1929 Sam Taylor Production

This adaptation, directed by Sam Taylor, starred Mary Pickford as Katherine; Douglas Fairbanks as Petruchio; Edwin Maxwell as Baptista; Joseph Cawthorn as Gremio; Clyde Cook as Grumio; Geoffrey Wardwell as Hortensio; and Dorothy Jordan as Bianca.

Roger Manvell, in his 1971 book Shakespeare and the Film, offered a brief history of the production (23), noted its emphasis on physical farce (24), and provided some details about the production (24–25).

In his 1994 essay “Shakespeare Comedies on Film” (110–12) Russell Jackson emphasized the production’s American-style physical comedy; noted Petruchio’s “showy athleticism” and Katharina’s “absurd acts of vandalism”; said the film might well have worked as a silent movie, which it resembles in various ways (112); praised Pickford’s shift from “pasteboard termagant” to her later “winsome knowingness”; and praised the effectiveness of her final wink, which was that of a modern, unsubdued woman of the 1920s (112).

Kenneth Rothwell, in his important 1999 survey of a century of Shakespeare on film, disputed the idea that Taylor had claimed a role as cowriter; said the film was “for the most part favorably received”; called it the “first feature-length talking Shakespeare movie”; and reported that it “was filmed in both a silent and talking version” since many theaters did not yet have sound systems (29). He noted that it resembled an eighteenth-century abridgment by David Garrick; joked (because of the use of whips) that it was “more whippy than witty”; remarked that Fairbanks relied on “his trademark expression of maddening insolence” (31); and explained Kate’s final submission as Elizabethans would have interpreted it (33).

In a book from 2000 titled Shakespeare in the Movies, Douglas Brode said that the athletic Fairbanks seemed a good choice to play Petruchio; thought the stereotypically sweet Pickford had to play against type; noted that the subplot was quickly dropped (thus simplifying the film); and suggested that Kate’s final submission implied a change in values from the independent women of the roaring twenties (20).

In his book from 2000 titled Shakespeare on Screen (136–37) Daniel Rosenthal observed that this film “brought together for the one and only time two of silent cinema’s brightest stars”; noted that “nothing remains of scenes not featuring either Katharina or Petruchio”; mentioned that Grumio gets some independent attention; and commented on long moments in which no speaking is heard. Rosenthal emphasized deletions from (and additions to) the script and the stress on action; remarked on feminist alterations in the plot and characterization; and reported that Pickford long regretted even making the film (136). Meanwhile, writing in his book from 2002 titled Shakespeare in the Cinema: Ocular Proof, Stephen Buhler thought Fairbanks was physically suited to his role and suggested that Pickford both was and was not playing against her reputation as America’s sweetheart (54).

In her 2003 essay titled “A Shrew for the Times, Revisited” (123–25), Diana E. Henderson discussed the ways Pickford’s role was emphasized as well as the ways Petruchio was both mocked and affirmed (125).

