The Taming of the Shrew
This play within a play is a delightful farce about a fortune hunter who marries and tames" the town shrew. The comedy, often produced today because of its accessibility, is one of the plays Shakespeare intended for the general public rather than for the nobility. CliffsComplete combines the full original text of The Taming of the Shrew with a helpful glossary and CliffsNotes-quality commentary into one volume. You will find:A unique pedagogical approach that combines the complete original text with expert commentary following each sceneA descriptive bibliography and historical background on the author, the times, and the work itselfAn improved character map that graphically illustrates the relationships among the charactersSidebar glossaries"
Stats for nerds
0recommend
12mentions
12people
2010–2025years
100% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I think Poe's Law applies to Shakespeare too. I recently saw Taming of the Shrew and people are still arguing about whether Shakespeare was endorsing Petruchio's starvation of Katherine to make her obey him. Or was that sarcasm, actually condemning that behavior? If only Will had used a smiley face!
- When prompted LLMs Shakespeare said:
You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse”
The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
“The poorest service is repaid with thanks.”
The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare
Pretty funny!
- Vigorous debate is a good thing.
It's about learning to turn it off afterwards.
Debate at its best is where the issues are at stake -- not the relationship. Getting clear on that is an important communicative and emotional skill.
The problem with "wanting to lose" in this post is how fake and sentimental that attitude can become, against our best intentions.
If both sides can put their cards on the table, that's a more productive conversation, rather than one side shutting up and keeping theirs close to the vest.
Confrontation is not an evil to be avoided. Hurting others is the harm to be avoided. Those are two very different things. Sometimes avoiding confrontation hurts oneself and others the very most.
Furthermore, there is no logical reason why one should default to thinking that only others will bring value to the conversation, and that one's own experience and judgment are not as important to share. By sharing one's thoughts, the other side may hear, learn, or rethink something that could change their lives. To the extent that "wanting to lose" consciously or unconsciously results in one bringing less of a certain energy to a debate, that's an opportunity lost for everyone.
Discernment and diplomacy are the valuable skills here. Again, rather than check out (whether smugly or earnestly), instead, let's make efforts to figure out when, where, why, and with whom to turn on the heat, -- and then turn it off.
Sportsmanship among athletes and collegiality among lawyers are good examples of this in practice.
"And do as adversaries do in law,
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends."
--Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, Act I, sc. 2.
- I know this is Heathen Heresy but I never enjoyed Shakespeare. As part of my English studies I have read the following ones - Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Winter’s Tale.
Average grades on them were between A+ to B's but dayamn! that olde timee englishee is hard to parse (even with the crib notes) and made me question the validity of them as an example of 'good English writing'
'Get Thee to a Nunnery!' Indeed.
And don't even get me started on Chaucer <shudder>.
- >what you are doing is picking up a copy of hamlet in a language you cant read, looking at it for 30 seconds, and then declaring
I don’t like this elizabethan bullshit, i find it unpleasant, and rather than waste my time on something that I feel doesn’t deserve my time, I’m gonna read some michael crighton. or maybe some dean koontz, stephen king or heck, tom clancy. it’s my life and I like what I like, and I encourage everyone to like what they like personally, and not allow themselves to be goaded into reading taming of the shrew, even if that is the best thing ole billy boy ever wrote.
- It might be worth noting that all the other plays that scored anywhere close to the Scottish play (427) are much longer. You have to go down to 17 (344) to get to a shorter play; only 6 (397) and 15 (345) approach it. If we scale by length twice (count/length^2), the contrast becomes more stark (retaining original order):
with only 17 and 27 breaking 200, and still well shy of 252.| 1 | macbeth | 724 | 16929 | 252 | | 2 | henry-v | 1065 | 25577 | 162 | | 3 | coriolanus | 1126 | 27294 | 151 | | 4 | loves-labors-lost | 855 | 21093 | 192 | | 5 | henry-viii | 962 | 24074 | 165 | | 6 | the-merchant-of-venice | 834 | 20985 | 189 | | 7 | henry-iv-part-2 | 1001 | 25762 | 150 | | 8 | henry-vi-part-2 | 990 | 25597 | 151 | | 9 | hamlet | 1142 | 30006 | 126 | | 10 | henry-iv-part-1 | 856 | 24100 | 147 | | 11 | henry-vi-part-3 | 866 | 24491 | 144 | | 12 | antony-and-cleopatra | 861 | 24465 | 143 | | 13 | king-lear | 898 | 25661 | 136 | | 14 | the-winters-tale | 854 | 24568 | 141 | | 15 | king-john | 717 | 20730 | 166 | | 16 | cymbeline | 959 | 27738 | 124 | | 17 | a-midsummer-nights-dream | 564 | 16377 | 210 | | 18 | richard-iii | 985 | 28914 | 117 | | 19 | richard-ii | 753 | 22224 | 152 | | 20 | henry-vi-part-1 | 715 | 21575 | 153 | | 21 | pericles | 605 | 18282 | 181 | | 22 | troilus-and-cressida | 837 | 25810 | 125 | | 23 | titus-andronicus | 659 | 20621 | 154 | | 24 | alls-well-that-ends-well | 724 | 22683 | 140 | | 25 | measure-for-measure | 693 | 21858 | 145 | | 26 | the-tempest | 518 | 16489 | 190 | | 27 | the-comedy-of-errors | 455 | 14552 | 214 | | 28 | the-two-noble-kinsmen | 735 | 23751 | 130 | | 29 | julius-caesar | 592 | 19251 | 159 | | 30 | as-you-like-it | 664 | 21692 | 141 | | 31 | twelfth-night | 573 | 19675 | 148 | | 32 | othello | 737 | 25670 | 111 | | 33 | much-ado-about-nothing | 591 | 20843 | 136 | | 34 | romeo-and-juliet | 677 | 23948 | 118 | | 35 | the-merry-wives-of-windsor | 604 | 21603 | 129 | | 36 | timon-of-athens | 504 | 18262 | 151 | | 37 | the-taming-of-the-shrew | 449 | 18709 | 128 | | 38 | the-two-gentlemen-of-verona | 404 | 17010 | 139 |But the real point of the article is that the oddity of "the" in the frequency table attracted their attention to that word, and led them to identify an actual peculiarity in its usage. To say henry-v demonstrates anything similar, you would need to check if usage in that play is similarly peculiar (which I have not done either).
It seems odd to suggest (as some commenters have done) that the difference was subconscious. My null hypothesis is that peculiarities in usage by a professional wordsmith are deliberate. I expect to see actual evidence that the author didn't know what he was up to.
