The Taming of the Shrew steps forward and speaks directly to the audience as herself; "Well, I must own, it wounds me to the Heart/To play, unwomanly, so mean a Part./What – to submit, so tamely – so contented,/Thank Heav'n! I'm not the Thing I represented." Cole Porter's musical "Kiss Me, Kate" is an adaptation of "Taming of the Shrew". The music and lyrics are by Porter and the book is by Samuel and Bella Spewack. It is at least partially based on the 1935/1936 Theatre Guild production of "Taming of the Shrew", which starred husband and wife Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, whose backstage
The Taming of the Shrew to the family house, where the now tamed woman lectures her sister on the merits of being an obedient wife. The taming in this version is much more physical than in Shakespeare; the shrew is beaten with birch rods until she bleeds, and is then wrapped in the salted flesh of a plough horse (the Morrelle of the title). "Merry Jest" was not unknown to earlier editors of the play, and had been dismissed as a source by A.R. Frey, W.C. Hazlitt, R. Warwick Bond and Frederick S. Boas. Modern editors also express doubt as to Hosley's argument. In 1966,