Robert F. Willson, in his 2003 study Shakespeare in Hollywood, 1929–1956, noted that in this film the play was “heavily cut”; commented on the clever alteration of a soliloquy in the play to a talk with a dog in the film (22); thought that “the dog—and Fairbanks—perform the scene with comic brilliance, while Pickford, on a balcony, overhears the entire speech,” so that she knows what Petruchio is up to, so that Taylor gives “Kate’s character more insight and inwardness than she exhibits in Shakespeare’s play.” Because the stars were married, the audience would have expected them to fight “the battle of the sexes” as equals (23). According to Willson, “The decision to have Kate overhear Petruchio’s strategy session with the dog indicates she knows the tamer’s plan and decides on her own to go along with it” (26), so that when she later speaks of serving, loving, and obeying “we hear echoes of the wedding vows, suggesting that Kate alone has understood the true meaning of these words.” Moreover, at the very end, “Kate, seen in close-up, winks broadly at her sister Bianca, signaling her awareness that the rhetoric she speaks is only that,” although Willson considered the wink “too explicit and simplistic, as is Petruchio-Fairbanks’s smug smile” (27). Willson, although enjoying the film, called it “a one-dimensional comedy that serves as an attractive medium for the stars, who display both strengths and some glaring weaknesses in interpreting the lead roles,” with “farcical action” crowding out “witty verbal exchange.” Partly the emphasis on action resulted from the fact that in these early days of sound, actors had to stand close together, near the microphone, if they expected to be heard. Arguing that Pickford helped “make Kate an appealing, believable figure” and that the film “humanized” Fairbanks, Willson nonetheless reported that Pickford was “shaken by what she saw,” began to doubt her skills as an actress, tried to suppress the film, and blamed it for damaging her career (28). Willson noted the film’s resemblances, in some respects, to a stage production (especially in its emphasis on physical comedy); felt that it “ignores or underplays the elements of verbal wit, disguise, and complicated plotting that characterize Shakespearean comedy”; but also observed its resemblances to film comedies by Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton (29).

In his book from 2013 titled Small-Screen Shakespeare (75–77), Peter Cochran jokingly found the film unsubtle; called Pickford’s performance mostly physical and hard to watch (75); noted alterations to the plot and the absence of a subplot; observed that it added lines by the director; faulted Pickford’s overacting; and reported that much is cut from the play’s final half (77).

Peter E. S. Babiak, discussing this film in his 2016 book Shakespeare Films: A Re-evaluation of 100 Years of Adaptations (40–47), wrote that it continually “subvert[s] expectations” (40); commented on its effective use of “dolly shots” and “crane shots” (41); said that it repeatedly employs the “technique of juxtaposing a visual image directly against an element of the play-text” (41); and observed its frequent “qualification[s] of spoken utterances by visual contradictions” (41). Remarking that both Katherine and Petruchio carry whips (42); that Petruchio laughs when Katherine repeatedly slaps him (43); and that Petruchio seems “impervious to what easily dominates the other men in the film” (43), Babiak mentioned the heavy use of slapstick (44); said that Kate is at first frustrated by her “inability to dominate Petruchio”; and remarked that Petruchio is later frustrated by “his inability to provoke any reaction out of Kate” (44). He concluded that this production implies that ideal marriages involve the husband’s submission to the wife (46) and that it presents “contemporary themes of the film’s era in a Renaissance setting” (47).

In his book from 2016 titled Shakespeare’s Cinema of Love, R. S. White saw Fairbanks as “good-humoured and dashing (in every sense)”; said his “stance is summed up in repeated laughs inherited from broad stage performances”; remarked that these laughs “become irritating” but thought they also “suggest that the character is mocking and enjoying the dilemmas rather than motivated by sadism.” Calling the two lead characters “both perverse but also … both dynamic and powerful presences,” White asserted that the “power is distributed equally, since all the physical domination is on the side of Katherina, wielding her whip and striking the man, while all the psychological abuse is on his side and generally speaking he refrains from repeated physical violence” (46). White commented that the “strategy used in this film to avoid some ideological problems in the twentieth century [involving women’s rights?] is to enhance the element of play” (47).

1967 Franco Zeffirelli Production

This adaptation starred Elizabeth Taylor as Kate; Richard Burton as Petruchio; Cyril Cusack as Grumio; Michael Hordern as Baptista; Alfred Lynch as Tranio; Alan Webb as Gremio; Michael York as Lucentio; and Natasha Pyne as Bianca.

