Anyone present at a performance of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in Britain at any time since 1913 is quite likely to have witnessed a hybrid amalgamation of two discrete play-texts: the text contained in the First Folio of 1623, which we accept as Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew; and the anonymous play known as The Taming of a Shrew, printed in 1594, which was once held to be a source of Shakespeare's play, but is now regarded by most scholars as a'memorial reconstruction'of a Shakespearean original.'

Shakespeare's play in the form we have inherited it contains of Christopher Sly only the two opening scenes known as the'Induction': from the opening of the Shrew action, nothing more is seen or heard of the dreaming, drunken tinker. In The Taming of a Shrew, by contrast, the Sly-narrative is not a prologue but an extended dramatic framework: Sly and his attendants are kept on stage more or less throughout, and are given several further comments on and interventions in the action of the play. This sustained presence of the choric observer is more in keeping with contemporary stage practice, as exemplified in plays such as Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, Greene and Lodge's A Looking Glass for London and England, and Greene's James IV. Even a short introductory chorus like