The Shrew Themes

‘A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money’( W.C Fields). The main male characters in “The Taming of The Shrew” and “Ten Things I Hate About You”, Petruchio and Patrick, have three things in common, the lust for money, the lust for power, and the lust for women. In the 1967 version of the play, originally written by Shakespeare, Petruchio is portrayed as brute only thinking about money and himself. In the 1999 version Patrick is portrayed as a charming, smooth talker that doesn’t care about social expectations. They use their character traits to woo Katharina (1967) Kate (1999). She’s a shrew that doesn’t care about social expectations or how she should act in public. I personally believe that the films are a love story about a man and a woman freeing each other.

In both versions of the play there is an overlying theme of money and power. In the 1967 version Petruchio is paid by Hortensio to woo Kat, likewise Patrick is paid by Joey to woo Kate. This shows that both the men were only in it to make money. Petruchio even says himself "come to wive it wealthily in Padua; / If wealthily then happily in Padua". In the Elizabethan era it was
The main male character, Petruchio is driven only by the lust of money. He believes that with money comes a greater power over people. This is somewhat true, as in the Elizabethan times people who had the most money had the most power. In the remake of the film, Patrick at first is driven by money, but during the course of the film he starts to fall for Kate. This is the major difference in between the two versions. I believe Petruchio doesn’t start loving Kate until the last scenes in taming of the shrew, but Patrick starts loving Kate near the middle of the film. Despite this I still think that it is a love story, and not an act of misogyny. Why you may ask, it is because both of the films are giving accurate descriptions of what life was like in both time