Jack Jorgens, in his 1977 book Shakespeare on Film, called the Zeffirelli film “boisterous,” said it “plays up the romance and sentiment, tones down the realism, and revels in the farce” and saw it as implying “a mutual taming” resembling a “real-life marriage.” He wrote that Petruchio, “[c]rass, drunken, self-serving, and materialistic at the beginning, … without being rendered impotent, becomes civilized, witty, and dignified by the end” (68) and suggested that Kate’s submission, by the end, functions as “a demonstration that she understands what Petruchio has been trying to teach her.” In fact, while submitting, “she uncovers the real shrews and feeds the males present such an eloquent and unconditional surrender to male domination that they are all taken in,” thus demonstrating a common feature of Shakespeare’s love plots: “give all and you will get all,” with Katherine “express[ing] gratitude [to Petruchio] for his freeing her from a sterile role.” Asserting that, “[a]part from sentimental romance, Zeffirelli’s major emphasis is upon farce” and that the “film delights in harmless violence and festive destruction,” Jorgens conceded that although Zeffirelli had “not made a perfect film” of the play (71), he had nonetheless done much better than he was sometimes given credit for. Jorgens considered “the cuts in the Bianca plot, which has not aged well, … justified and well executed” and called “the new opening … both functional and entertaining,” although he admitted “miss[ing] Christopher Sly and the doubleness he lends to the play proper.” He did dislike Burton’s constant laughter but concluded by calling this production “a better and more thoughtful film than the surprisingly vitriolic attacks on it by many critics would lead one to believe” (77–78).

Assessing the film in an article from 1980 titled “Zeffirelli’s Shakespeare: The Visualization of Tone and Theme,” Michael Pursell spent much time discussing how Zeffirelli substituted for the missing Christopher Sly “Induction” from the play; suggested that the use of Panavision made the film’s Padua seem a realistic city, especially around the sides of the screen; but commented that “at the same time the Panavision format is not so wide that the controlling and organising function of the frame is lost, as it is in Cinerama.” According to Pursell, we “are thus simultaneously encouraged to see the image as fictional world, without losing sight of the image as image—again, a balance wholly appropriate to the tonal and thematic requirements of the text” (216).

Graham Holderness, in a 1989 book on performances of the play (57–72), discussed the film in various historical contexts; theorized about it and about them; cited the opinions of various critics; explored Zeffirelli’s aesthetic ideas; and suggested why he cut the Induction. He commented on the use of farce and naturalistic detail; noted the spirit of carnival; and wrote that it “was by electing to subordinate naturalism, psychology, scholarly respect for the classical virtues and sober moral earnestness, to a sustained activation of rumbustious high-jinks that Zeffirelli reaped the particular condemnation of those critics who felt that the play was being distorted, abused and wrenched from its natural or original character.” Reporting that “the director’s reliance on visual effects, whether of decor, setting or action, was felt by many observers to represent an unjustifiable sacrifice of Shakespeare’s predominantly verbal dramatic medium” (65), Holderness himself defended the film from hostile criticism; explained Zeffirelli’s reasons for casting Burton and Taylor; observed the emphasis on “love-at-first sight”; but thought that the “‘taming’ plot” was “drained of the various historical and moral significances attributed to it,” with a final emphasis on farce rather than anything more serious (69) and relative neglect of the Bianca subplot (70). Holderness nicely summarized his views as follows: “By infusing the play with visual and musical overtones of romance; insisting on the reciprocal passion of tamer and tamed; translating the violence of the play into a medium of farce, where destruction is always innocuous; and by casting the end-result of these operations into the form of a film, Zeffirelli has altered the rules of the game to such an extent that the film has little to say about the sexual politics of The Taming of the Shrew”; he considered the film “not so much anti-feminist as a-feminist”—in other words, indifferent to feminism (71).

In an essay from 1994 discussing “Shakespeare Comedies on Film” (112–17), Russell Jackson wrote that Zeffirelli’s movie offered “a fuller version of the play’s text” than the 1929 film; observed its opening stress on a “painterly” set (112); noted the early focus on boisterous behavior; and said Petruchio and Katherina are presented as “comic characters who … ‘wise up’” and become increasingly thoughtful (114). He suggested that Katherina eventually achieves some satisfying power in Petruchio’s home, arguing that by “underlining the general crassness of Paduan society, Zeffirelli presents [Katherina and Petruchio] as superior creatures, for all her killing looks and his over-hearty laughter.” Admiring the subtle acting by Burton and Taylor and the subtle scene arrangements by Zeffirelli (115) and contending that Katherina and Petruchio move from “absurd indecorum to what seems to be the truly decorous” (although with an implied but understated sexuality), Jackson commented on the various ways the film was relevant to the lives of its stars and era. He ultimately praised it for its comedy, eloquence (116), and “‘authentic’ and picturesque” settings (117).

