The ' play within the play ' is then presented as Sly's dream, and as such, the main plot is set in a surreal landscape, with Siberry and Lawrence doubling as Petruchio and Katherina.

* Grumio – servant of Petruchio

In the meantime, Petruchio arrives in Padua, accompanied by his servant, Grumio.

Much of the plot is also similar ; Petruchio vows to marry Catharine before he has even seen her, she smashes a lute over the music tutor's head, Baptista fears no one will ever want to marry her ; the wedding scene is identical, as is the scene where Grumio teases her with food ; the haberdasher and tailor scene is very similar ; the sun and moon conversation, and the introduction of Vincentio are both taken from Shakespeare.

Hearing this, Hortensio seizes the opportunity to recruit Petruchio as a suitor for Katherina.

She is refused food and clothing because nothing – according to Petruchio – is good enough for her ; he claims perfectly cooked meat is overcooked, a beautiful dress doesn't fit right, and a stylish hat is not fashionable.

He also sets about disagreeing with everything she says, and forcing her to agree with everything he says, no matter how absurd ; on their way back to Padua to attend Bianca's wedding, she agrees with Petruchio that the sun is the moon, and proclaims that " if you please to call it a rush-candle ,/ Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me " ( 4. 5. 14 – 15 ).

Petruchio proposes a wager whereby each will send a servant to call for their wives, and whichever comes most obediently will have won the wager for her husband.

Katherina is the only one of the three who comes, winning the wager for Petruchio.

Shroeder conjectured that the literary source for the Petruchio / Katherina story could have been William Caxton's translation of the Queen Vastis story from Livre pour l ' enseignement de ses filles du Chevalier de La Tour Landry.

Oliver, for example, believes that Shakespeare created the Induction so that the audience wouldn't react badly to the inherent misogyny in the Petruchio / Katherina story, in effect defending himself against charges of sexism.

Petruchio, for his part, attempts to tame her – and thus her language – with rhetoric that specifically undermines her tempestuous nature ;

# Katherina's speech is sincere and Petruchio has successfully tamed her ( this is how it is presented in the 1983 BBC Shakespeare adaptation, for example ).

Oliver argues that in the speech, there is no clear evidence of either seriousness or irony but instead " this lecture by Kate on the wife's duty to submit is the only fitting climax to the farce – and for that very reason it cannot logically be taken seriously, orthodox though the views expressed may be [...] attempting to take the last scene as a continuation of the realistic portrayal of character leads some modern producers to have it played as a kind of private joke between Petruchio and Kate – or even have Petruchio imply that by now he is thoroughly ashamed of himself.

Second, Katherina is objectified when they are first introduced ; Petruchio wishes to physically judge Katherina and asks her to walk for his observation.

Specificially, Daly reorganised Act 4 so that Act 4, Scene 2 ( the arrival of the pedant in Padua ) comes before Act 4, Scene 1 ( Petruchio and Katherina arriving at his house ), and Act 4, Scene 4 ( the pedant confirms the dowry for Bianca ) precedes Act 4, Scene 3 ( Petruchio's taming of Katherina ).

The most successful adaptation was David Garrick's Catharine and Petruchio, which was introduced in 1756 and dominated the stage for almost two centuries, with Shakespeare's play not returning until 1844 in England and 1887 in the United States, although Garrick's version was still being performed as late as 1879, when Herbert Beerbohm Tree staged it.

Instead, Peg pretends she is dying, and as Petruchio runs for a doctor, Peg reveals that she is fine, and that she has been tamed.

Upon her successful completion of this task, Petruchio realises that he has found a good woman, and he vows to be obedient to her for the rest of their lives.

Howard left behind just two Shakespeare performances, the first, recorded in the 1960s, was as Petruchio opposite Margaret Leighton's Kate in Caedmon Records ' complete recording of The Taming of the Shrew ; the second was in the title role of King Lear for the BBC World Service in 1986.

He attended Louisiana Tech on a music stipend for two years before transferring to Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, where he performed for the first time on stage as Petruchio in a production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.

In Taming of the Shrew Act 2, Scene 1, Petruchio promises Baptista, the father of Katherine ( the Shrew ), that once he marries Katherine " for patience she will prove second Grisel, / And Roman Lucrece for her chastity " ( 3. 2. 288-89 ).

Here, he performed in numerous productions, including Steinbeck's Burning Bright, The Adding Machine, The Firebrand, The Deletable Judge, The Taming of the Shrew (" Petruchio "), Playboy of the Western World, Children of Darkness, School for Wives, The Inspector General, The Glass Menagerie, Mr. Arcularis, Twelfth Night, The Scarecrow, The Importance of Being Earnest, Julius Caesar, She Stoops to Conquer, School for Scandal, Three Men on a Horse, Faith of Our Fathers ( Sesquicentennial Amphitheatre ) and Dark of the Moon.

