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 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