You are very sensible, and yet you miss my sense.
I mean Hortensio is afeard of you.
WIDOW
He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.
PETRUCCIO Roundly replied.
KATHERINE Mistress, how mean you that?
WIDOW Thus I conceive by him.
PETRUCCIO
Conceives by me! How likes Hortensio that?
HORTENSIO
My widow says thus she conceives her tale.
PETRUCCIO Very well mended. Kiss him for that, good widow.
KATHERINE
‘He that is giddy thinks the world turns round’—
I pray you tell me what you meant by that.
WIDOW
Your husband, being troubled with a shrew,
Measures my husband’s sorrow by his woe.
And now you know my meaning.
KATHERINE
A very mean meaning.
WIDOW
Right, I mean you.
KATHERINE
And I am mean indeed respecting you.
PETRUCCIO To her, Kate!
HORTENSIO To her, widow!
PETRUCCIO
A hundred marks my Kate does put her down.
HORTENSIO That’s my office.
PETRUCCIO
Spoke like an officer! Ha’ to thee, lad.
He drinks to Hortensio
BAPTISTA
How likes Gremio these quick-witted folks?
GREMIO
Believe me, sir, they butt together well.
BIANCA
Head and butt? An hasty-witted body
Would say your head and butt were head and horn.
VINCENTIO
Ay, mistress bride, hath that awakened you?
BIANCA
Ay, but not frighted me, therefore I’ll sleep again.
PETRUCCIO
Nay, that you shall not. Since you have begun,
Have at you for a better jest or two.
BIANCA
Am I your bird? I mean to shift my bush,
And then pursue me as you draw your bow.
You are welcome all.
Exit Bianca with Katherine and the Widow
PETRUCCIO
She hath prevented me here, Signor Tranio.
This bird you aimed at, though you hit her not.
Therefore a health to all that shot and missed.
TRANIO
O sir, Lucentio slipped me like his greyhound,
Which runs himself and catches for his master.
PETRUCCIO
A good swift simile, but something currish.
TRANIO
‘Tis well, sir, that you hunted for yourself.
’Tis thought your deer does hold you at a bay.
BAPTISTA
O, O, Petruccio, Tranio hits you now.
LUCENTIO
I thank thee for that gird, good Tranio.
HORTENSIO
Confess, confess, hath he not hit you here?
PETRUCCIO
A has a little galled me, I confess,
And as the jest did glance away from me,
‘Tis ten to one it maimed you two outright.
BAPTISTA
Now in good sadness, son Petruccio,
I think thou hast the veriest shrew of all.
PETRUCCIO
Well, I say no.—And therefore, Sir Assurance,
Let’s each one send unto his wife,
And he whose wife is most obedient
To come at first when he doth send for her
Shall win the wager which we will propose.
HORTENSIO Content. What’s the wager?
LUCFNTIO Twenty crowns.
PETRUCCIO Twenty crowns!
I’ll venture so much of my hawk or hound,
But twenty times so much upon my wife.
LUCENTIO A hundred, then.
HORTENSIO Content.
PETRUCCIO A match, ‘tis done.
HORTENSIO Who shall begin?
LUCENTIO That will I.
Go, Biondello, bid your mistress come to me.
BIONDELLO I go.
Exit
BAPTISTA
Son, I’ll be your half Bianca comes.
LUCENTIO
I’ll have no halves, I’ll bear it all myself.
Enter Biondello
How now, what news?
BIONDELLO
Sir, my mistress sends you word
That she is busy and she cannot come.
PETRUCCIO
How? She’s busy and she cannot come?
Is that an answer?
GREMlO Ay, and a kind one, too.
Pray God, sir, your wife send you not a worse.
PETRUCCIO
I hope, better.
HORTENSIO
Sirrah Biondello,
Go and entreat my wife to come to me forthwith.
Exit Biondello
PETRUCCIO
O ho, ‘entreat’ her—nay, then she must needs come.
HORTENSIO
I am afraid, sir, do what you can,
Enter Biondello
Yours will not be entreated. Now, where’s my wife?
BIONDELLO
She says you have some goodly jest in hand.
She will not come. She bids you come to her.
PETRUCCIO
Worse and worse! She will not come—O vile,
Intolerable, not to be endured!
Sirrah Grumio, go to your mistress.
Say I command her come to me.
Exit Grumio
HORTENSIO
I know her answer.