Discussing the film in another article from 1994 (“Zeffirelli’s Shakespeare” [167–71]), Ace Pilkington noted how Shakespeare’s text was rearranged; discussed the film’s emphasis on farce; and noted its deemphasis on brutality in the “taming” and therefore its subtler version of Petruchio (170). Comparing the wooing to a “chase scene” and noting Petruchio’s interest in money, Pilkington suggested that Zeffirelli “darkens Petruchio” (170) in various ways, especially in the ways he mistreats Katherine without actually beating her. He reported that Zeffirelli and Burton were both surprised when Taylor played the submission scene as if she were sincere rather than ironic (171).

Robert Hapgood, in his essay from 1997 titled “Popularizing Shakespeare: The Artistry of Franco Zeffirelli,” discussed the director’s talent for alerting viewers “to everything they should know”; said that in Taming he “seems intent on displaying everything he can do at once”; and noted his use of “busy cross-cutting,” hilarious exaggeration, “slap-stick” comedy, witty and combative dialogue, repetition of “key phrases,” and “mocking music.” According to Hapgood, “Such textured interworking of parts extends to all aspects of the film” (87).

In another essay from 1997 (“A Shrew for the Times”), Diana E. Henderson wrote that “the ironies and wit of Zeffirelli’s Shrew defy oversimple interpretation of this as a conservative film. In addition to its unusual crediting of Katherina with inferiority akin to the director’s own, it is also a work of pop art in postmodern style”—a “minefield of parody” (159).

Douglas Brode, in his book from 2000 titled Shakespeare in the Movies, considered Zeffirelli’s Shrew “uneven” and “overheated” and regretted both the trimming of the subdued subplot and the selection of Elizabeth Taylor to play Katherina (23). He did admire the closing scene, asserting that Zeffirelli “[c]leverly coaxed Taylor into reading the lines with a trace of irony, suggesting Kate may now actually gain the upper hand at that moment when Petruchio believes he has finally won,” and concluding that “Zeffirelli included … radical [i.e., liberal] ideas in his interpretation, making his version the polar opposite of Sam Taylor’s” (24).

In another book from 2000, this one titled Shakespeare on Screen (140–41), Daniel Rosenthal wrote that “[w]ith his first film, Zeffirelli turned one of Shakespeare’s crudest comedies into the noisiest of all Shakespeare movies.” He reported critical disagreements about the film; observed that seventy percent of Shakespeare’s words were cut; thought Zeffirelli stressed the Bianca subplot; described his “spectacular treatment” of the wedding; and considered Taylor unconvincing, although noting that she plays the final submission as sincere (140).

Stephen Buhler, in his 2002 book Shakespeare in the Cinema, said that “Zeffirelli connects Shakespeare’s characters with his stars’ public personae to rewrite the play as Katherine’s escape from being tamed” and suggested that there is “a savage joy in [Burton’s Petruchio’s] onslaughts against church, society, family, and all their trappings. He finds a kindred spirit in Taylor’s Katherine, who not only chafes but storms against polite—and patriarchal—expectations for her life and conduct” (67). Buhler saw, in this film, a “stress on competition—on regendering one-upmanship”—that he considered “appropriate to the play’s conclusion” (68).

