SOURCE: “Kate, Bianca, Ruth, and Sarah: Playing the Woman's Part in The Taming of the Shrew,” in Shakespeare's Sweet Thunder: Essays on the Early Comedies, edited by Michael J. Collins, University of Delaware Press, 1997, pp. 176-215.

In the following excerpt, Rutter provides an overview of twentieth-century performances of The Taming of the Shrew, discussing the effects of feminist theory on the interpretations.

Mess. Your honor's players, hearing your amendment, Are come to play a pleasant comedy. … Sly. Is not a comonty a Christmas gambold, or a tumbling-trick? Page. No, my good lord, it is more pleasing stuff. Sly. What, household stuff? Page. It is a kind of history. 

(Ind. 2.129-30 and 137-41)

Like Polonius trying to pin down the play at Elsinore, The Taming of the Shrew makes several stabs at fixing its own genre. But while the self-appointed master of the Danish revels has a clear political...