PETRUCCIO
What?
HORTENSIO
She will not.
PETRUCCIO
The fouler fortune mine, and there an end.
Enter Katherine
BAPTISTA
Now by my halidom, here comes Katherina.
KATHERINE (to Petruccio)
What is your will, sir, that you send for me?
PETRUCCIO
Where is your sister and Hortensio’s wife?
KATHERINE
They sit conferring by the parlour fire.
PETRUCCIO
Go, fetch them hither. If they deny to come,
Swinge me them soundly forth unto their husbands.
Away, I say, and bring them hither straight.
Exit Katherine
LUCENTIO
Here is a wonder, if you talk of wonders.
HORTENSIO
And so it is. I wonder what it bodes.
PETRUCCIO
Marry, peace it bodes, and love, and quiet life;
An aweful rule and right supremacy,
And, to be short, what not that’s sweet and happy.
BAPTISTA
Now fair befall thee, good Petruccio,
The wager thou hast won, and I will add
Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns,
Another dowry to another daughter,
For she is changed as she had never been.
PETRUCCIO
Nay, I will win my wager better yet,
And show more sign of her obedience,
Her new-built virtue and obedience.
See where she comes, and brings your froward wives
As prisoners to her womanly persuasion.
Katherine, that cap of yours becomes you not.
Off with that bauble, throw it underfoot.
Katherine throws down her cap
WIDOW
Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh
Till I be brought to such a silly pass.
BIANCA
Fie, what a foolish duty call you this?
LUCENTIO
I would your duty were as foolish, too.
The wisdom of your duty, fair Bianca,
Hath cost me a hundred crowns since supper-time.
BIANCA
The more fool
you for laying on my duty.
PETRUCCIO
Katherine, I charge thee tell these headstrong women
What duty they do owe their lords and husbands.
WIDOW
Come, come, you’re mocking. We will have no telling.
PETRUCCIO
Come on, I say, and first begin with her.
WIDOW She shall not.
PETRUCCIO
I say she shall: and first begin with her.
KATHERINE
Fie, fie, unknit that threat’ning, unkind brow,
And dart not scornful glances from those eyes
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.
It blots thy beauty as frosts do bite the meads,
Confounds thy fame as whirlwinds shake fair buds,
And in no sense is meet or amiable.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty,
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe,
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience,
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband,
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel,
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Come, come, you froward and unable worms,
My mind hath been as big as one of yours,
My heart as great, my reason haply more,
To bandy word for word and frown for frown;
But now I see our lances are but straws,
Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband’s foot,
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready, may it do him ease.
PETRUCCIO
Why, there’s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate.
They kiss
LUCENTIO
Well, go thy ways, old lad, for thou shalt ha’t.
VINCENTIO
‘Tis a good hearing when children are toward.
LUCENTIO
But a harsh hearing when women are froward.
PETRUCCIO Come, Kate, we’ll to bed.
We three are married, but you two are sped.
’Twas I won the wager, though (to Lucentio) you hit
the white,
Exit Petruccio with Katherine
HORTENSIO
Now go thy ways, thou hast tamed a curst shrew.
LUCENTIO
’Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so.
Exeunt
ADDITIONAL PASSAGES
The Taming of A Shrew, printed in 1594 and believed to derive from Shakespeare’s play as performed, contains episodes continuing and rounding off the Christopher Sly framework which may echo passages written by Shakespeare but not printed in the Folio. They are given below.
A. The following exchange occurs at a point for which there is no exact equivalent in Shakespeare’s play. It could come at the end of 2.1.The ‘fool’ of the first line is Sander, the counterpart of Grumio.
Then Sly speaks
SLY Sim, when will the fool come again?
LORD He’ll come again, my lord, anon.
SLY Gi’s some more drink here. Zounds, where’s the tapster? Here, Sim, eat some of these things.
LORD So I do, my lord.
SLY Here, Sim, I drink to thee.
LORD My lord, here comes the players again.
SLY O brave, here’s two fine gentlewomen.
B. This passage comes between 4.5 and 4.6. If it originates with Shakespeare it implies that Grumio accompanies Petruccio at the beginning of 4.6.
SLY Sim, must they be married now?
LORD Ay, my lord.
Enter Ferando and Kate and Sander
SLY Look, Sim, the fool is come again now.
