Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Franco Zeffirelli turned Shakespeare's rowdiest comedy into a lavish 1967 spectacle, pairing Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton at the peak of their off-screen fame for a battle of wills set against sunbaked Renaissance Padua.
What is The Taming of the Shrew about?
Petruchio arrives from Verona broke, blunt, and hunting a rich match. He finds one in Katherina, the sharp-tongued elder daughter their father refuses to marry off before her gentler younger sister Bianca. What follows is less courtship than standoff: two equally stubborn people testing how far pride can bend before something closer to respect creeps in. Zeffirelli stages the courtship as loud physical comedy, chasing his leads through market stalls, banquet halls, and a wedding that goes deliberately wrong, while the quieter suitors circling Bianca provide a calmer counter-rhythm. The film keeps its focus tight on the central pair rather than the play's fuller subplots, trusting two enormous star performances to carry the argument scene by scene.
Cast & crew
Elizabeth Taylor plays Katherina with real bite rather than shrillness, and Richard Burton matches her volume for volume, turning Petruchio's scheming into something closer to a dare than a plan. Michael York and Natasha Pyne handle the Bianca subplot with a lighter touch that lets the leads dominate without the film feeling lopsided, while Cyril Cusack and Michael Hordern add seasoned comic texture around the edges.
Context & significance
Shot on location in Italy with production design by Zeffirelli's regular collaborators, the film leans into full Renaissance costume and set spectacle rather than a stripped-down stage reading, a choice that made it one of the more expensive Shakespeare adaptations of its era. It arrived a year after Taylor and Burton's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and audiences at the time read the pair's real-life sparring into every scene, which only sharpened the comedy's edge.
Where & how to watch
The Taming of the Shrew streams on K-Time with a free account login — no separate charge to browse the page or read the details here. K-Time's Farsi-first interface and subtitle support make classic English-language titles like this one easy to navigate for Persian-speaking households, with the full catalog organized for quick browsing across genres and decades.