Why is taming of the shrew a play within a play

I suspect that Shakespeare used metatheatre to create an additional layer of protection for himself. Artists challenging authority do so at grave risk, so one cannot be too cautious, especially in a time and place where sedition is dealt with in the harshest of ways. Filed under Literature. Tagged as analysis , art , artists , authority , blog , book reviews , books , cambio , Christopher Sly , clothes , comedy , criticism , drama , English , Hamlet , induction , literature , Lucentio , metatheatre , metatheatricality , mousetrap , patriarchy , Petruchio , play , Queen Elizabeth , reading , renaissance , review , sedition , Shakespeare , shrew , symbol , symbolism , women's issues , writing.

Shakesphere is a tough read to say the least. In highschool I read the Prince and the Puaper and basically had to reread it twice!

LOL — yeah, the Elizabethan English takes some getting used to. Hope you and yours are well. TTY soon. I had totally forgotten this. Or have I see productions that cut the layers and presented only the main play?

Hi Amber. You are correct. Every stage production I have seen has skipped that altogether. Too bad, because it adds some complexity to the piece. SLY …Is not a comonty comedy a Christmas gambold or a tumbling-trick? PAGE No, my good lord, it is more pleasing stuff. SLY What, household stuff? PAGE It is a kind of history. The Taming of the Shrew. Discover More Stuff that Happens Stuff about the induction another word for introduction A Lord finds a drunken tinker, Christopher Sly, asleep in the street.

The Lord decides to play a trick on Sly by telling him that he has had amnesia for 15 years and is really a Lord. Sly awakens to his new identity. The players arrive to perform for the enjoyment of Sly and his wife. The play that they perform constitutes the rest of The Taming of the Shrew.

The Induction is an unusual feature of this play. The story and the characters involved in the Induction have nothing directly to do with the main play, and after its introduction this story is only reintroduced briefly and never fully developed.

At the end of the main story, Sly declares his intention to tame his own wife as Petruchio has tamed Katherine. The lord thrusts Sly into a playacting world and portrays his new role as coming into being through no will of his own. Controlled by two wealthy and powerful men—her father, Baptista, and her suitor, Petruchio—Katherine is forced to play the part of a wife, a social role that she initially rejects.

The Induction also introduces the topic of marriage into the play. Short Shakespeare! Additional Sponsors Short Shakespeare!