Harry's English Journal

The Taming of the Shrew is a play within a play. The frame play, where the action opens (called the “Induction,” just prior to Act One), shows Christopher Sly drunk being kicked out by a hostess from a bar. A wealthy lord arrives, finding Sly (who introduces himself as “Christophero Sly”), and decides to play a joke on him. After Sly falls asleep in his intoxication, the lord’s men dress Sly in fine apparel and the men in turn dress up as servants and one even as Sly’s wife in an effort to persuade Sly when he wakes up that he is an aristocrat. After this is accomplished the lord’s men perform what we know as The Taming of the Shrew. He briefly is seen again making a comment about having some privacy with his “wife” (actually a pageboy in drag). In some versions of the play the audience never sees or hears from Christopher Sly again and thus assume that he has probably fallen asleep. Other versions have a closing segment in which Sly (who has now learned how to “tame a shrew”) returns home to deal with his wife, whose shrewish behaviour had driven him to drink in the first place.