A Shakespearean Feat

I agree with Don Shirley that A Noise Within’s “The Taming of the Shrew” is a very enjoyable production (“This ‘Shrew’ Has the Last Laugh,” Oct. 27). I disagree that the play itself, in particular, as Shirley says, “Kate’s final capitulation to Petruchio,” poses a difficult challenge.

Shirley appears puzzled by what he calls the “thorny final scene.” He says that “Kate has few lines that begin to suggest why her rebellion dissolves so amicably. Is she just kidding?”

Of course she isn’t kidding, and neither was Shakespeare. I hadn’t seen or read this play in a great many years, and I too was surprised by that final scene. But once it unfolded on stage, it seemed quite clear what Shakespeare had in mind. “The Taming of the Shrew” is perhaps the first English work in the literature of domination and submission, i.e., the literature that includes Pauline Reage’s “Story of O” and Anne Rice’s “Beauty Trilogy.”

Kate’s training occurs as Petruchio determines when she will eat, when she will sleep and (although not a point of primary focus in the relatively tame “Taming”) when she will have sex. Eventually Kate gives in and experiences the joy of submission, which she explains in that final soliloquy.

Shakespeare was even more creative and original than given credit for.

RUSS ABBOTT

Culver City