's final speech in both productions.

In the United States, Shakespeare's original play returned to the stage in 1887, under the direction of Augustin Daly, with Ada Rehan as Katherina. This production was hugely successful and ran for over 120 performances. However, as with Phelps, whilst the play again used Shakespeare's text, changes were made. Specificially, Daly reorganised Act 4 so that Act 4, Scene 2 (the arrival of the pedant in Padua) comes before Act 4, Scene 1 (Petruchio and Katherina arriving at his house), and Act 4, Scene 4 (the pedant confirms the dowry for Bianca) precedes Act 4, Scene 3 (Petruchio's taming of Katherina). Some of Katherina's final speech was also cut.

Lily Brayton was a noted Katherina in the Edwardian era, playing the part in a number of productions, sometimes opposite her husband Oscar Asche, and in the 1907 Oxford University Dramatic Society production opposite Gervais Rentoul. In 1913, Martin Harvey staged a major production at the Prince of Wales Theatre, as did William Bridges Adams in 1919, where the Induction was completely omitted. In 1923, Max Reinhardt included the Induction and concentrated on the farcical nature of the play, presenting it as a type of commedia dell'arte. Barry Jackson also kept the Induction in his 1928 production at the Royal Court Theatre. In 1931, Harcourt Williams used the conclusion of A Shrew (in which, after the Petruchio/Katherina story is finished, the Lord returns the now sleeping Sly to the inn where he was found, and who, upon waking up, announces he has had a dream in which he has learned how to tame his own wife). The longest running Broadway production was the 1935 Theatre Guild adaptation with husband and wife Alfred Lunt (who also directed) and Lynn Fontanne, which ran for 129 performances. Presented as a rollicking farce involving circus animals, dwarfs, acrobats and clowns, the production also toured the United States after its run on Broadway. According to some reports, Kiss Me Kate, a 1953 filmic adaptation of the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate was inspired by the backstage antics of Lunt and Fontanne, who continually fought both on and off stage, but who always reconciled, both on and off stage.

Notable later 20th century productions include the Hilton Edwards' 1959 production at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, starring Milo O'Shea and Anna Manahan; John Barton's 1960 Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, starring Peter O'Toole and Peggy Ashcroft, and which included both the complete Induction and the epilogue from A Shrew; Maurice Daniels's 1961 RSC production at the Aldwych Theatre, starring Derek Godfrey and Vanessa Redgrave; Trevor Nunn's 1969 RSC production also at the Aldwych, starring Michael Williams and Janet Suzman; Clifford Williams' 1973 RSC production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, starring Alan Bates and Susan Fleetwood; William Ball's 1976 commedia dell'arte-style production at the American Conservatory Theater; Wilford Leach's 1978 production at the Delacorte Theater, starring Raúl Juliá and Meryl Streep; Barry Kyle's 1982 RSC production at the Barbican Centre, starring Alun Armstrong and Sinéad Cusack; Toby Robertson's 1986 production at the Clwyd Theatr Cymru, starring Timothy Dalton and Vanessa Redgrave; Jonathan Miller's 1987 RSC production at the Barbican, starring Brian Cox and Fiona Shaw; A.J. Antoon's 1990 production at the New York Shakespeare Festival, starring Morgan Freeman and Tracey Ullman, which was set in the old west; Bill Alexander's 1992 RSC production at the Barbican, starring Anton Lesser and Amanda Harris, in which the Induction was rewritten in modern language, and the play-within-the-play featured actors carrying scripts and continually forgetting lines; Delia Taylor's 1999 production at the Clark Street Playhouse, which featured an all female cast, with Diane Manning as Petruchio and Elizabeth Perotti as Katherina; Phyllida Lloyd's 2003 production at the Globe, again with an all female cast, starring Janet McTeer as Petruchio and Kathryn Hunter as Katherina; Gregory Doran's 2003 RSC production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, where the play was presented with Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed as a two-part piece, with Jasper Britton and Alexandra Gilbreath (playing both Katherina in The Shrew and Maria (Petruchio's second wife) in The Tamer Tamed); Edward Hall's 2006 Propeller Company production at the Courtyard Theatre as part of the RSC's presentation of the Complete Works, featuring an all-male cast, with Dugald Bruce Lockhart as Petruchio and Simon Scardifield as Katherina; and Conall Morrison's 2008 RSC production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, starring Stephen Boxer and Michelle Gomez. Morrison's production included the Induction, but in an unusual way. Stephen Boxer played both Sly and Petruchio, however, the Lord of the play was changed to a Lady, and both she and Katherina were played by Michelle Gomez. The play was then presented as a "Big Brother type social experiment", in which the Lady plays Katherina and allows Sly (as Petruchio) to dominate where the action goes, all the while attempting to gauge how the male mind works under a given set of circumstances.

Two especially well known productions are Michael Bogdanov's 1978 RSC production at the Aldwych, starring Jonathan Pryce and Paola Dionisotti and Gale Edwards's 1995 RSC production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, starring Michael Siberry and Josie Lawrence. In the Bogdanov modern dress production, after the house lights go down, nothing happens on stage for a moment. Then, a commotion rises from within the audience. The house lights go on, and a member of the audience (Pryce) is seen to be in altercation with an usherette. After pushing the usherette to the ground, the man then clambered onto the stage, and began to smash parts of the set before being restrained by actors and theatre staff, striped and thrown into a bath. The subsequent play is then presented as his dream, with Pryce doubling as Petruchio. At several performances of the play, audience members were duped into thinking the fight between the man and the usherette was real, and several times, other audience members attempted to intervene in the conflict.

In Edwards' production, the play opens with a woman (Lawrence) dressed in rags trying to get her drunk husband (Siberry) to come home. He refuses, and falls asleep outside the tavern. His wife leaves, whereupon the Lord and the hunting party enter. The 'play within the play' is then presented as Sly's dream, and as such, the main plot is set in a surreal landscape, with Siberry and Lawrence doubling as Petruchio and Katherina. The Shakespeare text is cut at the end of Katherina's speech (which is not delivered seriously, and by which time Petruchio has become bowed with shame). At this point, the play returns to the Induction setting. Sly has been deeply moved by his dream, and the play ends with him condemning the subjugation of women and embracing his wife.