Cast Yard, Kilkenny

TAMING is the operative word in The Taming of the Shrew, a play about the arranged marriage of Petruchio and Katherine. The original is set in Padua, a powerful city-state in Renaissance Italy. Petruchio lays it out baldly to his betrothed: “For I am born to tame you, Kate, and bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate conformable as other household Kates.”

IRISH audiences will see raucous, cut-and-thrust Jacobean drama when Globe Theatre presents Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the Kilkenny Arts Festival.