Antoon's 1990 production at the New York Shakespeare Festival, starring Morgan Freeman and Tracey Ullman, which was set in the old west ; Bill Alexander's 1992 RSC production at the Barbican, starring Anton Lesser and Amanda Harris, in which the Induction was rewritten in modern language, and the play-within-the-play featured actors carrying scripts and continually forgetting lines ; Delia Taylor's 1999 production at the Clark Street Playhouse, which featured an all female cast, with Diane Manning as Petruchio and Elizabeth Perotti as Katherina ; Phyllida Lloyd's 2003 production at the Globe, again with an all female cast, starring Janet McTeer as Petruchio and Kathryn Hunter as Katherina ; Gregory Doran's 2003 RSC production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, where the play was presented with Fletcher's The Tamer Tamed as a two-part piece, with Jasper Britton and Alexandra Gilbreath ( playing both Katherina in The Shrew and Maria ( Petruchio's second wife ) in The Tamer Tamed ); Edward Hall's 2006 Propeller Company production at the Courtyard Theatre as part of the RSC's presentation of the Complete Works, featuring an all-male cast, with Dugald Bruce Lockhart as Petruchio and Simon Scardifield as Katherina ; and Conall Morrison's 2008 RSC production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, starring Stephen Boxer and Michelle Gomez.

In The Shrew, after the wedding, Gremio expresses doubts as to whether or not Petruchio will be able to tame Katherina.

Additionally, in Act 3, Scene 2, Tranio is briefly presented as an old friend of Petruchio, who knows his mannerisms and explains his tardiness prior to the wedding, a role which, up until now, had been performed by Hortensio.

The misogynistic side of Petruchio, appearing in his " wedding outfit ", in the 2003 Carmel Shakespeare Festival production

The two are married, with Petruchio arriving at the wedding late and forcing Kate to leave the ceremony feast early.

At the wedding, Petruchio is taunted by Hortensio and Lucentio for having married a " shrew ".

Petruchio ( Kevin Black ) and Kate ( Emily Jordan ) from a Pacific Repertory Theatre | Carmel Shakespeare Festival production of The Taming of the Shrew at the outdoor Forest Theater in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California | Carmel, CA., October 2003.

In 1947, he was invited by Laurence Olivier to play Petruchio in an Old Vic production of The Taming of the Shrew.

Meanwhile, Hortensio has married a rich widow, and so in the final scene of the play there are three newly married couples at Baptista's banquet ; Bianca and Lucentio, the widow and Hortensio, and Katherina and Petruchio.

At the end of the play, after the other two wives have been hauled into the room by Katherina, she gives a speech on the subject of why wives should always obey their husbands and the play ends with Baptista, Hortensio and Lucentio marvelling at how successfully Petruchio has tamed the shrew.

He did not, however, abandon the stage, appearing from 1978 to 1979 in the Royal Shakespeare Company's productions of The Taming of the Shrew as Petruchio, and Antony and Cleopatra as Octavius Caesar.

In the lower sixth, he played Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew – a role he would later perform with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

In productions at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the Theatre Royal, Newcastle, and the Barbican Theatre in 1982 – 83, Armstrong played Trinculo in The Tempest and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew with Sinéad Cusack as Kate.

" Shakespeare also uses Italian in the banter between Lucentio and Tranio and in the greetings between Petruchio and Hortensio in the first act.

This is significant because some critics argue that in an original version of the play, now lost, Hortensio was not a suitor to Bianca, but simply an old friend of Petruchio ( this is a modification of the Ur-Shrew theory, which instead of arguing that a play by someone other than Shakespeare served as a source, argues that an earlier draft by Shakespeare once existed ).

Julius Caesar Ibbetson illustration of Act 4, Scene 5 ( Petruchio insists the moon is shining and Ketherina agrees ) from Boydell Shakespeare Gallery | The Boydell Shakespeare Prints ; engraved by Isaac Taylor ( 1759 – 1829 ) | Isaac Taylor ( 1803 ).

The Shakespeare text is cut at the end of Katherina's speech ( which is not delivered seriously, and by which time Petruchio has become bowed with shame ).

In April 1996 Geraint appeared as Petruchio in Shakespeare's The Taming of The Shrew, directed by Patrick Tucker of the Original Shakespeare Company.

Bruce Willis as Petruchio in the episode Atomic Shakespeare. Another famous fantasy episode was " Atomic Shakespeare ," which featured the cast performing a variation of The Taming of the Shrew, with David in the role of Petruchio, Maddie as Katharina, Agnes as Bianca, and Herbert as Lucentio.