THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.
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THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is almost the
only one of Shakespear's comedies that has a regular
plot, and downright moral. It is full off bustle,
animation, and rapidity of action. It shews
admirably how self-will is only to be got the
better of by stronger will, and how one degree
of ridiculous perversity is only to be driven out
by another still greater. Petruchio is a madman
in his senses; a very honest fellow, who hardly
speaks a word of truth, and succeeds in all his
tricks and impostures. He acts his assumed
character to the life, with the most fantastical
extravagance, with complete presence of mind,
with untired animal spirits, and without a particle
of ill-humour from beginning to end.--The
situation of poor Katherine, worn out by his incessant
persecutions, becomes at last almost as
pitiable as it is ludicrous, and it is difficult
to say which to admire most, the unaccountableness
of his actions, or the unalterableness of
his resolutions. It is a character which most
husbands ought to study, unless perhaps the
very audacity of Petruchio's attempt might alarm
them more than his success would encourage
them. What a sound must the following speech
carry to some married ears!
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"Think you a little din can daunt my ears?
Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puff'd up with winds,
Rage like an angry boar, chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field?
And heav'n's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in a pitched battle heard
Loud larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?
And do you tell me of a woman's tongue,
That gives not half so great a blow to hear,
As will a chesnut in a farmer's fire?"
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Not all Petruchio's rhetoric would persuade
more than "some dozen followers" to be of this
heretical way of thinking. He unfolds his
scheme for the Taming of the Shrew, on a principle
of contradiction, thus:--
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"I'll woo her with some spirit when she comes.
Say that she rail, why then I'll tell her plain
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale;
Say that she frown, I'll say she looks as clear
As morning roses newly wash'd with dew;
Say she be mute, and will not speak a word,
Then I'll commend her volubility,
And say she uttereth piercing eloquence:
If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks,
As tho' she bid one stay by her a week;
If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day,
When I shall ask the banns, and when be married?"
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He accordingly gains her consent to the match,
by telling her father that he has got it; disappoints
her by not returning at the time he has
promised to wed her, and when he returns,
creates no small consternation by the oddity of
his dress and equipage. This however is nothing
to the astonishment excited by his mad-brained
behaviour at the marriage. Here is the
account of it by an eye-witness:--
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"Gremio. Tut, she's a lamb, a dove, a fool to him:
I'll tell you, Sir Lucentio; when the priest
Should ask if Katherine should be his wife?
Ay, by gogs woons, quoth he; and swore so loud,
That, all amaz'd, the priest let fall the book;
And as he stooped again to take it up,
This mad-brain'd bridegroom took him such a cuff,
That down fell priest and book, and book and priest.
Now take them up, quoth he, if any list.
Tranio. What said the wench when he rose up again?
Gremio. Trembled and shook; for why, he stamp'd and swore,
As if the vicar meant to cozen him.
But after many ceremonies done,
He calls for wine; a health, quoth he; as if
He'ad been aboard carousing with his mates
After a storm; quaft off the muscadel,
And threw the sops all in the sexton's face;
Having no other cause but that his beard
Grew thin and hungerly, and seem'd to ask
His sops as he was drinking. This done, he took
The bride about the neck, and kiss'd her lips
With such a clamourous smack, that at their parting
All the church echoed: and I seeing this,
Came thence for very shame; and after me,
I know, the rout is coming;
Such a mad marriage never was before."
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The most striking and at the same time laughable
feature in the character of Petruchio throughout
is the studied approximation to the intractable
character of real madness, his apparent insensibility
to all external considerations, and
utter indifference to every thing but the wild
and extravagant freaks of his own self will.
