Taming of the Shrew

In one of Shakespeare's bawdier comedies, contemporary audiences still take great pleasure in the rapid-fire verbal battles between the shrewish Katharina and the canny Petruchio, determined to subdue Katharina's legendary temper and win her dowry. This fully annotated version of The Taming of the Shrew makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century.

Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary, pronunciation, and prosody and provides alternative readings of phrases and lines. His on-page annotations give readers all the tools they need to comprehend the play and begin to explore its many possible interpretations.