The Original Ending of The Taming of the Shrew

Abstract

ODAY I should like to discuss with you a somewhat minor problem in the textual and in the literary criticism of Shakespeare.* The Taming of the Shrew was printed in the Folio of i623 without any corresponding entry in the Stationers' Register. The authorities must have regarded the entry dated 2 May 1594 of thirty years earlier for the quarto known as The Taming of A Shrew as relevant. The relation, however, between the Quarto text of 1594 and that of the Folio text of i623 is still a scholarly issue. Today I propose to consider the question raised by the final scene in A Shrew. The Folio version of i623 ends with the scene in which the Shrew vindicates her husband's faith in her obedience by answering, in spite of the refusal of Bianca, and the newly-wedded widow, in similar circumstances, his request that she join him as he sits with her father and the other newly-married men. This is the scene that used to worry some of my older lady friends in an age when husbands were still taken seriously. Today I should no longer try to reassure them by pointing out that married women in Elizabeth's day, if we are to believe the comments of continental visitors, were very much like those of today and astonished strangers by the freedom and social equality they took for granted. Today, instead, I shall try to persuade you that Shakespeare in his earlier years was too wise a man and too interested in the contribution the ladies of London made to the box-office takings to complete his play on the note on which the Folio text now ends. The original ending of Shakespeare's play is to be found, very imperfectly reported, so I shall argue, in the final scene of the Quarto of