C. Sly interrupts the action of the play-within-play. This is at 5.1.102 of Shakespeare’s play.
Phylotus and Valeria runs away.
Then Sly speaks
SLY I say we’ll have no sending to prison.
LORD My lord, this is but the play. They’re but in jest.
SLY I tell thee, Sim, we’ll have no sending to prison, that’s flat. Why, Sim, am not I Don Christo Vary? Therefore I say they shall not go to prison.
LORD No more they shall not, my lord. They be run away.
SLY Are they run away, Sim? That’s well. Then gi’s some more drink, and let them play again.
LORD Here, my lord.
Sly drinks and then falls asleep
D. Sly is carried off between 5.1 and 5.2.
Exeunt omnes
Sly sleeps
LORD
Who’s within there? Come hither, sirs, my lord’s
Asleep again. Go take him easily up
And put him in his own apparel again,
And lay him in the place where we did find him
Just underneath the alehouse side below.
But see you wake him not in any case.
BOY
It shall be done, my lord. Come help to bear him hence.
Exit
E. The conclusion.
Then enter two bearing of Sly in his own apparel again and leaves him where they found him and then goes out. Then enter the Tapster
TAPSTER
Now that the darksome night is overpast
And dawning day appears in crystal sky,
Now must I haste abroad. But soft, who’s this?
What, Sly! O wondrous, hath he lain here all night?
I’ll wake him. I think he’s starved by this,
But that his belly was so stuffed with ale.
What ho, Sly, awake, for shame!
SLY Sim, gi’s some more wine. What, ’s all the players gone? Am not I a lord?
TAPSTER
A lord with a murrain! Come, art thou drunken still?
SLY
Who’s this? Tapster? O Lord, sirrah, I have had
The bravest dream tonight that ever thou
Heardest in all thy life.
TAPSTER
Ay, marry, but you had best get you home,
For your wife will course you for dreaming here tonight.
SLY
Will she? I know now how to tame a shrew.
I dreamt upon it all this night till now,
And thou hast waked me out of the best dream
That ever I had in my life. But I’ll to my
Wife presently and tame her too,
An if she anger me.
TAPSTER
Nay, tarry, Sly, for I’ll go home with thee
And hear the rest that thou hast dreamt tonight.
Exeunt omnes
THE FIRST PART OF THE CONTENTION
(2 HENRY VI)
WHEN Shakespeare’s history plays were gathered together in the 1623 Folio, seven years after he died, they were printed in the order of their historical events, each with a title naming the king in whose reign those events occurred. No one supposes that this is the order in which Shakespeare wrote them; and the Folio titles are demonstrably not, in all cases, those by which the plays were originally known. The three concerned with the reign of Henry VI are listed in the Folio, simply and unappealingly, as the First, Second, and Third Parts of King Henry the Sixth, and these are the names by which they have continued to be known. Versions of the Second and Third had appeared long before the Folio, in 1594 and 1595; their head titles read The First Part of the Contention of the two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster with the Death of the Good Duke Humphrey and The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, and the Good King Henry the Sixth. These are, presumably, full versions of the plays’ original titles, and we revert to them in preference to the Folio’s historical listing.
A variety of internal evidence suggests that the Folio’s Part One was composed after The First Part of the Contention and Richard, Duke of York, so we depart from the Folio order, though a reader wishing to read the plays in their narrative sequence will read Henry VI, Part One before the other two plays. The dates of all three are uncertain, but Part One is alluded to in 1592, when it was probably new. The First Part of the Contention probably belongs to 1590-1.
The play draws extensively on English chronicle history for its portrayal of the troubled state of England under Henry VI (1421-71). It dramatizes the touchingly weak King’s powerlessness against the machinations of his nobles, especially Richard, Duke of York, himself ambitious for the throne. Richard engineers the Kentish rebellion, led by Jack Cade, which provides some of the play’s liveliest episodes; and at the play’s end Richard seems poised to take the throne.
Historical events of ten years (11445-55) are dramatized with comparative fidelity within a coherent structure that offers a wide variety of theatrical entertainment. Though the play employs old-fashioned conventions of language (particularly the recurrent classical references) and of dramaturgy (such as the horrors of severed heads), its bold characterization, its fundamentally serious but often ironically comic presentation of moral and political issues, the powerful rhetoric of its verse, and the vivid immediacy of its prose have proved highly effective in its rare modern revivals.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY