The Tamer Tamed
The Tamer Tamed is a play by John Fletcher, first performed in 1611. It is a comedic sequel to William Shakespeare's 1594 play The Taming of the Shrew. To oversimplify and oversummarize, the plot switches the conventional male/female roles, and the women seek to tame the men. In this sequel, Katherine (the "shrew" in the original) has died, and Petruchio takes a second wife, Maria. Maria denounces her former mildness and vows not to sleep with Petruchio until she "turn him and bend him as [she] list, and mold him into a babe again." After many comedic exchanges and hilarious plot twists, Petruchio is finally "tamed" in the eyes of Maria, and the play ends with the two together. The play reflects how society's views of women, femininity, and 'domestic propriety' were beginning to change. It is said Fletcher wrote this play to attract Shakespeare's attention, and it seems to have worked - the two went on to collaborate on at least three plays (Fletcher wrote about 42 plays in his life, 21 of which were collaborations with other known dramatists). Recently, the Royal Shakespeare Company resurrected the play, which had sunk into obscurity during the previous three centuries. The play ran in their theatre in England from January 15 - March 6 2004, no doubt the most important and longest-running rendition of the play since its creation (and possibly ever).
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