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 had in their possession a now lost early draft of the play. Upon returning to London, they published "A Shrew" in 1594, some time after which Shakespeare rewrote his original play into the form seen in the "First Folio". Duthie's arguments were never fully accepted at the time, as critics tended to look on the relationship between the two plays as an either-or situation; "A Shrew" is "either" a reported text "or" an early draft. In more recent scholarship, however, the possibility that a text could be both has been shown to be critically viable. For example, in his 2003