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 and equal person ("Politics", 1.3, 12–13). Recognising the evil of despotic domination, the play holds up in inverse form Kate's shrewishness, the feminine form of the will to dominance, as an evil that obstructs natural fulfillment and destroys marital happiness. Another theme in the play is cruelty. Alexander Leggatt states: Ann Thompson argues that "the fact that in the folktale versions the shrew-taming story always comes to its climax when the husbands wager on their wives' obedience must have been partly responsible for the large number of references to sporting, gaming and gambling throughout the play. These metaphors can help