This book is part of a controversial new series that raises fundamental
questions about the authenticity of Shakespeare's texts as we know them
today. In a radical departure from existing series, it presents the
earliest known editions of Shakespeare's playsówhich differ
substantially from the present versionsóand argues that these are the
most authentic we have. The editors present the text in a form as close
as possible to its first publication. It includes an introduction, notes
and an appendix containing sample facsimile pages from the original
printed texts. Throughout, the emphasis of the critical apparatus is on
the theoretical and historical significance of the text and its
contextual relationships with theatre, history and cultural politics.
Published in 1594 under the title The Taming of a Shrew, this play has
always been regarded as an earlier version by another dramatist, or as a
corrupt memorial reconstruction of Shakespeare's The Taming of the
Shrew. Yet the version accepted as Shakespeare's was not published until
the First Folio of 1623. The text of A Shrew differs from that of The
Shrew. It contains, for example, a complete theatrical framing device in
the form of the Lord's practical joke on Christopher Sly, where the
Shakespearean text drops Sly and the framing device early in the play.
From the beginning of this century the non-Shakespearean text has been
used in theatrical practice to complete the authorized but insufficient
Shakespearean play. This new edition makes The Taming of a Shrew
available in full, not as a source or analogue or memorial
reconstruction of a Shakespearean original, but in its own right as a
brilliantly inventive popular Elizabethan play.
