And yet we hear not of our son-in-law:
What will be said? what mockery will it be,
To want the bridegroom, when the priest attends
To speak the ceremonial rites of marriage?
What says Lucentio to this shame of ours?

Kath. No shame but mine: I must, forsooth, be forc'd
To give my hand, oppos'd against my heart,
Unto a mad-brain rudesby, full of spleen;1

Who woo'd in haste, and means to wed at leisure.
I told you, I, he was a frantick fool,

Hiding his bitter jests in blunt behaviour:
And, to be noted for a merry man,

He'll woo a thousand, 'point the day of marriage,
Make friends, invite, yes, and proclaim the banns;*
Yet never means to wed where he hath woo'd.
Now must the world point at poor Katharine,
And say,-Lo, there is mad Petruchio's wife,
If it would please him come and marry her.

Tra. Patience, good Katharine, and Baptista too;
Upon my life, Petruchio means but well,
Whatever fortune stays him from his word:
Though he be blunt, I know him passing wise;
Though he be merry, yet withal he 's honest.

Kath. 'Would Katharine had never seen him though! [Exit, weeping, followed by BIAN. and others. Bap. Go, girl; I cannot blame thee now to weep; For such an injury would vex a saint,3

Much more a shrew of thy impatient humour.4

1 full of spleen;] That is full of humour, caprice, and inconstancy. Johnson.

So, in The First Part of King Henry IV:

"A hare-brain'd Hotspur, govern'd by a spleen."

M. Mason.

2 Make friends, invite, yes, and proclaim the banns;] Mr. Malone reads:

Make friends, invite them, &c. Steevens.

Them is not in the old copy. For this emendation I am answerable. The editor of the second folio, to supply the defect in the metre, reads, with less probability in my opinionMake friends, invite, yes, and proclaim, &c. Malone.

3 - vex a saint,] The old copy redundantly reads-vex a very saint. Steevens.

of thy impatient humour.] Thy, which is not in the old copy, was inserted by the editor of the second folio. Malone.

Enter BIONDello.

Bion. Master, master! news, old news, and such news as you never heard of!

Bap. Is it new and old too? how may that be?

Bion. Why, is it not news, to hear of Petruchio's coming?

Bap. Is he come?

Bion. Why, no, sir.

Bap. What then?

Bion. He is coming.

Bap. When will he be here?

Bion. When he stands where I am, and sees you there. Tra. But, say, what:-To thine old news.

Bion. Why, Petruchio is coming, in a new hat, and an old jerkin; a pair of old breeches, thrice turned; a pair of boots that have been candle-cases, one buckled, another laced; an old rusty sword ta'en out of the town armory, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with two broken points: His horse hipped with an old mothy

5

old news,] These words were added by Mr. Rowe, and necessarily, for the reply of Baptista supposes them to have been already spoken; old laughing-old utis, &c. are expressions of that time merely hyperbolical, and have been more than once used by Shakspeare. See note on Henry IV, P. II, Act II, sc. iv. Steevens.

6a pair of boots-one buckled, another laced; an old rusty sword ta'en out of the town armory, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with two broken points :] How a sword should have two broken points, I cannot tell. There is, I think, a transposition caused by the seeming relation of point to sword. I read, a pair of boots, one buckled, another laced with two broken points; an old rusty sword—with a broken hilt, and chapeless. Johnson.

I suspect that several words giving an account of Petruchio's belt are wanting. The belt was then broad and rich, and worn on the outside of the doublet.-Two broken points might therefore have concluded the description of its ostentatious meanness.

Steevens.

The broken points might be the two broken tags to the laces.

Tollet.

that have been candle-cases,] That is, I suppose, boots long left off, and after having been converted into cases to hold the ends of candles, returning to their first office. I do not know that I have ever met with the word candle-case in any other place, except the following preface to a dramatic dialogue, 1604, entitled The Case is Alter'd, How?" I write upon cases, neither knife-cases, pin-cases, nor candle-cases,”

8

saddle, the stirrups of no kindred:7 besides, possessed with the glanders, and like to mose in the chine; troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of windgalls, sped with spavins, raied with the yellows, past cure of the fives, stark, spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots; swayed in the back, and shoulder-shotten; ne'er-legged before, and with a half-checked bit, and a head-stall of sheep's leather; which, being restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst, and now repaired with knots: one girt six times

1

And again, in How to choose a Good Wife from a Bad, 1602: "A bow-case, a cap-case, a comb-case, a lute-case, a fiddlecase, and a candle-case." Steevens.

7

the stirrups of no kindred:] So, in Sidney's Arcadia, Lib. III: "To this purpose many willing hands were about him, letting him have reynes, pettrel, with the rest of the furniture, and very brave bases; but all comming from divers horses, neither in colour nor fashion showing any kindred one with the other."

Steevens. 8 infected with the fashions,- -past cure of the fives,] Fashions. So called in the West of England, but by the best writers on farriery, farcens, or farcy.

Fives. So called in the West: vives elsewhere, and avives by the French; a distemper in horses, little differing from the strangles. Grey.

Shakspeare is not the only writer who uses fashions for farcy. So, in Decker's comedy of Old Fortunatus, 1600:

"Shad. What shall we learn by travel?

"Andel. Fashions.

"Shad. That's a beastly disease."

