The taking of the shrew. Literature & Language. Book Review (Book Review Sample)

Name
Instructor
Course
Date
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
The play “The taming of the shrew,” by Shakespeare wedged amid two strange personalities. It is a classic “battle of the sexes,” comedy, a romantic fantasy in which true love angers the most combative of pairs. On the other hand, it is an assault on assertive women. It is a play about a man who starves, beats, humiliates, and mentally tortures his wife, who ultimately submits and tells the other women to do the same. Shakespeare’s pieces expose themselves up to a world of understanding. Whether in the discourse, historical context, symbolism, or intentions to leave the audience in conflict with themselves, there is no dispute about his plays lending themselves to every reader’s response. The response to reading “The Taming of the Shrew” was a strange one; it has faced many feminist critiques assessing patriarchy, misogyny, woman as a commodity, and subordination of woman’s story within a larger, more “serious” frame of the class. We can appreciate that this piece was written over 400 years ago and, as a result, we can comprehend that beliefs and approaches towards women and their part in the public were very different then than now.
The play opens up in the countryside. Christopher sly becomes a prank target by a local lord. The lord tells the men to take sly to his mansion after finding him drunk out of his wits in front of an alehouse. The men dress him in his finery and treat him like a lord. The men tell him that he has been insane for the past several years and believes to be a tinker, yet he is a lord. Slay declines to buy the story, but once he hears of his “wife,” he willingly agrees that he’s the lord, they purport him to be. Sly demands to be left alone with his wife. However, the servants tell him that actors have arrived to gift a play for him. In Padua, an Italian town, a rich man named Lucentio comes alongside Tranio and Biondello, his servants, to attend the local university. Lucentio is excited to begin his studies. However, his urgencies change when he sets his eyes on Bianca, a beautiful young woman with whom Lucentio instantly falls in love.