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The history of Shakespearean studies shows that the adaptations of Shakespeare, whether they were made by first-class writers or by second-class ones, have been usually regarded as outrageous mutilation or defamation rather than “improvements” of Shakespeare. It is an undeniable fact, however, that ever since Restoration Shakespeare's works have been continually adapted by many writers, and these adaptations were often very popular, too. Various adaptations of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew were made since its revival in the late 1620s and early 1630s. Of all these adaptations, David Garrick's Catharine and Petruchio, with alterations and additions, was the most important and influential. Between 1754 and 1844 Catharine and Petruchio was the only version of The Taming of the Shrew presented on stages both in England and America. Garrick conceived Catharine and Petruchio as a three-act “afterpiece,” reducing Shakespeare's three plots to one. The farcical Sly frame and the sub-plot focusing on Bianca were eliminated, so that the complex and multi-vocal meanings which could be generated by these two plots came to disappear. Only the taming plot remained intact. But the taming plot itself also limited the possibilities that the layered, ambiguous ending, the center of which was the famous lines of Kate's sermon with the ironic performance contradicting the content, could have been interpreted other than just a successful shrew-taming story. Although Garrick provided Catharine with some soliloquies and asides that revealed her intention to marry Petruchio and her plan to tame him, she might not be more independent than Shakespeare's Kate who had no other options than marriage. And whip-cracking Petruchio dominated the whole play as well as the final scene in which he announced that his pose as “the lordly husband” had just been “an honest mask” that he could “doff” now that Catharine had been tamed. He promised that the future lives with Catharine would be “one gentle stream of mutual love,” and women should “bound to love, to honour, and obey.” The significant differences between Garrick's adaptation and Shakespeare's text let us be aware clearly of the need to pay more serious attention to the dialogized potential of Shakespeare for generating new meanings and new appropriations, without necessarily paying blind homage to Bardolatry.