This is what good directors do, isn’t it — persuade you to consider a work in a way you hadn’t before? I’d need more convincing to buy the bit about true love between Kate and her Petruchio, but the undesirability argument is intriguing.

Image “It’s good that we show it, and talk about it. A loudmouth woman with a strong opinion is still considered a shrew in our society,” the director Julie Taymor said. Credit... Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

My own position is this, though: I have always hated “The Taming of the Shrew.”

Of all of Shakespeare’s plays, it’s the only one that upsets me just to think about, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot ever since I saw Phyllida Lloyd’s current all-female production, which continues through June 26 at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.

“Shrew” is supposed to be a comedy. The ending, which finds Kate docile at last, is meant to be winsome. But when she gives her final speech, reminding women of their duty to their husbands — to be pretty, grateful and, above all, obedient — it always makes me feel sick. It always makes me cry.

Whatever I’ve hoped walking into a theater, I inevitably despair of the play by the end of that speech, right at its most toxic line. Kate, newly wed to Petruchio, exhorts the other wives to “place your hands below your husband’s foot,” in submission.

I know: It’s not like I’m alone in my unease. Open your program at the Delacorte, and you’ll find a prominent note from the Public Theater’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis. Shakespeare in the Park has done “Shrew” in the past — Meryl Streep played Kate opposite Raul Julia as Petruchio in 1978, and Tracey Ullman teamed with Morgan Freeman in 1990 — but not on Mr. Eustis’s watch.