The Taming of the Shrew

This version concentrates on the contest between Petruchio and Katerina, as it should. The Biance subplot is used only to set up the Shrew story. When the subplot is resolved, its intrusion comes almost as a surprise, but I suppose the director felt he had to tie up lose ends. Maitland's primary mode of dealing with Kate is to laugh hilariously (and we perceive one advantage of silent film!). But a neat parallelism occurs between Kate's sweeping books off the table in her father's library and Petruchio's sweeping food and drink off of his table in his country house. His behavior physically mirrors hers. They reconcile at the table after she thanks him, so the big final scene of the script is not included in this two reeler. Titles are occasionally placements and transitions but usually lines from the play. That technique works better than it usually does in a silent Shakespeare since here it's cued carefully to the visual action. This film is a reasonable condensation, not the best of the silent filmed Shakespeares by any means (see the Italian 'Romeo and Juliet,' for example), but not bad. Perhaps British Film Institute can be encouraged to include this film in a 'Silent Shakespeare II' as a follow-up of the valuable first version of the silent films in their collection.