Lovers and Tamers: Transmediations of Shakespeare's TAMING OF THE SHREW to Visual Culture
Lovers and Tamers: Transmediations of Shakespeare's TAMING OF THE SHREW to Visual Culture

Summary/Abstract: The critical dispute in the interpretive history of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew is traditionally polarised between whether Katherina is - at the end of the play - tamed or not. This article examines part of this interpretive history as a barometer of cultural coding of domestic love. Instead of deciding yet again if Katherina is sincere, or just acting obedient, I want to see how different cultural contexts choose their reading of a canonic play in popular culture. The article shows how and where the social codes of these cultural contexts become visible in selecting their interpretive arguments from a virtually endless line of possibilities. The material of this analysis is a double transmediation: of literature to film, and of film to film posters. Among some well known adaptations and remakes of The Taming of the Shrew, I also examine a lesser-known Romanian filmic reference to this intertext.

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