From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (London: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 487-89.
TAMING OF THE SHREW
1596-97
April 9. To the King's house, and there we saw "The Tameing of a Shrew," which hath some very good pieces in it, but generally is but a mean play; and the best part "Sawny," done by Lacy, hath not half its life, by reason of the words, I suppose, not being understood, at least by me. -- PEPYS, SAMUEL, 1667, Diary and Correspondence.
"The Taming of the Shrew" is almost the only one of Shakespear's comedies that has a regular plot, and downright moral. -- HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1817-69, Characters of Shakespear's Plays, p. 219.
In the shape in which the piece lies before us it possesses the peculiarity of appearing at once perfect and imperfect. If we confine our attention to the principal part the spectacle as it were within the spectacle -- it seems no doubt complete and finished. On the other hand, the induction is left undeveloped and incomplete. -- ULRICI, HERMANN, 1839, Shakspeare's Dramatic Art, p. 294.
He has stamped upon the comedy throughout, and especially in the Induction, the indelible and unquestionable marks of his own mind, by deliberately rejecting many passages of elaborate and even splendid imagery such as no poet of that age would have been ashamed of, to substitute other passages, and even scenes of a higher and purer poetry and sweeter melody.-- VERPLANCK, GULIAN CROMMELIN, 1844-47, ed. The Illustrated Shakespeare.
Shakespeare is quite as much at home in the sports afforded by birds of the air, as in the pursuit of beasts of chase; his knowledge of Falconry, or Hawking, so favourite a pastime with the noble and gentle of his day, is shown by numerous passages in his plays; and probably no writer on the Noble Science ever compressed so much technical information in a narrower compass than we find in eight lines in "The Taming of the Shrew," where Petruchio rejoices over the result of his treatment of the newly-married Katharine:--
"My falcon now is sharp, and passing empty, etc."
-- FRENCH, GEORGE RUSSELL, 1868, Shakspeareana Genealogica, Appendix, p. 572.
The critics have been very warm in praise of Shakespeare's Induction, some, however regretting that he did not keep it up till the end of the play, others suspecting that he did so keep it up, but that the continuation has been lost. I think otherwise decidedly, being convinced that in this as in other things the Poet was wiser than his critics. For the purpose of the Induction was but to start an interest in the play; and he probably knew that such interest, once started, would be rather hindered than furthered by any coming-in of other matter; that there would be no time to think of Sly amidst such a whirlwind of oddities and whimsicalities as he was going to raise. But the regret in question well approves the goodness of the thing; for, the better the thing, the more apt men are to think they have not enough until they have too much. -- HUDSON, HENRY NORMAN, 1880, ed. Harvard Shakespeare, vol. II, p. 136.
The refined instinct, artistic judgment, and consummate taste of Shakespeare were perhaps never so wonderfully shown as in his recast of another man's work -- a man of real if rough genius for comedy -- which we get in the "Taming of the Shrew." Only the collation of scene with scene, then of speech with speech, then of line. with line, will show how much may be borrowed from a stranger's material and how much may be added to it by the same stroke of a single hand. All the force and humour alike of character and situation belong to Shakespeare's eclipsed and forlorn precursor; he has added nothing; he has tempered and enriched everything. That the luckless author of the first sketch is like to remain a man as nameless as the deed of the witches in "Macbeth" unless some chance or caprice of accident should suddenly flash favouring light on his now impersonal and indiscoverable individuality, seems clear enough when we take into account the double and final disproof of his imaginary identity with Marlowe, which Mr. Dyce has put forward with such unanswerable certitude. He is a clumsy and coarse-fingered plagiarist from that poet and his stolen jewels of expression look so grossly out of place in the homely setting of his usual style that they seem transmuted from real to sham. On the other hand, he is of all the Pre-Shakespeareans, known to us incomparably the truest, the richest, the most powerful and original humourist; one indeed without a second on that ground, for "the rest are nowhere." -- SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, p. 124.
It will be seen that the element of Intrigue, of Situation, predominates in this play, and its instrumentality is Disguise. The Romanie origin and coloring are observable in the Italian names, scenery, location, manners -- in its Italian form generally. But the Teutonic element of character also makes a beginning. It is however, rude and simple; it does not show the fine and detailed portraiture which will hereafter be developed; there is a single, dominant trait without relief. The product is unripe and uncouth in some respects, yet at the bottom the procedure is true -- the retribution of the deed is the fundamental principle. The conviction and the method of the Master thus peer out in his earliest works. . . . The question whether it was written -- wholly, partially, or not at all -- by Shakespeare, is a matter of minor importance; the play remains exactly the same, hence a just criticism of it, as a whole, could not be changed by changing its authorship. There it stands in the book, there it belongs, and there it will remain, for it is an organic link in that series called the works of William Shakespeare. -- SNIDER, DENTON JAQUES, 1887, The Shakespearian Drama, The Comedies, pp. 99, 100.
1. -- If the author of "The Taming of a Shrew" was not William Shakespeare, he must have been a man acquainted with Stratford-on-Avon, with Wilmecote, with the Sly family, and with the tinker himself. Is it probable that two authors should exist having a cognizance of all these facts? 2. -- If the author of the older comedy was not Shakespeare, the latter must have pirated an enormous quantity of lines and scenes from some other man, a fact which would not have escaped the notice of those who were ever ready to ridicule and censure him. But there is nothing on record to prove that he was ever criticised unfavorably for his production. 3.-- Burby in 1606-7 sold three plays to Ling, all of which were then recognized as Shakespeare's, and one of them was the older comedy. Burby's transactions were honorable, and he would scarcely have foisted a counterfeit production upon his buyer. 4. -- If the play as it now stands was not written before 1609 and after November 19th, 1607, all the contemporary evidence of Greene, Dekker, Henslowe, Kyd, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Rowlands must be considered as worthless; we must assign an earlier date to "Hamlet" than the one now usually received; and we must ignore the remarkable circumstance that Smethwick bought the old play in 1607, and lent the proprietors of the first Folio an improved version of it in 1622 or 1623. -- FREY, ALBERT R., 1888, Bankside Shakespeare, vol. II, Taming of the Shrew, Introduction, p. 37.
He took very lightly this piece of task-work, executed, it would seem, to the order of his fellow-players. In point of diction and metre it is much less highly finished than others of his youthful comedies; but if we compare the Shakespearian play (in whose title the Shrew receives the definite instead of the indefinite article) point by point with the original, we obtain an invaluable glimpse into Shakespeare's comic, as formerly into his tragic, workshop. Few examples are so instructive as this. -- BRANDES, GEORGE, 1898, William Shakespeare, A Critical Study, vol. I, p. 45.
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