The Taming of the Shrew as keeping her from eating and drinking, until she becomes a desirable, compliant, and obedient bride. The subplot features a competition between the suitors of Katherina's younger sister, Bianca, who is seen as the "ideal" woman. The question of whether the play is misogynistic or not has become the subject of considerable controversy, particularly among modern scholars, audiences, and readers. "The Taming of the Shrew" has been adapted numerous times for stage, screen, opera, ballet, and musical theatre; perhaps the most famous adaptations being Cole Porter's "Kiss Me, Kate" and the 1967 film of the play, starring Elizabeth Taylor and
The Taming of the Shrew in performance thus takes on a disturbing irony. Marowitz described his intention in "The Shrew" as "a head-on confrontation with the intellectual substructure of the play, an attempt to test or challenge, revoke or destroy the intellectual foundation which makes a classic the formidable thing it has become [and to] combat the assumptions of a classic with a series of new assumptions, and force it to bend under the power of a new polemic." Due to the extreme nature of the production, the play divided critics and audiences, but it was a huge box office success. The Taming of the Shrew in