Brian Morris was Professor of English Literature at Sheffield University and a general editor of both the Arden Shakespeare and the New Mermaid Dramatists series. His other publications include editions of the plays of John Ford and the poems of John Cleveland.
Morris’s introduction begins with a discussion of the text as it first appeared in the First Folio of 1623. In the next section, he analyzes the problematic relationship between The Taming of the Shrew and The Taming of a Shrew, a different play which first appeared in text 29 years before the First Folio, and whose virtually identical name has caused much confusion. Morris then considers the date, sources, and authorship of the play, addressing the question of whether Shakespeare himself wrote it. In the last and most substantial part of the introduction, the editor examines the play’s structures, themes (such as education, love, and marriage), and afterlife. Three appendices follow the text of the play: evidence to establish the relationship of The Shrew and A Shrew, from Samuel Hickson; the Sly scenes in A Shrew; and a source (from Gascoigne’s Supposes) and analogues.
JONATHAN BATE is Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, University of Warwick, UK, and the editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Yale and UCLA and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine's College, Cambridge, and a Governor and Board member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. A prominent critic, award-winning biographer and broadcaster, he is the author of several books on Shakespeare, including The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador), which was praised by Sir Peter Hall, founder of the RSC, as 'the best modern book on Shakespeare.' In June 2006 he was awarded a CBE by HM The Queen 'for services to Higher Education'.
ERIC RASMUSSEN is Professor of English at the University of Nevada, USA, and the Textual Editor of The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works. He is co-editor of the Norton Anthology of English Renaissance Drama and has edited volumes in both the Arden Shakespeare and Oxford World's Classics series. He is the General Textual Editor of the Internet Shakespeare Editions project - one of the most visited Shakespeare websites in the world. For over nine years he has written the annual review of editions and textual studies for the Shakespeare Survey.
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
