The Taming of the Shrew

The Annotated Shakespeare series enables readers to fully understand and enjoy the plays of the world's greatest dramatist

In one of Shakespeare's bawdier comedies, contemporary audiences still take great pleasure in the rapid-fire verbal battles between the shrewish Katharina and the canny Petruchio, determined to subdue Katharina's legendary temper and win her dowry. This fully annotated version of The Taming of the Shrew makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century.

Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary, pronunciation, and prosody and provides alternative readings of phrases and lines. His on-page annotations give readers all the tools they need to comprehend the play and begin to explore its many possible interpretations.

Burton Raffel (1928-2015) was professor of arts and humanities emeritus and professor of English emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Among his many edited and translated publications are Poems and Prose from the Old English, Cligès, Lancelot, Perceval, Erec and Enide, and Yvain. Harold Bloom (1930-2019) was Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and Berg Professor of English at New York University. His many books include The Western Canon, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, and Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds.