Comparing Taming Of The Shrew And 10 Things I Hate About You

The 16th century play, Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare and the modern movie 10 Things I hate about you are correspondent to each other in many ways. They have very similar characters names and their behaviors, similar plots, and themes. The characters are very similar to each other because in Taming of the Shrew, the main character’s name is Katarina and in 10 Things I hate about you the main character’s name is Katherina, or Kat for short. Katarina and Katherine are both well known as the “shrew” of the plot. Both of their families come from a family with decent amount of wealth. This is shown in the movie because you can tell by the setting of their house that they live in a very large neighborhood and in the movie, Katharina lives in a roman villa almost. Although, they have very similar names
and live in the same type of environment, they are also viewed negatively by society.
Kat from the movie is represented as anti-social, heinous, and very blunt. Katharina from the play is violent and usually ends up screaming and yelling at people. They both have a bad reputation with people of their communities. Next, the tamer of the “shrew” in the play is Petruccio, while the tamer in the movie is named Patrick or Pat, for short. Katherine and Katarina both have a sister named Bianca, who is well known as outgoing and popular. The dad’s of the “shrews” from the movie and the play are also very much alike. Walter, the dad from the movie does not allow Bianca to date until her older sister Kat dates. In the play, the dad, Baptista, wants Katharina to marry first before Bianca does, which is a family tradition to them. In the play, Lucentio is the boy who finds Petruccio
to tame Katharina, so that he is able to marry her younger sister, Bianca. While in the movie Joey is the boy who is attempting to date Bianca, but can’t, because of her father’s rule. In the movie, Cameron is the boy who tries to date Bianca as well. The play and movie have the exact same plot. The plot would be that Bianca is not allowed to date/marry until her older sister Katharina/Kat dates or marry first. Which is either a family tradition or a rule set up by their father, which must be obeyed. Since the play and movie have a similar plot, the themes are similar as well. One similar theme they have is disguise. For example, in the movie when Cameron pretends to know French just to tutor Bianca to get to know her better. And again in the movie when, Patrick pretends to like Kat because he gets paid for it. In the play, Lucentio disguises himself as Cambio and pretends he knows how to speak French. Another theme would be how a male dominate society are able to tame the women, which is done in both of the play and movie because at the end of the stories, both Kat’s end up being tamed. Kat from the movie finally discovers that Pat really does love her and they end up dating, while in the play, Katharina becomes an obedient wife. There are very few necessary differences between the movie and the play to fit the different time periods. In 10 Things I hate about you, there are enough difference to fit modern society, for example, the movie ends with Kat and Pat dating because they would be too young to get married in today’s society. Another difference is that Petruccio and Pat “tame” the Kat from the play and movie in different ways. Petruccio in the play is very disrespectful toward Katharina because he ends up starving her and depriving her of sleep. Pat from the movie does the total opposite; he loves her and is always nice to her in order to win her heart. Although, both of their “taming” method’s worked, Petruccio’s way of taming Katharina would not be acceptable in today’s society, so that is why they are different.