

Her ‘sonnet’ (which is not actually a sonnet, but she did not seem to be aiming for a high grade with this one) is absolute cornballs, but it is delivered with an aching sincerity that sells the hell out of the contrivance.

10 Things does not break Kat’s spirit she is justly disillusioned by Patrick beginning their relationship with a bet, but genuine affection – and her reluctant awareness of Patrick’s sincere intentions – underlies her change of heart. The original is irredeemable, disturbing, and – when played straight as the Globe did in 2016 – downright tragic. The effect, however, is massively different in each. The climactic moment of truth – when the tempestuous heroine reveals her love/Stockholm Syndrome for her lover/master – is cringeworthy in both Shakespeare’s and screenwriters Karen McCullah and Kristen Smith’s hands. However, the words still take a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek delivery not to horrify – possibly this battle of wills was best suited for a modern high school and a moderate helping of feminist thought all along. The easiest way to achieve this is to establish a subtextual spark between Katherina and Petruchio upon their first encounter, which is absent in the pun-filled but verbally abusive dialogue (the 1967 Franco Zeffirelli version, starring the then-married Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, takes this route). There is no question that Taming was a comedy in its time but making it funny today is impossible without substantial revisions, omissions, and/or reinterpretations. The Taming of the Shrew features some fun slapstick moments and the playwright’s trademark bawdy wit but replaces his better plays’ timeless introspection with chauvinistic sexual politics and broad generalisations. Simply put, films like West Side Story, She’s the Man, and The Lion King had much better source material ( Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and Hamlet respectively) so did not have quite as far to go 10 Things took a B-rate and highly problematic Shakespeare play and turned it into pure gold.
