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I hate the way you talk to me and the way you cut your hair,
I hate the way you drive my car, I hate it when you stare.
I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind.
I hate you so much it makes me sick; it even makes me rhyme.
I hate the way you're always right, I hate it when you lie,
I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry.
I hate it when you're not around and the fact that you didn't call.
But mostly I hate the way I don't hate you, not even close.
Not even a little bit, not even at all. (Junger 1999)
Critics have not been kind about the poem above, the composition of Katerina (Kat) Stratford (Julia Stiles), the lead female character in Gil Junger's romantic teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), itself an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Her poem constitutes a class exercise, but Kat's performance, and the poem itself, are addressed to Patrick Verona (Heath Ledger), functioning to express her feelings for him and ultimately facilitating their reconciliation. Penny Gay says that "Kat's capitulation is her weepy public reading of her not very good poem" (2008, 129), while Richard Burt offers an even harsher judgment, stating, in parenthesis, that the poem is "quite atrocious" (2002, 216). The poem, of course, constitutes a borrowing and adaptation. It has its corollary in the infamous speech concluding The Taming of the Shrew, in which the supposedly tamed shrew, Katherine, announces her subservience to her husband, Petruchio. Shakespeare's Katherine's final speech is ambiguous, but nonetheless crucial to readings of the play's problematic gender politics. Margaret-Jane Kidnie has outlined the central interpretive issues posed by The Taming of the Shrew, describing how "scholarly and theatrical approaches to the taming plot are dominated by three distinct readings of Katherine's notorious final monologue":
The first view is that Katherine's submission is entirely ironic and Petruchio, the gull, triumphantly takes as duty what is only a feigned deference to his will; the second line, more grim, is that Katherine's spirit is brutally and conclusively beaten down by Petruchio's taming methods; and the...