The Taming of the Shrew on screen
The earliest cinematic adaptation of the play is D.W. Griffith's eleven-minute The Taming of the Shrew, made for Biograph in 1908, starring Florence Lawrence as Katherina and Arthur V. Johnson as Petruchio.
It is thought to be the first version to show scenes which take place off-stage in the play; in this case, the wedding and the journey to Petruchio's house.
[2] A 1913 Italian version, the twenty-two-minute La bisbetica domata, was directed by Arrigo Frusta and starred Gigetta Morano and Eleuterio Rodolfi.
Intended more as a showcase for a new type of sound system than an adaptation of the play, the film consisted entirely of the scene where Petruchio and Katherina first meet.
One of a series of forty-minute adaptations of classic texts released under the Gems of Literature banner, only the second half of the film survives, and the final scene is incomplete as a result of print damage.
This version very much adopts Petruchio's perspective, and one of the intertitles reads "by noon the next day, though famished and weary for want of food and rest, the Shrew deep in her heart admired the man whose temper is greater than her own.
Graham Holderness argues of this scene, the collapse of an ecclesiastical service into a merciless parody, unrestrained revelry and orgiastic release is Zeffirelli's attempt to reconstruct the carnivals of the Middle Ages [...] in the course of the opening sequence, framed as an "induction" by the superimposition of the film titles, we observe the barbaric anti-ceremony of clerics wearing grotesque animal masks, sacred music giving way to obscene and cacophonous chants and a blasphemously parodic image of the Virgin.
This ritualistic subversion of hierarchy and orthodoxy is a visually powerful and historically detailed dramatization of those medieval festivals of misrule conjecturally derived from the Saturnalian rituals of Rome [...] the elements of parody and subversion, the substitution of license for restraint, obscenity for virtue, the orgiastic celebration of the material body for the metaphysical rituals of the Mass, are here correctly identified as a form of drama [...] by jettisoning the Sly-frame, Zeffirelli may in the opinion of some observers have been indicating his contempt for the original.
But [...] Zeffirelli has sought and found an alternative establishing context which is at once an educated and intelligent historical reconstruction and brilliant exposé of the production's principles of interpretation.
[15] However, Elizabeth Schafer calls the film "intensely conservative," citing the controversial advertising blurb; "A motion picture for every man who ever gave the back of his hand to his beloved...and for every woman who deserved it.
[16][18] In 1961, Sergei Kolosov directed a black and white theatrical adaptation for Mosfilm, starring Lyudmila Kasatkina and Andrei Alekseyevich Popov.
[49][50] The first television performance of the Shakespearean text was in the United States in 1950, broadcast live on CBS as part of the Westinghouse Studio One series.
A heavily edited sixty-minute modern-dress performance, written by Worthington Miner and directed by Paul Nickell, it starred Lisa Kirk and Charlton Heston.
[51] Diana E. Henderson writes "this version relentlessly reiterates conventional post-war ideas of gender difference [...] the production as a whole serves to legitimatise the domestication of women.
"[52] In 1952, BBC Television Service screened a live adaptation as part of their Sunday Night Theatre series, directed by Desmond Davis and starring Margaret Johnston and Stanley Baker.
[53] In 1956, NBC's Hallmark Hall of Fame screened the first colour television adaptation, directed by George Schaefer, and starring Lilli Palmer and Maurice Evans (who also produced).
The initial script was written by Michael Hogan, who included the Induction, and kept Sly on stage for the entire show, which culminated with him beating his own wife, much to the delight of the actors who have just performed for him.
He goes to his room and begins reading, and the episode then takes place in his mind as he imagines the members of the cast of Moonlighting in an adaptation of the play itself, with Cybill Shepherd as Katherina and Bruce Willis as Petruchio.
Directed by Aida Ziablikova and adapted from Shakespeare by Leon Garfield, it is voiced by Amanda Root and Nigel Le Vaillant, with Malcolm Storry as Sly.
[58] The 1999 Chilean soap opera La Fiera is a free adaptation of the play; the story is set in the late 1990s and relocated to Chiloé, an island in the south of Chile.
Similarly, the 2000-2001 Brazilian soap opera O Cravo e a Rosa relocates the play to 1920s São Paulo and introduces Catarina, a wealthy feminist who doesn't believe in marriage and slowly finds herself falling in love with a gruff peasant farmer named Petruchio.
Written by Kenny Buford and directed by Dana De Vally Piazza the episode depicts the main character, Breanna (Kyla Pratt) getting the leading part in a school performance of The Taming Of The Shrew.
", featured Anna Nicole Smith attending acting classes in Los Angeles, where she performs the first meeting between Katherina and Petruchio, alongside actor Danny Bonaduce.
Written in modern prose, the episode relocates the story to contemporary London, where Katherine (Shirley Henderson) is an abrasive career politician who is told she must find a husband if she wants to become the party leader.
[64] In 1980, BBC2 aired an adaptation for their BBC Television Shakespeare series, directed by Jonathan Miller and starring Sarah Badel and John Cleese.
According to Cleese, who consulted a psychiatrist who specialised in treating "shrews", Petruchio doesn't believe in his own antics, but in the craftiest and most sophisticated way he needs to show Kate certain things about her behaviour.
"[68] In his review of the adaptation for the Financial Times, Chris Dunkley referred to this issue, calling Cleese's Petruchio "an eccentrically pragmatic social worker using the wayward client's own doubtful habits to calm her down.
[71] Miller was determined the production not become a farce, and in that vein, two key texts were Lawrence Stone's The Family, Sex and Marriage in England: 1500-1800 and Michael Walzer's The Revolution of the Saints, which he used to help ground his interpretation in recognisably Renaissance-esque societal terms; Petruchio's actions are based on accepted economic, social and religious views of the time, as are Baptista's.
"[75] Diana E. Henderson was unimpressed with this approach, however, writing "it was the perfect production to usher in the neo-conservative 1980s" and "this BBC-TV museum piece unabashedly celebrates the order achieved through female submission.
"[77] Similarly, the BBC Shakespeare's textual editor, David Snodin wrote Jonathan Miller and I decided after considerable discussion to omit the whole of that curious, lengthy, and disappointingly unresolved opening known as the "Induction".