Again, in The New Ordinary, by Brome:

"My old beast is infected with the fashions, fashion-sick." Again, in Decker's Guls Hornbook, 1609: "Fashions was then counted a disease, and horses died of it." Steevens.

91 · swayed in the back,] The old copy has-waid. Corrected by Sir T. Hanmer. Malone.

So, in Philemon Holland's translation of the 28th Book of Pliny's Natural History, ch. iv, p. 300: "- for let them be swaied in the backe, or hipped by some stripe," &c. Steevens.

1 ne'er legg'd before,] i. e. founder'd in his fore-feet; having, as the jockies term it, never a fore leg to stand on. The subsequent words" which being restrained to keep him from stumbling," -seem to countenance this interpretation. The modern editors read-near-legg'd before; but to go near before is not reckoned a defect, but a perfection, in a horse. Malone.

pieced, and a woman's crupper of velure, which hath two letters for her name, fairly set down in studs, and here and there pieced with packthread.

Bap. Who comes with him?

Bion. O, sir, his lackey, for all the world caparisoned like the horse; with a linen stock3 on one leg, and a kersey boot-hose on the other, gartered with a red and blue list; an old hat, and The humour of forty fancies pricked in 't for a feather: a monster, a very monster

2

crupper of velure,] Velure is velvet. Velours, Fr. So, in The World tossed at Tennis, by Middleton and Rowley:

"Come, my well-lined soldier (with valour,

"Not velure) keep me warm.”

Again, in The Noble Gentleman, by Beaumont and Fletcher: 66 an old hat,

3

"Lin'd with velure." Steevens.

stock] i. e. stocking. So, in Twelfth Night: "— it [his leg] does indifferent well in a flame-coloured stock."

Steevens.

4 an old hat and The humour of forty fancies pricked in 't for a feather:] This was some ballad or drollery at that time, which the poet here ridicules, by making Petruchio prick it up in his foot-boy's hat for a feather. His speakers are perpetually quoting scraps and stanzas of old ballads, and often very obscurely; for, so well are they adapted to the occasion, that they seem of a piece with the rest. In Shakspeare's time, the kingdom was over-run with these doggrel compositions, and he seems to have borne them a very particular grudge. He frequently ridicules both them and their makers, with excellent humour. In Much Ado about Nothing, he makes Benedick say: "Prove that ever I lose more blood with love than I get again with drinking, prick out my eyes with a ballad-maker's pen." As the bluntness of it would make the execution of it extremely painful. And again, in Troilus and Cressida, Pandarus in his distress having repeated a very stupid stanza from an old ballad, says, with the highest humour: "There never was a truer rhyme; let 's cast away nothing, for we may live to have need of such a verse.We see it, we see it." Warburton.

I have some doubts concerning this interpretation. A fancy appears to have been some ornament worn formerly in the hat. So Peacham, in his Worth of a Penny, describing "an indigent and discontented soldat," says, "he walks with his arms folded, his belt without a sword or rapier, that, perhaps, being somewhere in trouble; a hat without a band, hanging over his eyes; only it wears a weather-beaten fancy for fashion-sake." This lackey therefore did not wear a common fancy in his hat, but some fantastical ornament, comprizing the humour of forty different fan

in apparel; and not like a christian footboy, or a gentleman's lackey.

Tra. 'Tis some odd humour pricks him to this fashion;

Yet oftentimes he goes but mean apparell❜d.

Bap. I am glad he is come, howsoe'er he comes.
Bion. Why, sir, he comes not.

Bap. Didst thou not say, he comes?

Bion. Who? that Petruchio came?

Bap. Ay, that Petruchio came.

Bion. No, sir; I say, his horse comes with him on his back.

Bap. Why, that 's all one.

Bion. Nay, by saint Jamy, I hold you a penny, A horse and a man is more than one, and yet not many. Enter PETRUCHIO and GRUMIO.5

Pet. Come, where be these gallants? who is at home?

cies. Such, I believe, is the meaning. A couplet in one of Sir John Davies's Epigrams, 1598, may also add support to my interpretation:

"Nor for thy love will I once gnash a bricke,

"Or some pied colours in my bonnet sticke."

A fancy, however, meant also a love-song or sonnet, or other poem. So, in Sapho and Phao, 1591: "I must now fall from love to labour, and endeavour with mine oar to get a fare, not with my pen to write a fancy." If the word was used here in this sense, the meaning is, that the lackey had stuck forty ballads together, and made something like a feather out of them.

Malone.

Dr. Warburton might have strengthened his supposition by observing, that the Humour of Forty Fancies was probably a collection of those short poems which are called Fancies, by Falstaff, in The Second Part of King Henry IV: ". sung those tunes which he heard the carmen whistle, and swore they were his Fancies, his good-nights." Nor is the Humour of Forty Fancies a more extraordinary title to a collection of poems, than the wellknown Hundred sundrie Flowers bounde up in one small Poesie.—A Paradise of dainty Devises.-The Arbor of amorous Conceits.-The gorgeous Gallery of gallant Inventions-The Forest of Histories.The Ordinary of Humors, &c. Chance, at some future period, may establish as a certainty what is now offered as a conjecture. A penny book, containing forty short poems, would, properly managed, furnish no unapt imitation of a plume of feathers for the hat of a humourist's servant. Steevens.

5 Enter Petruchio and Grumio.] Thus, in the original play: "Enter Ferando, basely attired, and a red cap on his head.