The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592. The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Christopher Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself. The nobleman then has the play performed for Sly's diversion.
Kiss Me, Kate is a musical written by Bella and Samuel Spewack with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The story involves the production of a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and the conflict on and off-stage between Fred Graham, the show's director, producer, and star, and his leading lady, his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi. A secondary romance concerns Lois Lane, the actress playing Bianca, and her gambler boyfriend, Bill, who runs afoul of some gangsters. The original production starred Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang.
The Mark of Zorro is a 1920 American silent Western romance film starring Douglas Fairbanks and Noah Beery. This genre-defining swashbuckler adventure was the first movie version of The Mark of Zorro. Based on the 1919 story The Curse of Capistrano by Johnston McCulley, which introduced the masked hero, Zorro, the screenplay was adapted by Fairbanks and Eugene Miller.
Petruchio is the male protagonist in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.
Sam Taylor was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer, most active in the silent film era. Taylor is best known for his comedic directorial work with Harold Lloyd and Mary Pickford, and also later worked with Laurel and Hardy. He was born in New York City.
The Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed is a Jacobean comedy written by John Fletcher. It was first published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, though it was written several decades earlier. There is no doubt that the play is the work of Fletcher alone; his highly distinctive and characteristic pattern of linguistic preferences is continuous through the text.
Kiss Me Kate is a 1953 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film adaptation of the 1948 Broadway musical of the same name.
The Taming of the Shrew is a 1967 period romantic comedy film directed by Franco Zeffirelli, based on William Shakespeare's play about a courtship between two strong-willed people in 16th-century Italy. The film stars Elizabeth Taylor as Kate and Richard Burton as Petruchio, who were both nominated for BAFTA Awards for their acting. It features Cyril Cusack, Michael Hordern, Michael York, and Victor Spinetti in supporting roles.
Bianca Minola is a character in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (c.1590–1594).
The Americano is a 1916 American silent adventure / romantic comedy film directed by John Emerson and stars Douglas Fairbanks in his last production for Triangle Film Corporation. Based on the novel Blaze Derringer, by Eugene P. Lyle, Jr., the scenario was written by John Emerson and Anita Loos who also wrote the film's intertitles. The film was re-released by S.A. Lynch Enterprises on August 21, 1923. Three 16mm prints and one 8mm print of the film still exists. Set in a fictional South American country of Paragonia, it has been described as one of a group of films that supported United States imperialism by providing support to the idea of manifest destiny.
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Sr. was an American actor and filmmaker. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films, including The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro, but spent the early part of his career making comedies.
Catharine and Petruchio is a reworking of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew by British playwright and actor David Garrick. It was written in 1754 and was performed far more often than the original The Shrew through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Taming of the Shrew is a 1957 opera in four acts, five scenes by Vissarion Shebalin to a libretto by the Soviet musicologist Abram Akimovich Gozenpud, based on the comedy by William Shakespeare. Gozenpud utilized very little of Shakespeare's original text in his libretto, and completely eliminated many of the secondary characters and subplots from the play. His libretto does match the spirit of Shakespeare's play in its use of wit, the genuine passion of the story's lovers, and mixture of both lofty and coarse language.
Jeffrey Vance is an American film historian and author who has published books on movie stars including Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.
There have been numerous on screen adaptations of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The best known cinematic adaptations are Sam Taylor's 1929 The Taming of the Shrew and Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 The Taming of the Shrew, both of which starred the most famous celebrity couples of their era; Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks in 1929 and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in 1967. On television, perhaps the most significant adaptation is the 1980 BBC Television Shakespeare version, directed by Jonathan Miller and starring John Cleese and Sarah Badel.
The Taming of the Shrew in performance has had an uneven history. Popular in Shakespeare's day, the play fell out of favour during the seventeenth century, when it was replaced on the stage by John Lacy's Sauny the Scott. The original Shakespearean text was not performed at all during the eighteenth century, with David Garrick's adaptation Catharine and Petruchio dominating the stage. After over two hundred years without a performance, the play returned to the British stage in 1844, the last Shakespeare play restored to the repertory. However, it was only in the 1890s that the dominance of Catharine and Petruchio began to wane, and productions of The Shrew become more regular. Moving into the twentieth century, the play's popularity increased considerably, and it became one of Shakespeare's most frequently staged plays, with productions taking place all over the world. This trend has continued into the twenty-first century, with the play as popular now as it was when first written.
The Taming of the Shrew is a ballet in two acts choreographed by John Cranko to keyboard works by Domenico Scarlatti arranged and orchestrated by Kurt-Heinz Stolze. With scenery and costumes designed by Elizabeth Dalton, it was first presented as Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung by the Stuttgart Ballet at the Wṻrtembergische Staatstheater in Stuttgart on 16 March 1969.
Vinegar Girl is a 2016 novel by American author Anne Tyler. It is the third book of Random House's "Hogarth Shakespeare" project, in which contemporary novelists retell stories from Shakespeare's plays. Interviewed by Ron Charles in The Washington Post, Tyler said " 'The Katherina in Shakespeare’s play is insane... She’s shrieking at Petruchio from the moment she meets him. And he’s not much better. So you know I had to tone them down. I’m sure that somebody is out there, saying, ‘This isn’t a shrew at all.’ "
Man Bait is a 1926 American silent comedy film directed by Donald Crisp and starring Marie Prevost, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Kenneth Thomson.
Katherina (Kate) Minola is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew. Referred to in the play as the titular "shrew" and the "ingenue", the play focuses on Katherina's taming by Petruchio into a more conventional role of a good wife. She is the elder daughter of Baptista Minola and the sister of Bianca Minola.
