This introduction to Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew as a theatrical text combines traditional methodologies of performance analysis - textual criticism and empirical descriptions of examples of its performance - with Marxist historical analysis, feminism and theatre semiotics. The dramatic and historico-political potentialities of the performance-text are compared with well-known instances of modern productions such as the RSC versions of John Barton in 1960 and Michael Bogdanov in 1978, Franco Zeffirelli's 1966 film and Jonathan Miller's production for the BBC Television/Time-Life Shakespeare series in 1982.