The Taming of the Shrew Alternate Ending

The Taming of a Shrew is the alternate ending for The Taming of the Shrew. They both have similar concepts, but we find the major difference in Kate’s speech at the end. The ending of both plays bring about a satisfying feeling that a shrew, even so bad as Kate, could be tamed. She realises the faults of her ways and goes on to explain, differently in both, why women should be tamed. In the original The Taming of the Shrew, “Katherine explains the relationship of husband and wife by analogy to the relationship between prince and subject” (144). “But love, fair looks, and true obedience – Too little payment for so great a debt. Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband” (5.2. 157-60). She goes on in her soliloquy to call women so simple (5.2. 165) and that her husband is her lord, her life, and her keeper (5.2. 149). Kate points out biological differences, calling women’s bodies soft, weak and smooth, and contrasts it to men’s lives who face trouble in the world. She basically states the traditional point of view that women will stay at home and cook and clean while the man goes out and makes money for the family. It would seem that Shakespeare is showing his feelings on this subject thru Kate and shows that his Petruchio character is able to tame such a wild woman. In the alternate ending, The Taming of a Shrew, there are obvious differences where the names of the characters are changed. Besides this, Kate argues that “women should submit to men because they are created by God as inferior beings and were moreover responsible for the Fall of man from Paradise” (Thompson 29) (145). She goes to the religious aspect instead of the biological one seen in Shakespeare’s original.
“Then to His image He did make a man, Old Adam; and from his side sleep, A rib was taken, of which the Lord did make The woe of man, so termed by Adam then Woman, for that by her came sin to us, And for her sin was Adam doomed to die” (pg. 152.