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The Taming of the Shrew: Unabridged (Arkangel)
 
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The Taming of the Shrew: Unabridged (Arkangel) [Audiobook] [Unabridged] (Audio Cassette)

by William Shakespeare (Author), Frances Barber (Performer), Roger Allam (Performer)
2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product details

  • Audio Cassette
  • Publisher: Penguin Audiobooks; Unabridged edition (2 Nov 1998)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0140867813
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140867817
  • Product Dimensions: 18 x 11.3 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,165,400 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
One of the most controversial and problematic of all of Shakespeare's plays, The Taming of the Shrew is a typical Elizabethan domestic comedy written around 1592. Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona, arrives in Padua and announces to his friends that "I come to wive it wealthily in Padua; / If wealthily, then happily in Padua". He soon finds that a group of men keen to marry Bianca, the younger daughter of rich old Baptista, are frustrated by her elder, "shrewish" sister, Katherine. There is much subsequent hilarity as Bianca's suitors make a bet with Petruchio that he cannot "tame" and marry Katherine. Despite Katherine's protestations, Petruchio goes ahead with the match, using deliberately unorthodox behaviour to confuse Katherine (including a scene where he starves her), claiming that "this is the way to kill a wife with kindness". The play culminates with a scene of Katherine's apparently spontaneous subjection to her husband's will, where she places her hand beneath her husband's foot, and tells the other wives present that "thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper". The play's gratuitous scenes of women being abused and vilified in the name of "comedy" has made many directors and critics very uncomfortable with the play, and many feminist critics have condemned contemporary productions of the play as reproducing certain 16th-century stereotypes concerning women who speak out against male authority. --Jerry Brotton

Product Description
Padua holds many suitors for the hand of fair Bianca, but Bianca may not be married until her spitfire sister Kate is wed. Could any man be rash enough to take Kate on? The witty adventurer Petruchio undertakes the task and sets about transforming Kate from foul-tempered termagrant to loving wife.

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2.0 out of 5 stars Unpleasant, 17 Jan 2009
By Nicholas Whyte (Oud Heverlee, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
I really didn't like The Taming of the Shrew. The basic storyline is simply too unpleasant: Katherina, obviously a very unhappy person, is intimidated into submission by a bloke called Petruchio who appears out of nowhere and for no apparent reason decides to marry her. There is lots of beating of servants; how hilarious.

It's not totally awful. The suitors trying to court Katherina's sister Bianca are moderately funny, and the Katherina / Petruchio relationship, though generally very dodgy, is almost sweet in the penultimate scene. But it's not really enough to mask the general nastiness of the plot. I did wonder a bit to what extent the complex father-child relationships, and the difficulties of managing households in two different cities, were drawn from Shakespeare's own experience.

The Arkangel version is lifted a bit by Frances Barber as Katherina and especially Roger Allam, of whom I don't think I had previously heard, as Petruchio. But the rest I'm afraid tried to get by with comic accents and speech defects. My advice is to give this one a miss.
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