Great archetypal rom com plot – they are still doing variations on it today (and Shakespeare couldn’t have invited it for all his genius). It takes a long time to get going – there's this prologue with a lord, and servants, and some strolling players (what was the point of this?), but then once it gets going it's the battle of the sexes we all know and love and argue over.
There’s a theory Shakespeare had access to a good “female” actor in his early days because there were some good parts (not as good as for the blokes, true, but still good): Queen Margaret, Queen Anne, Juliet, and here, Katerine. She is a really nasty piece of work – she hits her sister and Petruchio. However she doesn't deserve her treatment here.
There's no doubt this is a sexist and misogynist play – you can make the argument that it isn’t, but why can’t people just accept just because Shakespeare was a genius doesn’t mean he can’t be sexist? Petruchio bullies Kate in to submission – he even starves her. But it’s got a great central situation, strong characters, lots of entertaining dialogue exchanges (in particular word play). I was surprise how mean and how little time spent on the famous duelling couple – as much time is spent on pursuit of Bianca. Not one of Shakespeare's great plays but very influential in its own way.
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