The first Shakespeare play brought by Zeffirelli to the cinema, The Taming of the Shrew, addresses the theme of gender roles. On a larger scale, the show explores the behavioral expectations of males and females both in society at large and within a domestic relationship. For many years, most critics agreed that the heart of the work suggested male domination and female submission, especially to the authority of husbands, as an accepted male-female dynamic. This view remained unchanged for many years, and the public widely accepted Petruchio's "taming" of Catherine as politically correct. By the time of Zeffirelli's production of The Taming of the Shrew in 1967, the second wave of the feminist movement was well underway in the United States. States and women's liberation groups began to arise across America. It was also this year that President Lyndon B Johnson signed Executive Order 11375, expanding affirmative action and ensuring equal education and employment rights for women and minorities (archives.gov). As socio-political views of the role of women changed during After the second feminist movement, critics began to rethink The Taming of the Shrew and directors began to use the element of irony in the conclusion of the work (Kahn, 98) to undermine the traditional chauvinistic reading of the work and valorise the battle of the sexes. Zeffirelli's film is the first notable production of the late 19th century to implement the revisionist approach to the play, and according to literary critic Mei Zhu, in her essay entitled "Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew and the Comedy Tradition wacky,” Zeffirelli's approach to the film as a Hollywood comedy provided a natural exploration of the ba...... middle of paper ......The shrew and the screwball comedy tradition.” : Comparative Literature and Culture 6.1 (2004):Kahn, Coppelìa. “The Taming of the Shrew: Shakespeare's Mirror of Marriage,” Modern Language Studies, 5:1 (Spring 1975), 88–102 Schwartz, Terri ." MTV Movies Blog (2011): Henderson, Diana E. "A Shrew for the Times, Revisited." Shakespeare the Movie II, Making Popular plays on film, TV and DVD. Eds. Burt, Richard and Boose, Lynda E. New York: Routledge, 2003. 120-139. “Franco Zeffirelli and Shakespeare”. Shakespeare's Cambridge Campanion in cinema. Ed. Russell Jackson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 212-221. Press.