Diana E. Henderson, in a 2003 updated version (“A Shrew for the Times, Revisited” [127–31]) of an essay first published in 1997, argued here that Taylor is presented “far more empathetically and with greater agency than in most video versions” of the play but then uses her power to affirm traditional gender roles (125). Henderson found a “surprising undercurrent of melancholy and nostalgia for home” in this production and said it presented a “predominantly boorish” Petruchio and an “often tearful Katharina” [sic] along with “sentimental music and lingering close-up shots” (126). She related the film’s tone to Zeffirelli’s own complicated biography; said it affirmed “traditional values” (126–28); and saw “Katharina as simultaneously feeling betrayed, isolated, and gentle, giving the film a sentimental tone” (128). Henderson argued that Katharina’s skill at housekeeping reflects Zeffirelli’s “nostalgia for peasant life,” so that he “re-creates feudalism as the good old days,” although she did not consider this production entirely conservative (129). She noted the ways the “complexity” of its “camera-play” complicated the ways Katharina is presented (131).

In an essay from 2004 humorously titled “Male Pattern Boldness: Zeffirelli’s Feminist Adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew,” William Brugger asserted that “[i]n Shakespeare’s Shrew, Petruchio has the power; [but] in Zeffirelli’s Shrew, much of that power is transferred to Kate. The film, then, may be viewed as feminist not only because the female is empowered, but also because the male has been stripped of much of his [own authority]” (13–14). According to Brugger, “If Zeffirelli had an agenda in his characterization of Petruchio, it may have been to exaggerate his stereotypical manliness to the point of ridicule …. Without question, Zeffirelli’s Petruchio is a well-drawn likeness of Shakespeare’s comic figure: audiences laugh with him as he merrily goes about taming Kate. But a generous portion of the film’s collective humor,” Brugger continued, “is also aimed at Petruchio; audiences laugh at him—at his grossness, his impropriety, his insobriety, even his naivete—either in mockery or out of vicarious embarrassment.” (14). Brugger thought that “the view that Kate ‘won’ this battle of the sexes seems to have prevailed, putting Zeffirelli ahead of his time by at least ten years, and as much as twenty, guiding Shakespeare’s future as much as preserving his past” (23).

Samuel Crowl, in his 2008 study Shakespeare and Film: A Norton Guide (54–55), praised the “raucous,” “energetic” crowd scene; said Katherina and Petruchio instantly identify each other as mutually attractive “independent spirits”; and claimed that their fights are treated both as “farce” and as “foreplay” (54). Noting how Zeffirelli enlarges the depiction of dialogue by cutting actual lines and substituting clever relevant action for the missing words, Crowl finally, however, thought the film becomes too much about Burton and Taylor (55).

Discussing the movie in a 2008 article titled “Tracking the Sounds of Franco Zeffirelli’s The Taming of the Shrew,” David L. Kranz wrote that the film “artfully structures a complex mix of music, sound, and verbal silence in ways that underscore and even clarify the director’s romantic yet progressive interpretation of the play. While it would be hyperbolic to say that patterns of sound are the key to the film’s interpretive insights,” Kranz continued, “Zeffirelli’s manipulation of sound often does more than just accompany visual design and dialogue in a simple way. Rather, … sound effects and music throughout the film demonstrate the director’s attempt to provide a mix of realism and artifice that raises the question of artistic and human illusion.” According to Kranz, “Zeffirelli and [Nino] Rota [the film’s composer] create and position a number of musical motifs, greatly varying their volume, rhythm, and tone, to advance the director’s view that Kate, under Petruchio’s tutelage, overcomes her childish inferiority and the defensive shrewishness that masks it, eventually working with her husband to achieve a marriage of mutual love and equality of wit unusual in such a patriarchal society and apparently sexist play” (95).

In an essay from 2009 titled “Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew and Screwball Comedy,” Mei Zhu argued that Zeffirelli’s Taming resembles a Hollywood screwball comedy and thus set a precedent for Kenneth Branagh’s later, similar film version of Love’s Labour’s Lost (17–18). Discussing such topics as Petruchio as an antihero (18-19), class differences between Petruchio and Katharina not present in the play (19); and the way Zeffirelli “makes Petruchio more shrewish than Katharina” (19), Zhu asserted that Zeffirelli’s Katharina is “intelligent, sophisticated, and active” (and thus “a much more fully developed character than in the play” [20]) and compared Zeffirelli’s film to such earlier screwball comedies as Bringing Up Baby (21–22).