There is no contending with a person on whom
nothing makes any impression but his own purposes,
and who is bent on his own whims just
in proportion as they seem to want common
sense. With him a thing's being plain and reasonable
is a reason against it. The airs he gives
himself are infinite, and his caprices as sudden
as they are groundless. The whole of his treatment
of his wife at home is in the same spirit of
ironical attention and inverted gallantry. Every
thing flies before his will, like a conjuror's wand,
and he only metamorphoses his wife's temper
by metamorphosing her senses and all the objects
she sees, at a word's speaking. Such are his
insisting that it is the moon and not the sun
which they see, &c. This extravagance reaches
its most pleasant and poetical height in the scene
where, on their return to her father's, they meet
old Vincentio, whom Petruchio immediately
addresses as a young lady:--
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"Petruchio. Good morrow, gentle mistress, where away?
Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too,
Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman?
Such war of white and red within her cheeks;
What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty,
As those two eyes become that heav'nly face?
Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee:
Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty's sake.
Hortensio. He'll make the man mad to make a woman of him.
Katherine. Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet,
Whither away, or where is thy abode?
Happy the parents of so fair a child;
Happier the man whom favourable stars
Allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow.
Petruchio. Why, how now, Kate, I hope thou art not mad:
This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither'd,
And not a maiden, as thou say'st he is.
Katherine. Pardon, old father, my mistaken eyes
That have been so bedazed with the sun
That every thing I look on seemeth green.
Now I perceive thou art a reverend father."
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The whole is carried off with equal spirit, as
if the poet's comic Muse had wings of fire.
It is strange how one man could be so many
things; but so it is. The concluding scene, in
which trial is made of the obedience of the new-married
wives (so triumphantly for Petruchio) is
a very happy one.--In some parts of this play
there is a little too much about music-masters
and masters of philosophy. They were things
of greater rarity in those days than they are now.
Nothing however can be better than the advice
which Tranio gives his master for the prosecution
of his studies:--
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"The mathematics, and the metaphysics,
Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you:
No profit grows, where is no pleasure ta'en:
In brief, sir, study what you most affect."
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We have heard the Honey-Moon called "an
elegant Katherine and Petruchio." We suspect
we do not understand this word elegant in the
sense that many people do. But in our sense
of the word, we should call Lucentio's description
of his mistress elegant.
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"Tranio, I saw her coral lips to move,
And with her breath she did perfume the air:
Sacred and sweet was all I saw in her."
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When Biondello tells the same Lucentio for his
encouragement, "I knew a wench married in an
afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley
to stuff a rabbit, and so may you, sir"--there is
nothing elegant in this, and yet we hardly know
which of the two passages is the best.
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THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is a play
within a play. It is supposed to be a play acted
for the benefit of Sly the tinker, who is made
to believe himself a lord, when he wakes after a
drunken brawl. The character of Sly and the
remarks with which he accompanies the play
are as good as the play itself. His answer when
he is asked how he likes it, "Indifferent well;
'tis a good piece of work, would 'twere done,"
is in good keeping, as if he were thinking of his
Saturday night's job. Sly does not change his
tastes with his new situation, but in the midst
of splendour and luxury still calls out lustily and
repeatedly "for a pot o' the smallest ale." He
is very slow in giving up his personal identity
in his sudden advancement.--"I am Christophero
Sly, call not me honour nor lordship.
I ne'er drank sack in my life: and if you give
me any conserves, give me conserves of beef:
ne'er ask me what raiment I'll wear, for I have
no more doublets than backs, no more stockings
than legs, nor no more shoes than feet,
nay, sometimes more feet than shoes, or such
shoes as my toes look through the over-leather.--What,
would you make me mad? Am not
I Christophero Sly, old Sly's son of Burtonheath,
by birth a pedlar, by education a card-maker,
by transmutation a bear herd, and now
by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian
Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know
me not; if she say I am not fourteen pence on
the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying'st
knave in Christendom."
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This is honest. "The Slies are no rogues,"
as he says of himself. We have a great predilection
for this representative of the family; and
what makes us like him the better is, that we
take him to be of kin (not many degrees removed)
to Sancho Panza.
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