67 pages • 2 hours read
William ShakespeareA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Right from the start, The Taming of the Shrew makes it very clear that everything the audience is about to see is a trick. The frame story introduces a drunk peddler dressed up as a lord, given fine new clothes and a false boy-wife. Then, it sends him to the theater—a place where all the woman characters are played by boys (at least in Shakespeare’s time) and all the clothes are costumes.
Even within the play’s world, nothing is as it seems. Servants become masters at the mere exchange of a “colored hat and cloak” (1.1.213). Old men are almost arrested for impersonating themselves. And, of course, shrews become obedient wives, and virtuous maidens become harridans.
In this play’s world, almost everyone is giving a performance of some kind—and those who aren’t will likely be accused of doing so. Identity is at once shifty and unreliable, and yet it is the absolute bedrock of all society’s workings. Tranio, for instance, puts on a convincing enough show as Lucentio to cement an actual marriage contract.
The characters who understand that the world is a stage—and who don’t resist that fact—get by the best here.
By William Shakespeare
All's Well That Ends Well
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 1
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 2
William Shakespeare
Henry V
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 1
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 3
William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
William Shakespeare
King John
William Shakespeare
King Lear
William Shakespeare
Love's Labour's Lost
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
William Shakespeare
Measure For Measure
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare
Books Made into Movies
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Comedies & Satirical Plays
View Collection
Elizabethan Era
View Collection
Laugh-out-Loud Books
View Collection
Marriage
View Collection
Required Reading Lists
View Collection
Romance
View Collection
Shakespeare
View Collection