Peter Cochran, in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (22–25), suggested that Kate acts as she does because she cannot stand seeing Bianca’s hypocrisy and manipulation; maintained that Kate wants romance but, by behaving as she does, makes achieving it unlikely; said that Petruchio also detests hypocrisy and that he teaches Kate that playing a role can be fun if also sometimes humiliating; and asserted that Kate’s final speech shows that she has learned to play a role and that she pleases Petruchio by doing so. Cochran claimed that Zeffirelli and his two stars failed to comprehend Kate’s personality; criticized the fact that three quarters of the words were cut in favor of “witless knockabout”; called the acting unsubtle (22) but said that the play is made accessible to a broad audience by substituting stage business for Shakespeare’s words. He found much of the action unimpressive; considered Burton unappealing, ineffective, and boorish; thought the humor too self-conscious to be funny (23); and faulted the wooing scene for being badly edited and badly handled. Claiming that the film fails because Burton and Taylor are unappealing and finding Kate’s conversion unconvincing. Cochran perceived no real chemistry between Kate and Petruchio; thought this film shows its debts to the Pickford version; said that the “humanity and wit in Shakespeare’s play” are “ignored”; and dismissed the film as unfunny “because we don’t care what happens” (24). He called Kate’s final speech unmotivated and concluded that in this film “much of the play has been cut, and so much of what’s left has been ruined” (25).

In an essay on the Zeffirelli film from 2013 (147–57), Ramona Wray surveyed responses by previous critics; noted the film’s “[o]verall rambunctiousness”; observed its debts to Greek ‘New Comedy’ (150); and praised Taylor and Burton for “excel[ing] in the knockabout comedy demanded of their roles” and for being “physically intrepid and courageous” (151). Commenting that in their costumes “Katharina and Petruchio are colour-coded, their bright colours implying a latent rapport” (152), Wray suggested that because of the resemblances between the lives of the two leads and the behavior of the two characters they portrayed, “Shakespeare’s notoriously anti-feminist message can be sidestepped,” so that in the end “the sexual-political element is rendered irrelevant through an intertextual interface that prompts audiences to regard Petruchio and Katharina as a natural couple” because “through their Shakespearean counterparts, Burton and Taylor are enabled to perform their own marriage” (155).

Peter E. S. Babiak, in his 2016 overview of a hundred years of Shakespeare films (103–8), noted that Burton and Taylor had recently starred in a film version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (about another battling couple [103–4]); emphasized the way Padua is presented as a realistic-looking city (104); suggested that the film is “structured around carnival inversions, around situations meeting and becoming their opposites” (104); and wrote that this “pattern of carnival inversion is the structural principle of this film and also reverses standard critical interpretations of the play and its characters,” so that, for example, “[f]ar from being chaste, Bianca is depicted as a flirt who quite enjoys the attention of several men” (105). Babiak offered many examples of “carnival inversion” (105–7); thought that Katherina’s “seeming submission to Petruchio is intended as an invitation to enter into a mature relationship in which they are partners rather than combatants”; and suggested that she may partly be “expressing regret for her part in their former childish relationship” (107). Asserting that Zeffirelli emphasizes inversions visually and that he ultimately makes us wonder which woman is a shrew and which a virtuous wife (108), Babiak concluded by writing that the “function of the [Christopher] Sly induction in Shakespeare’s play is fulfilled by the carnival explosion that begins Zeffirelli’s film, in which we see nobles acting like commoners and commoners taking on the roles of nobles” (108).

