The Taming of the Shrew

Arkangel Shakespeare

By: William Shakespeare

Narrated by: Frances Barber, Roger Allam, Alan Cox

Love and wit conquer all in Shakespeare's sparkling comedy of self-delusion and disguise.

Padua holds many suitors for the hand of fair Bianca, but Bianca may not be married until her spinster sister, Kate, is wed. Could any man be rash enough to take on Kate?

The witty adventurer Petruchio undertakes the task. While he sets about transforming Kate from foul-tempered termagant to loving wife, young Lucentio and his clever servant, Tranio, plot to win Bianca.

Frances Barber and Roger Allam are Kate and Petruchio. Lucentio is played by Alan Cox.

Public Domain (P)2014 Blackstone Audio

A mixed bag

The play is what it is. The principals here are mostly quite good but some of the actors voicing lesser characters make needlessly distracting choices that one wishes the director would have restrained (H-h-hortensio I'm looking at you...).

Great homework help

It was very helpful to understand and get through my assignments. Great performances wonderful actors

great

I like the book it helped me for school since we were to read during school.

Loved it!

Great multi actor performance! True to the script. A great option if you can't see the play in person.

Well done

The actors and music was wonderful! The entire production legitly made if fell like i was actually there. Well done!

So good

It was well played and well preformed. Loved every single minute. I will definitely listen to more.

Very well done!

This is my favorite Shakespeare play. I love this performance. It's so easy to get lost in the play and lose track of time. I highly recommend this audio version!

Classic

The banter and wit is superb, voice recording clear, performances well directed.

This play gets a lot of undeserved hate. It's one of his best comedies. You may find it therapeutic.

Problem play

The Taming of the Shrew is another early Shakespeare play, and it's one that makes me distinctly uncomfortable - maybe even more so than The Merchant of Venice, another "problem play."

It is, in my opinion, a misogynistic play. The spirited Kate has a few moments of tenderness with her crazy husband Petruchio, but only after she's been starved, deprived of sleep, and forced to debase herself in front of others. (To his credit, he never actually hits her, but that's setting the bar pretty low.) Many productions try to get around the implications by making it all seem ironic, but I've never been able to find that irony in the text.

(One of Shakespeare's fellow playwrights seemed to think the same thing, and wrote a sequel called The Tamer Tamed: Petruchio's second wife turns the tables on him.)

Not much irony in this production either; it's played straight. The cast is, as usual, first-rate, although Frances Barber is sometimes a little too shrill as Kate; granted the character is described repeatedly as a shrew, but there's shrewishness that's funny and shrewishness that's just unpleasant.

The other odd thing about the play is the appearance and disappearance of the "framing story" involving Christopher Sly. Shakespeare sets it up and then abandons it after a couple of scenes. Another play from the period provides a few other scenes with Sly, including an epilogue that neatly ties up the loose ends. Many recent productions, if they include the framing story at all, add these scenes. I suspect they were written by Shakespeare and intended to be part of the play, but Arkangel sticks to their guns (and their stated purpose) and omits them.

Not one of the more satisfying entries in the series, but the fault is mostly Shakespeare's.

Great performance, conflicted about storyline

First off, the performance was spectacular. I enjoyed the different tone and reading the actors brought. That said, I really think this play reflects more of a misogynist view point than I can tolerate in a comedy.