Taming Of The Shrew

Before the invention of recorded sound, ballads were a form of storytelling that was easy to remember. It was made for an audience to remember, consequently they often rhymed and sang with the aid of a tune, audiences would often join along in song or convey their opinion about the message or event in the piece. A ballad is a story, fictitious or real, usually involving an event either political, jovial or a feat of strength, virtue or heroism. When the printing press became available in the late fifteenth century people began printing ballads and selling them to make money. Peddlers could sing it on the street and act out parts as a form of street entertainment, they were sung at bars and hung throughout for people to read and enjoy. A broadside ballad was a ballad “printed on one side of a sheet of paper and …show more content…
The ballad is a comedic joke towards William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew a play which was published in 1624. The play centers around Kate, an aggressive, strong-willed, young heiress forced into marriage and how she is ‘tamed’ to fit into society. A seemingly fundamental portion of the play is when the husband, Petruchio starves her, after which most of her tenacity is lost. The ballad plays upon this portion first beginning, a young plow-man, a farmer who specifically tills his land as way to plant seeds must the tame of an unruly horse. In the second portion an uncooperative wife is tamed in the same fashion of the horse, until she submits and does her household duties. The jovial tale was a reminder to men to keep order around their house and offered a nonviolent way of performing it. Each ballad was accompanied by a modern tune of the period, this pieces tune along with many others, were lost with the passage of time. The piece highlights gender roles during the period, the man will do physical labor and the wife will stay at home and