Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Taming of the Shrew The Taming of the Shrew his play can be dated after 1579 and any It was followed by a reprint in 1596: time up to 1598. [Q2, 1596] P.S., sold by Cuthbert Bertie T Two more anonymous editions followed in 1607. Publication Date The first was entered in the register to Nicholas Ling at the same time as Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrewwas published for the Love’s Labour’s Lost, indicating a clear connection first time in the First Folio (F1) of Shakespeare’s with Shakespeare. The play was published in F1 as plays in 1623. That version is commonly referred The Taming of the Shrew, occupying the eleventh to as The Shrew to distinguish it from its supposed position among the comedies, coming after As You ‘source’, a play called The Taming of a Shrew which Like It and before All’s Well That Ends Well. The was published anonymously. 1631 quarto of The Shrewderives the text from F1 and attributes the play to Shakespeare. Publication of the Anonymous The relationship between the anonymous ‘A Shrew’ A Shrew (1594) and Shakespeare’s The Shrew (1623) has been vigorously debated over the years. On 2 May 1594 there was entered to Peter Short Thompson explains the choice of theories: in the Stationers’ Register: a) A Shrew is the original play, by an unknown writer, and the direct source of the [SR, 1594, A Shrew, anon] Secundo die Maij. Shakespeare play (as suggested by Peter Shorte. Entred vnto him for his copie Chambers); vnder master warden Cawoodes hande, a b) The Shrewis the original play and A Shrew booke intituled A plesant Conceyted historie is a memorial reconstruction by an actor called The Tamynge of a Shrowe vjd or some other person of the Shakespeare play, i.e. a ‘bad quarto’ (as argued by The play was published later that year: Alexander and Dover Wilson, Morris, Miller and Oliver); [Q1, 1594, A Shrew] A Pleasant Conceyted c) both Shrews derive from a lost original which Historie, called The Taminge of a Shrowe ... was Shakespeare’s first version of the sundry times acted by the Right honorable play (Houk). the Earle of Pembroke his servants Printed at London by Peter Short and are to Despite the close resemblance in structure be sold by Cuthbert Burbie, at his shop at the between the two plays, the language in A Shrew is Royal Exchange. 1594 far less Shakespearean, though not totally without This version of the play contains about 1480 lyrical touches. It has been claimed by some (e.g. 1 lines, shorter than most quartos attributed to Chambers ) that the poetic moments sound more Shakespeare (see Oliver). A single copy of this like Marlowe or Peele than like Shakespeare. edition, held at the Huntingdon Library, survives. However, Stephen Miller’s detailed comparison of © De Vere Society 1 Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Taming of the Shrew Title page to the anonymous first quarto ofThe Taming of a Shrew, 1594; it has generally been believed that this play was by another author but some scholars have argued that it was an early version by Shakespeare, which he later revised. By permission of Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, shelfmark Facs. e.29, title page. the texts leads him to conclude that The Shrewis a combination of them, when the two companies the original play and A Shrew is an inferior version were ‘exiled’ there from 3 to 13 June: Henslowe of it. indicates the performance dates of seven plays but not the performers. However, when they returned Performance Dates to the Rose playhouse the following week, the Admiral’s Men continued to present three of the Newington plays, but A Shrew was not one On 11 June 1594 a performance of ‘the tamyng of A of them. So Rutter confidently assigns A Shrew shrowe’ at the Newington Butts theatre is recorded to the Chamberlain’s Men (along with the other in Philip Henslowe’s diary. It is not immediately three plays, which included Titus Andronicus apparent whether it was performed by the Lord and Hamlet). According to Thompson, “it seems Admiral’s Men, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, or © De Vere Society 2 Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Taming of the Shrew clear... that both Pembroke’s men and the Lord identities with his servant and disguises himself Chamberlain’s Men had Shrew plays in their as a music teacher in order to woo Kate’s younger respective repertoires by 1594.” sister, Bianca. This exchange causes a number of The next recorded performance took place at comic misunderstandings. Court on 26 November 1633. The recognised source of this plot is the play Supposes, an English translation, by George Sources Gascoigne, of Ariosto’s Italian play Suppositi. Gascoigne