SOURCE: Blake, Ann. “The Taming of the Shrew: Making Fun of Katherine.” Cambridge Quarterly 31, no. 3 (2002): 237-52.

In the following essay, Blake argues that the critical reputation of The Taming of the Shrew has suffered because its comedic elements have often been considered farcical.

In The Sense of Humor Stephen Potter remembers in his youth discovering his ‘first free contemporary’ laugh in Shakespeare. This was when the ‘Hotspur humour’ plays on ‘the humourless Glendower’:

GLEN.

I can call spirits from the vasty deep. 

HOTS.

Why, so can I, or so can any man, 

But will they come when you do call for them? 

(1 Henry IV III. i. 52-4)¹

Potter's reaction to Hotspur's quip, or to others like it, is no doubt a common experience of early theatre-going. I remember how it amused me, as did another rather less witty ‘contemporary’ put-down when I first saw The Taming of the...