In the critical history of Shakespeare’s plays, The Taming of the Shrew has inspired perhaps the most contentious and contradictory reactions. To this day, it offers a battleground of ideas to scholars, directors, and audiences. Here is a sampling of critical response to the play over the past 150 years.

“The last scene is altogether disgusting to modern sensibility. No man with any decency of feeling can sit it out in the company of a woman without feeling extremely ashamed.” —George Bernard Shaw, 1897

“It is not until [Petruchio] positively declares that the sun is the moon that the joke breaks upon [Katherine] in its full fantasy, and it is then that she wins her first and final victory by showing she has a sense of fun as extravagant as his own, and is able to go beyond him ... She has secured what her sister Bianca can never have, a happy marriage.” —Nevil Coghill, 1950

“What Petruchio wants, and ends up with, is a Katharina of unbroken spirit and gaiety who has suffered only minor physical discomfort and who has learned the value of self-control and of caring about someone other than herself.” —Anne Barton, 1974

“The open end of The Taming of the Shrew is Katharina’s mind, undisclosed in soliloquy. And so it is appropriate that the play should end on a faint, but ominous, question mark. —Ralph Berry, 1972

“Bianca’s rebellion is perhaps the most optimistic sign the play affords us. Even the Good Child, in her new role as wife, calls [the] exhibition of obedience ‘a foolish duty,’ and refuses to submit. But Kate herself is a living sacrifice to the pedagogy of patriarchal rule that holds her culture in thrall.” —Katherine A. Sirluck, 1991

“The history of criticism of The Shrew is dominated by feelings of unease and embarrassment, accompanied by the desire to prove that Shakespeare cannot have meant what he seems to be saying; and that therefore he cannot really be saying it … For Shakespeare’s plays show a steady, profound, and moving allegiance to the image of women’s integrity and intelligence, and an insistence on their oppression under patriarchy which runs counter to the conventions of the period.” —Stevie Davies, 1995

“I think there are three toxic plays that resist rehabilitation and appropriation that are written by Shakespeare. And they are Merchant of Venice, Othello, and Taming of the Shrew. And for each of them, there is a desire to recuperate them and make them progressive texts. But ultimately, those three end up kind of circling us back to a really regressive and uncomfortable standpoint.” –Ayanna Thompson, 2019