SungUkKong

Abstract

The critical history of The Taming of the Shrew is to search for the taming and the tamed. Many critics, up to the present, have continued to find the final answer for this ambivalent question, which leads their literary passion to the struggle or conflict between male and female.

But as a text, this can not be evaluated too much because of the structural faults---the Induction part and the Kate's final speech. Some define this work as an incomplete version which reflects the unskillful writing of Shakespeare's early period as a dramatist. But in case of a performance on the stage this play shows exceptional popularity and attracts many audience attention. And this unbalanced situation affects the understanding of the text, as it were, The Taming of the Shrew as a performance on the stage or a movie shows an influence on the reading of the text.

In this paper I assert that this play as a text includes the meaningful intention of the dramatist,---the comic spirit and theory. In Induction part Shakespeare reflects what the comedy is. This part, though criticized as literary fault, shows the theory and dramatic conventions of the comedy in Renaissance England, which functions as the lesson on comedy taught by Shakespeare.

And main episode displayed by Petruchio and Kate, by nature it is the play-within-the -play of the Induction part, according to the textual evidences, reflects the comic spirit---the struggle between the manipulator and the manipulated, not male and female. Shakespeare does not show us the character development of the two. They exist as a comic type and the closing of the play shows the typical ending with the marriages and party, which symbolize the audience and readers wish-fulfillment.

Through the close reading of the text, compared with Shakespeare's other comedies, this can be estimated as a well-made comedy.