Page:Taming of the Shrew (1921) Yale.djvu/136



Nothing definite is known about the date at which The Taming of the Shrew was first written and produced; this subject has been a fruitful field of controversy for Shakespearean scholars. Some have put the play as early as 1594, the year in which A Shrew was printed, some as late as 1604–1609, because of certain supposed allusions in the text to contemporary events. These last references are by no means so definite as to be conclusive, especially in the face of the internal evidence, which points to very early composition. One great difficulty in the matter is that The Shrew does not appear in Meres's list of 1598, though this may be because the work is only in part Shakespeare's or because Meres 'affects a pedantic parallelism of numbers,' giving only six comedies to balance his six 'tragedies.' Another plausible, although not entirely satisfactory, theory has it that this play is the Love's Labour's Won of Meres. The strongest argument for the identification has been set forth by Professor A. H. Tolman in his Views about Hamlet and other Essays, but as yet we have no conclusive evidence upon this vexed point. It seems possible, however, that Shakespeare might originally have called his drama by the appropriate name Love's Labour's Won to distinguish it forcibly from the popular Taming of A Shrew, and when the old play had been definitely superseded by the newer version, that he returned to an approximation of the earlier and more literal title.