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.
Tronio. 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’d 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 clamorous
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.
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 everything 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. Everything flies before his will, like a conjurer’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:
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.