The Taming of the Shrew in performance reviewers as being extremely physical. Lunt and Fontanne were the most famous celebrity couple of the time, and their backstage fights were rumoured to be just as ferocious as their on-stage performances. So legendary did the tempestuous reputation of the couple become that Cole Porter's 1948 musical "Kiss Me, Kate", about a fiery couple attempting to stage an adaptation of "The Taming of the Shrew", was based on their real-life antics. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the play has been frequently staged all over the world. Some notable productions include: "The Shrew"s popularity on stage has continued
The Taming of the Shrew version. By the end of the eighteenth century, the predominant theory had come to be that "A Shrew" was a non-Shakespearean source for "The Shrew", and hence to include extracts from it was to graft non-authorial material onto the play. This theory prevailed until 1850, when Samuel Hickson compared the texts of "The Shrew" and "A Shrew", concluding "The Shrew" was the original, and "A Shrew" was derived from it. By comparing seven passages which are similar in both plays, he concluded "the original conception is invariably to be found" in "The Shrew". His explanation was that "A Shrew" was