R. S. White, in his 2016 book Shakespeare’s Cinema of Love, suggested that Zeffirelli’s film “relies overtly on the actors’ reputations and personalities” and that audiences would have remembered that Burton and Taylor had also recently played another complicated couple (Antony and Cleopatra) in a major Hollywood blockbuster (47).

1980–81 BBC Production

Directed by Jonathan Miller, this production featured Simon Chandler as Lucentio; Anthony Pedley as Tranio; John Franklyn-Robbins as Baptista; Frank Thornton as Gremio; Sarah Badel as Katherine; Jonathan Cecil as Hortensio; Susan Penhaligon as Bianca; John Cleese as Petruchio; and David Kincaid as Grumio.

Henry Fenwick, in his essay on “The Production” in the booklet the BBC published to accompany the first broadcast of this adaptation (17–26), noted that Jonathan Miller, the producer and director, discouraged the actors from treating the play as farcical. John Cleese, playing Petruchio, was dubious about being involved in a Shakespeare production, especially any production full of declamations or overly reverential in tone. Cleese also was not at first particularly impressed by this specific play (17–18). Miller said he wanted the comedy to arise from the plot, rather than seeming imposed. Miller also wanted the production to reflect the way Elizabethans actually thought of women as subordinate to fathers and husbands—an attitude different from modern views. Miller did omit the induction—his one major change, which helped set a serious, puritanical tone from the start, a tone influenced by Miller’s reading of recent historians (18). According to Miller, Cleese welcomed and benefited from Miller’s approach, which fit his own personality. Colin Lowrey, the set designer, drew on a Renaissance Italian stage design, on Dutch paintings, on paintings by Edward Hopper, but especially on paintings by the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico, with an overriding emphasis on simplicity (19–20). Alun Hughes, the costume designer, drew on the artists de La Tour and Caravaggio for inspiration, with again a stress on simplicity. Whereas Bianca’s clothes started light but then darkened, Kate’s clothes changed in the opposite direction (20). Susan Penhaligon, playing Bianca, wanted to emphasize that character’s strengths and willfulness—a willfulness that finally makes her marriage less potentially happy than Kate’s (21–22). Cleese appreciated that he was mainly expected to speak clearly, not declaim; he disliked Shakespearean acting that seems too formal or contrived (22). Cleese felt that Petruchio himself disliked pretense, saying the character thought he knew how to handle women and how to make a marriage really work (23–24). Sarah Badel, playing Kate, played her as a passionate woman seeking real love—slightly mad but instinctual, who drives others a bit crazy and is therefore funny. Badel did not blame Kate’s father for Kate’s behavior; she saw Kate as motivated by fear of never finding the right man but as someone who finds Petruchio, who can dish it out but also take it because he really loves her. Ultimately, according to Fenwick, this production emphasizes harmony and love (25–26).

In their helpful critical anthology Shakespeare on Television, J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen surveyed various early reviews of this production, with a 1980 reviewer for the London Times admiring Cleese’s “dangerous edge” and a reviewer for Britain’s The Listener in the same year calling this version “fresh and appealing,” its casting “inspired,” and both of the leads effective. Also in 1980, this time in Britain’s Punch, another reviewer commended the emotional complexity of Cleese’s Petruchio but regretted that sometimes his speaking was hard to follow. In the United States in 1981, a number of commentators reviewed the broadcast. One, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, called Cleese’s Petruchio “precise, carefully modulated, and ever-so-slightly insane”; wrote that he was “capably supported” by a “fiery yet somehow subtle Badel”; and termed the production as a whole “cheerfully untamed.” A writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune praised it as “beautifully done and wonderful fun” and appreciated Badel’s “understandable, clearly developed Kate” in this “quietly, unfailingly ingenious” staging, although the reviewer for the Washington Post, while praising the sets, found the performances dull and the camera work static. A writer for an academic journal appreciated Badel’s final contentment and found the whole “final scene far more convincing than usual,” while a lengthy review in London’s Times Literary Supplement considered this production “a simplified version” of the play; regretted the loss of the well-written and complicating prologue; and termed the whole effort “generally prosaic” and “literalistic.” Calling some performances “stylized” and “consciously comic” but finding “few genuinely funny sequences” (266), this reviewer observed some elements of farce, extolled Cleese’s “splendid physical presence,” considered Petruchio’s relationship with Kate “a wholly credible process of mutual adjustment,” and regarded Badel as a good match for Cleese. This reviewer did not find the BBC effort “an inventively funny production, nor a deeply imaginative one” and lamented that Miller “had little success in finding the play’s natural rhythms.”

