Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s the Taming of the Shrew

Margaret Dupuis is a tenured member of the English faculty at Western Michigan University and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on early modern drama and poetry. She has published articles on Thomas Wyatt and John Marston. Grace Tiffany is a professor of English at Western Michigan University and a 2010 recipient of that institution's Distinguished Teaching Award. She is the author of Erotic Beasts and Social Monsters: Shakespeare, Jonson, and Comic Androgyny, as well as five works of historical fiction based on Shakespeare's comedies and maintains a Shakespeare blog at shakespearefiction.blogspot.com. She teaches Shakespeare and early modern British literature.

The impetus for this Approaches to Teaching volume on The Taming of the Shrew grew from the editors' desire to discover why a play notorious for its controversial exploration of conflicts between men and women and the challenges of marriage is enduringly popular in the classroom, in the performing arts, and in scholarship. The result is a volume that offers practical advice to teachers on editions and teaching resources in part 1, "Materials," while illuminating how the play's subtle and complex arguments regarding not just marriage but a host of other subjects--modes of early modern education, the uses of clever rhetoric, intergenerational and class politics, the power of theater--are being brought to life in college classrooms. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," are written by English and theater instructors who have taught in a variety of academic settings and cover topics including early modern homilies and music, Hollywood versions of The Taming of the Shrew, and student performances.