A comedy in five acts, first produced around 1593-94 and first printed in the First Folio of 1623. Considered one of Shakespeare's bawdier works, the play describes the volatile courtship between the shrewish Katharina and the canny Petruchio, who is determined to subdue Katharina's legendary temper and win her dowry. The main story is offered as a play within a play; the frame story consists of an initial two-scene "induction": a lord offers the love story as an entertainment for tinker Christopher Sly, who is recovering from a drunken binge at an alehouse.

The source for the central plot is unknown; however, the subplot involving Bianca and her many suitors was derived from George Gascoigne's comedy Supposes (1566), itself a translation of I suppositi (1509) by Ludovico Ariosto.

The opening scenes present an unresolved framework to the play: Christopher Sly, a drunken tinker is taken in by a lord who wishes to make sport of him. Sly is dressed and placed in the lord's bedroom, then told that he is a nobleman who had been struck by insanity for some 15 years (from which he has just recovered). For his entertainment, a group of players will present a play entitled "The Taming of the Shrew." (Note: these scenes are commonly omitted from stage productions, as Sly and the rest of the bunch from the Inductions never return to complete the "framework.")

Baptista, a wealthy merchant of Padua, has two daughters: Katherina and Bianca. Because of Katherina's shrewish disposition, her father has declared that no one shall wed Bianca until such time as Katherina has been married. Lucentio of Pisa, one of many suitors to the younger and kinder Bianca, devises a scheme in which he and Tranio (his servant) will switch clothes, and thus disguised, Lucentio will offer his services as a tutor for Bianca in order to get closer to her. At his point, enter Petruchio of Verona, in Padua to visit his friend Hortensio (another suitor to Bianca). Attracted by Katherina's large dowry, Petruchio resolves to woo her.

To the surprise of everyone, Petruchio claims that he finds Katherina charming and pleasant. A marriage is arranged, and Petruchio immediately sets out to tame Katherina through a series of increasingly worse tricks. This involves everything from showing up late to his wedding to constant contradictions to whatever she says, even to the point of claiming that the sun is in fact the moon. After many trying days and nights, an exhausted Katherina is indeed "tamed" into docility.

By the end of the play, Lucentio has won Bianca's heart and Hortensio settles for a rich widow in Padua. During an evening feast for Bianca and Lucentio, Petruchio makes and wins a wager in which he proposes that he has the most obedient wife of all the men there, at which point Katherina gives Bianca a lecture on how to be a good and loving wife herself

Often played as a boisterous farce, this play is actually a comedy of character, with implications beyond the obvious story of the title. Shakespeare arouses more interest in Petruchio and Katharina than farce permits. They gain, for example, by contrast with the tepid, silly, or infatuated lovers (Bianca, Lucentio, Hortensio, and Gremio), and their relationship is given an admirable vitality.