Kenneth Rothwell, in another long and almost wholly positive assessment (this one in the Shakespeare Quarterly and quoted by Bulman and Coursen), admired Miller’s inventiveness; found “Badel’s Katherina … full of surprises”; recalled “with pleasure [many] visually arresting bits of business”; considered the production both “good theatre [and] good television”; praised various other “brilliant theatrical touches”; and reiterated the opinion that this was “not only good theatre but adroit television.” Admiring the long takes to which the Washington Post reviewer objected (268) and praising many “rewarding” and “cunning touches,” Rothwell ended by commending the “intelligent editing and camera work.” On the other hand, Irene Dash, writing in the Shakespeare on Film Newsletter and quoted by Bulman and Coursen, found this production “enlivened by some fine moments and crushed by some dull ones” but disliked Miller’s “culture-bound vision of women,” which she called “bound by the old cliches” and by an “inability to see Kate as a whole person”—an inability that “informs and mars the work” and made Miller the latest in “a long line of misogynistic producers who could not accept a strong, attractive Kate” (268).

Herbert Coursen, in his 1992 book Shakespearean Performance as Interpretation, tended to agree with Dash, saw Kate as a victim of Miller, objected to her almost literal taming, considered Miller’s view of the character and the play constrained (59), and thought the production went “from bad to worse,” with a “static camera,” badly delivered lines, more static camera work, and generally “dull” scenes (59–60). Coursen did admire Cleese’s “sensitive” but nonetheless sometimes ineloquent Petruchio, although he called the production mostly “dismal” (60), called Badel mostly hysterical, and termed “her crucial scene with Bianca … a misdirected, or undirected mess” (61).

In a 2006 overview of the play (131–36), Margaret Kidnie noted Miller’s reliance on “late Elizabethan, rather than late-twentieth century, assumptions” (131) and wrote that the fact that “Miller’s conception of an Elizabethan world-view only works if the Induction scenes are cut suggests strongly that his production is no less an imposition on a 400-year old text than the feminist interpretations he dismisses as ‘silly’ on grounds of anachronism” (132). Kidnie thought that Cleese’s Petruchio exhibited “a quiet stillness that can seem icy, and even menacing” (133); found “something [equally] chilling … about Katherina’s enforced behaviour modification” (135); and saw this production as “a sombre, even punitive, investigation of gender relations” (136).

Peter Cochran, in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare (78–80), considered this broadcast one of the least successful BBC Productions (78); found the first twenty minutes unfunny; termed Cleese too “cold” and “distant”; called the courtship “horrible” because it lacks passion and humor; blamed Miller for this perversely innovative interpretation; and preferred the 1929 Pickford film, regarding the BBC effort as too intellectual and the lack of an audience disastrous (80).

Discussing the BBC production in his 2016 book Shakespeare’s Cinema of Love, R. S. White called it the “only filmed version … to pay full attention to Bianca’s wooing”; reported that it “add[ed] at the end an irrelevant and completely extraneous madrigal”; declared that “this was one of the better productions in the often moribund BBC series, partly because of the choice of a genuine comic as Petruccio, John Cleese”; and remarked that, by “allowing Cleese to play the familiar character of Fawlty [from his much-loved comedy program Fawlty Towers] while giving full rein to Shakespearean language … the production highlights facets missing from the other, more glamorous, colourful, and farcical versions” (62).

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