simultaneously used Ariosto’s two Both Shrew plays comprise three elements woven versions – the original was in prose, the second together. in verse. These in turn were based on Amphytruo, a Latin comedy by Plautus. The Supposes was 1) The frame. A lord discovers a drunken performed at Gray’s Inn in 1566 as part of the tinker passed out on the ground and, as a jest, has winter holiday entertainment of 1566–7, although his retainers bring him indoors. When the tinker the translation was not published until 1573; it wakes up, they convince him that he is a great lord, was republished in 1587. Gascoigne retained all who has just recovered from a spell of madness in Ariosto’s characters and their Italian names. which he believed himself to be a lowly tinker. While both Shrew plays take the characters, As Thompson points out, such a story is found scenes and plot devices of The Supposes for their in many times and places, including the Arabian sub-plot (the wooing of the younger sister), they Nights. Close in time to Shakespeare, Heuterus’s are used less fully and to less effect in A Shrew De Rebus Burgundicis, published in 1584, has the than in The Shrew. In A Shrew, some of the Duke of Burgundy playing the trick, including the characters and their plot elements are eliminated performance of a comedy. In A Shrew the tinker, and two individuals are divided into pairs. The Slie, is intended to remain on stage throughout; in author of A Shrew gives Kate two sisters, but The The Shrew, once the play begins, no more is heard Shrew gives her only one (neither Ariosto nor his from Sly and he can stay on stage or vanish at the translator gives his girl any). director’s whim. The female protagonist in both plays is ‘Kate’; 2) The main plot. A “merry, madcap lord”, otherwise there is two different sets of names Petruchio, comes to town to get a wealthy bride, for most of the characters. Curiously, The Shrew woos and weds the feisty Kate and by various went back to Supposes for the name of the servant means succeeds in ‘taming’ her. He prevents her ‘Petruchio’ (added to Ariosto’s play by Gascoigne), from eating, sleeping, choosing her own clothes and bestows it on his male protagonist in The or having a say on anything. The techniques Shrew. Among other sources sometimes proposed described are similar to those used to train hawks. are the works of Plautus (providing the names Finally, Kate, realising that it is more important Grumio and Tranio), and writings on falconry by to this man that he have her public allegiance Gervase Markham such as Country Contentments, than that his own public image should remain usually dated 1611, but probably earlier; Markham spotless, capitulates in order to bring peace. was writing prolifically from c. 1590 and was Uniquely among Shakespeare’s works, this plot commended by Meres in 1598. seems to have been derived more closely from an oral tradition than from any previous written Orthodox Date work, ancient or contemporary. Folklore specialist Brunvand amply demonstrates that it is based on The range of dates proposed for the (Shakespeare) an old tale common to all the nations of Europe, play is 1589 – 94. Chambers fixed on 1593–4 and even some in Asia. In his detailed and for Shakespeare’s play, which is followed by the scientific study, he shows how closely Shakespeare Riverside and Signet editions. Halliday preferred followed the Danish version in all but a few 1594. Alexander puts the date of writing before details: Shakespeare softened his version from the 1593, as does Oliver; Wells & Taylor propose folkloric source, in which the abuse of the wife is 1590–93 and Cairncross places it around 1590. far greater. Thompson, also, settles on 1590 as the most likely 3) The sub-plot. Young Lucentio exchanges date. Morris (persuaded by Marco Mincoff’s © De Vere Society 3 Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Taming of the Shrew revision of Chambers’s chronology) proposes original. It remains possible that The Shrewwas 1589 and most scholars now favour a date c. among the first of Shakespeare’s plays and dates 1590. However, Wiggins gives limits of 1589– back to 1590. Alternatively, some commentators 92, preferring the latest date. He suggests that think that The Shrew, as it appears in the First perhaps Marlowe or Nashe wrote A Shrew c. 1593 Folio, is a substantially later version. to imitate Shakespeare’s The Shrew. Only three contemporary references have been found to a ‘Shrew’ play, the latest – and Internal Orthodox Evidence least relevant – dated 1609. In 1596 Harrington’s Metamorphosis of Ajax obviously refers to the 1594 Morris states simply that there is no internal printed text of A Shrew: “the book of Taming a evidence for dating the play.