Quick 5 for Taming of the Shrew
- Like you might expect from a Shakespeare play, the language is confusing and hard at times. I read an updated and annotated version that explained the vocabulary and idioms.
- This book has a modern day movie adaptation called 10 Things I Hate About You. I talk a lot about this later.
- I think books like this are hard to read on your own. I felt like I missed a lot of the depth of the story because I didn’t have someone to discuss stuff with.
- This play is actually pretty short! It was only about 220 pages.
- Overall I’m rating this a 2/5, mostly because I love the movie so much and I was so disappointed by the ending of the book. I don’t think I will read this book again, which makes me sad because I really wanted to like it.
I grew up in a small town and consequently went to a small high school. My school only offered two AP courses: Calc and English. I was (am) terrible at math so that was a hard no, but I’ve always loved literature and English, so I was super excited to read and analyze some classics in AP English! Sometime halfway through the year we were given Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. I groaned alongside the class, but inside I was pumped! I was excited to read a Shakespeare book and analyze the crap out of it. Plus, my teacher said that 10 Things I Hate About You with Heath Ledger was based off of this book, and he can make anything sexy. However, no one in my class wanted to read it and talked my teacher out of making us read it. So here I am seven years later finally getting to read it!
Now let me tell you, 10 Things I Hate About You is a FAN-TASTIC movie. Seriously. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it right now. By fantastic, I mean that it’s low budget and set in the 2000’s. The fashion is killer. The music is bumpin. Heath Ledger is hawt. Julia Stiles plays a young feminist. What more could you want in a movie? It’s perfect. Taming of The Shrew however…not my favorite read. Honestly maybe it’s just that I had incorrect expectations about the book. I thought the ending of Taming of The Shrew would be similar to 10 Things I Hate About You, but it was the exact opposite. Without spoiling too much, I’ll summarize the plot and the differences between the book and movie.
A man named Baptista has two daughters: Bianca, the younger sister, is demure, meek, and has a lot of dudes tryna slide into her DMs. Katherine, the eldest, is loud, opinionated, and has a bad rep. Even though all these dudes want to marry Bianca, Baptista denies them on the bases that Bianca can not marry until Katherine does. However, no one wants to marry Kat because she has opinions. The two main dudes trying to get with Bianca are Lucentio and Hortensio. Both of them decide to pretend to be teachers and get some extra ~alone time~ with B. Hortensio also talks his friend, Petruchio into marrying Katherine, despite her being “a shrew”. Petruchio is excited about the challenge of taming the shrew (hence the name of the book). Being a classic 16th century male, Petruchio completely ignores Katherine’s desires and opinions and he convinces everyone that she has agreed to marry him, despite her many, loud protests. His manipulative behavior worsens when they get married, and honestly I was so pissed. Meanwhile, Lucentio and Hortensio vie for B’s love while tricking her and her father. *sarcasm font* All around great ways to start off a marriage!!!!!
In the movie, Bianca is a popular, preppy and obsessed with boys and prom. Kat is determined, totally over high school, and cynical. Like the book, dad won’t let Bianca date until Katherine does. Katherine doesn’t want to date though, because boys are ew. (Kidding, there’s actually a legitimate reason behind her not wanting to date, but I don’t want to spoil the movie!) Baby Joseph Gordan-Levitt is the lovesick new student who tutors Bianca in French in order to trick her into loving him, and he pays Heath Ledger to date Kat. Heath is a loner bad boy who, at first just wants the money, but is intrigued by Kat’s independence. After a few classic RomCom misunderstandings and a little heartbreak, all the characters grow into better people. The boys realize they were douchey for tricking the girls and learn to appreciate the girls for who they are. Kat learns that you can trust others and still be independent, and Bianca learns that being authentic is better than being popular.
In summary: book=sad ending. movie=happy ending.
Now that I’ve summarized the plot, here’s my review. Like I mentioned earlier, I had unrealistic expectations for the book.This book definitely encouraged an old school “women should be seen and not heard” attitude. I thought Katherine would maintain some level of shrewdness, but it was slowly manipulated out of her until all that’s left is essentially a slave. In fact, Katherine gives this big speech at the end about how women are inferior. She basically says, “give up. It’s futile to have an opinion. Women are weak and our greatest honor is obeying a man”. Petruchio is honored for “taming the shrew”, and the book ends. If there are deeper, more symbolic meanings behind this book I missed them because I was mad at Petruchio the whole time. Also there was a very strange prologue about a drunk guy being tricked into thinking he was a rich man. The Taming of the Shrew is a story that a man, pretending to be a servant, tells the drunk guy. Its all very strange.
I mentioned in the Quick 5 that I feel like this book should have been read in a group, or at least with someone more educated in Shakespeare than myself. That way I could have picked up on more of the symbolism or we could have discussed the cultural significances. I feel like I missed part of the book because I only read what was on the surface. I also don’t know much about how Shakespeare frames his sentences and the different structures he uses for characters, but I know he does it. It would have been interesting to have someone point out the intricacies of his writing.
*sigh* Overall, I give this book a 2/5 meaning that I will probably not read it again. However I am very open to different opinions. In fact, I would love for someone to help me like this book lol. So if you are a Shakespeare lover, please enlighten me!! I have only read this and Hamlet, so I would love to read some more classics! What are your favorite stories/plays? Do you have any tips for reading Shakespeare? Thanks for reading along with me!
–fg+g
for grace + glory 