SOURCE: “Imagination, Madness, and Magic: The Taming of the Shrew as Romantic Comedy,” in Iowa State Journal of Research, Vol. 59, No. 3, February, 1985, pp. 221-32.

In the essay below, Cheatham argues that The Taming of the Shrew is similar to Shakespeare's later romantic comedies, and demonstrates the ways in which the play, like A Midsummer Night's Dream, uses the metaphor of theatrical role-playing to explore the idea of transformation in general, and the transformational power of love in particular.

The position of The Taming of the Shrew in Shakespeare's canon has been and remains uncertain. Well into the current century critics kept it distinct from the other comedies, terming it “ugly and barbarous,”¹ for example, or “altogether disgusting to the modern sensibility.”² Even contemporary critics have found the play difficult to place. As J. Dennis Huston complains, criticism of Shakespearean comedy has played a kind of shell game with...