Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is about the taming of the feisty "shrew" Katherine by her husband, into a role of obedience. The play highlighted the marital situation that most in England during the sixteenth Century was stuck in. Here there is a society where marriages were often arranged for money, land, or power, rather than for love. Moreover, the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries offered few ways out of an unhappy marriage. Added to this was the issue of place, where gender roles dictates that women should be considered the property of men. And so men were desirous of women who were meek and compliant, thus enabling the marriage to be peaceful and happy.

This view was held by the general population, but perhaps, not by Shakespeare, as many of his other plays contain an abundance of women who are strong-willed and witty. These include...