William Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew. Ed. Barbara Hodgdon

• Dieter Mehl

The last Arden edition (second series) of The Taming of the Shrew, edited by Brian Morris, was published in 1981; a very solid, sensible and “orthodox” piece of work. A year later, “The Oxford Shakespeare” came out with an edition by H. J. Oliver, who wisely reflected on the incompatibility of farce and Shakespeare’s interest in serious characterization; then arrived the “New Cambridge Shakespeare” (ed. Ann Thompson, 1984, helpfully updated 2003), the first edition by an angry woman who protested that “It is the world which offends us, not Shakespeare” and refreshingly argued that “By most standards, including feminist ones, Petruchio is a more interesting and challenging possibility as a husband than the Orlandos and Orsinos of this world, just as Kate is a more interesting wife than Bianca” (p. 41). The theatre has known this for some time, as the performance history shows.