Taming Of The Shrew Comparison Essay

After reading the Taming of the Shrew and watching Ten Things I Hate About You. I have realized that their are many similarities and differences between the play and the movie. I will be going into detail about these similarities and differences later in my paper. I will also be explaining a more in depth description of the major characters. Also if you have not read the Taming of the Shrew or watched Ten Thing I Hate About You, I would highly recommend it.
I’m going to start off by telling you about the differences between the play and the movie. First of all in the play the setting, takes place in Padua, now you may be curious to where this is. Padua is known as a countryside nearby the town of Verona. Now in the movie the setting took place
in Seattle, Washington and Tacoma, Washington. Also in the movie everything mostly was happening at the high school, with a few other places, too. Another difference is while the play was written and took place in the late 1500’s, the movie was taken place in 1999. As you can see the time period will cause a lot of differences, since the 1990’s are a lot more modern 1500’s. Next I’m going to talk about how in the play they were getting married and how in the movie they it’s about going on a date. This is obviously a huge difference. Going on an arranged date with someone and getting an arranged marriage with someone are two completely different things. Another difference is the characters names are not the same, which at times made it hard to relate the stories together and figure out who was who, but once we figured that out things were a little bit easier to understand. One difference, which is kind of a more obvious difference, is the play goes into a lot more detail than the movie. This is one kind of difference that usually does happen when plays or books are made into movies. Sometimes if the exact play or book was made into a movie. The play or book might be four hours long instead of two or even just an hour and a half. No one is really going to want to watch a boring movie that is going to last about four hours. In the play we are all kinda wondering at the end if Katerina is really in love with Petruchio, we may think Katerina just realizes that they were trying to “tame” her. While in the movie we come to the conclusion that Kat is falling for Patrick, by the end of the movie. Also in the movie an “actual” bet is placed while in the play there is not an “actual” bet. So this also means in the play Katerina doesn’t get upset about a bet while in the movie she gets very upset. So upset that it leads to write her poetry titled Ten Thing I Hate About You. While in the play Bianca is wanted because of her wealthyness and good looks, as you can see these two things are very different. Baptisa, the girls father, in the play is seeking for his daughters to find husbands. While in the movie their father doesn’t want either of them to date, considering he was a doctor who delivered babies, he didn’t a bad future for his children when they were too young. In the movie their father actually won’t let Bianca go on dates unless Kat does, while everyone in the school doesn’t seem to have the fondest judgement of Kat. In the movie Cameron wants to go out with Bianca so much, that when he hears Bianca needs a french tutor, he decides to learn french so he can be her tutor and spend more time with her. In the movie Joey is very self confident thinking he can get whatever girl he wants which end up backfiring in the end. Also in the movie Kat told Bianca how she had previous relations with Joey. Lucentio in the play is not as full of himself as Joey is like I previously talked about. Also Kat has more freedom in the movie rather than Kate in the play. Kat in the movie gets to choose which university she is going to attend after high school. In the play Kate doesn’t receive much freedom, considering her father is setting up an arranged marriage for her. The movie kind of let’s the male roles have a bigger part rather than in the play where the males don’t have such a big as part as some think they should have.
Now I’m going to explain some similarities.
Now you may remember the first difference I talked about, which was the different settings between the play and the movie. Now even though that's a difference a similarity can also come out of this. The village in the play where everything took place was Padua. In the movie the high school the students attend was named Padua high school. Another similarity is the gender of all the characters generally stayed the same between the play and the movie, this helped make the comparing less confusing and more understandable. One huge similarity is the plot in both the play and the movie generally stays the same except for minor differences. The character personalities are generally the same also. Along with Kat and Bianca are sisters in the play and the movie. One thing which is kind of a similarity is Baptisa, also known as Walter wants his eldest daughter to date and get married first. In both the play and movie at the beginning Patrick, also known as Petruchio doesn’t seem to have any interest in Kat while he later ends up falling in love with her. At first Patrick was just going in for the money that he was receiving a bet, which he later regretted since Kat had to find out through Joey at prom. But it really did all pay off in the end. In the movie Kat is more verbally mean than anything, while in the play Kate in more physically mean and abusive, considering when she wants something and didn’t get she would physically harm to get what
she wanted. So as you may conclude after reading my paper you may realize that I definitely found more difference rather than similarities between the play and the movie. A lot of the differences come fromt the time periods, the movie is obviously more modernized. So hopefully after reading my paper the similarities and differences are a little easier to understand and comprehend.