DRAMATIS PERSONÆ A Lord. Servants. Persons in the Induction. BAPTISTA, a rich gentleman of Padua. servants to Lucentio. -servants to Petruchio. A Pedant. KATHARINA, the shrew, } daughters to Baptista. Widow. Tailor, Haberdasher, and Servants attending on Baptista and Petruchio. Scene : Padua, and Petruchio's country house. DURATION OF TIME * Time, in this play,' says Mr. Daniel, “is a very slippery element, difficult to fix in any consistent scheme.' He suggests the following : Day 1. I. 2. II. Interval of a day or two. Interval [?] 77 RECIPES for the management of wives were the theme Early Literary of a series of popular plays during the last decade of History Elizabeth's reign. Dekker and Chettle's Patient Grissel was acted in 1600; Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness in 1603. But neither the longsuffering wife whom no harshness incenses, nor the guilty one whom kindness subdues, touched the vein of the rougher Elizabethan playgoer so effectively as the refractory virago or 'Shrew,' who is ‘tamed' by the sheer strong will of a masterful spouse. The Taming of the Shrew was the one member of the Shrew-taming species which attained a lasting success ; but it had vigorous precursors and rivals in its own time, and, alone among Shakespearean comedies, provoked a lively retort in the next generation. The Taming of the Shrew was first published, so Early Texts. far as is known, in the Folio of 1623, where it appears as the eleventh in the series of Comedies. It is there divided into acts, but not into scenes. A Quarto edition was printed, in 1631, from the Folio. Of Date of early performances, as of early editions, we hear Composition. nothing; and only internal evidence is available for determining its date. This is here the more precarious, since the play, as a whole, cannot pass for Shakespeare's. Most critics now agree that Shakespeare's participation in the Taming of the Shrew consisted essentially in rewriting certain scenes of an older play, large portions of which were embodied, with little or no change, in the piece printed by his editors, and known to posterity, as his. But the affinities of its most Shakespearean portion, the Taming itself, connect it on the whole with the work of the last five years of the century. Petruchio's wooing is what Henry's and Hotspur's might have been, had their Kates resembled his. The same boisterous, militant, unromantic conception of love pervades them all. Undoubtedly the whole scheme of comic effect is, for the Shakespeare of 1595-99, astonishingly elementary. On the other hand, the technique is, within its limited scope, wonderfully sure and firm. So far as the piece betrays Shakespeare's hand at all, it suggests not immaturity but preoccupation. It is the off-hand sketch of a mature artist, whose serious energies were concentrated upon greater tasks. Meres, in 1598, does not include the play in his list of Shakespeare's excellent comedies; but this is indecisive in the case of a play so largely not Shakespeare's. In any case, it had long been familiar in 1609, when Samuel Rowlands made one of his ‘Six honest Husbands' apply Petruchio's methods to the kind gossip' his wife, who had accused him of drunkenness : The chiefest Art I have I will bestow Sources of The Taming has countless analogues in storythe Plot. literature but no close parallel. The only English tale founded on a similar motive, A Merry Jest of a Shrewd and Curst Wife, lapped in a Morel's Skin for her Good Behaviour (printed in Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, iv. 415), is certainly as old as 1575; but the husband's method of 'curing' his Shrew by wrapping her in the salted skin of an old horse belongs to a ruder school of humour than even Petruchio's sufficiently Baotian fun. Somewhat nearer parallels are found both in the Spanish Conde Lucanor (first printed, 1575) and the Italian Notte piacevole of Straparola (1550); and the Jutland legend of the shrewish Mette,1 which throws into vivid relief the folk-lore origin of the story,2 is in some respects nearer than either. The earliest known version of the Shakespearean The Taming Taming-story is contained in the play The Taming off A Shrew. . A Shrew, which was published in 1594, with the following title: 'A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called The Taming of a Shrew. As it was sundry times acted by the Right Honourable the Earl of Pembrook his seruants 1594.' It was reissued in 1596 and 1607. In the latter year its publisher transferred it to Smethwick, who afterwards published the Quarto of Shakespeare's play. In what precise form its author met with the story we cannot tell. Probably the submissive sister or sisters of the Shrew already occurred in the variant he used, as in Straparola and the Danish tale. Kate, the Shrew, has two, Emelia and Philena, whose father compels their suitors, Aurelius and Polydor, as the condition of their own success, to find a wooer for Kate. Ferando consents, for a bribe of six thousand crowns, to undertake the enterprise. The subsequent course of the intrigue is substantially as in our present play. Aurelius changes clothes with his servant Valeria (=Tranio) and sends him to instruct Kate in music, 1 Simrock, Quellen des Shake- three examples never to contraspeare, i. 345; Köhler in Jahr. dict her husband; the final trial buch, iii. 397. of the obedience of the three 2 E.g. Mette is the third of wives corresponds literally with three daughters, she learns by the last scene of the comedy. consisted essentially in rewriting certain scenes of an older play, large portions of which were embodied, with little or no change, in the piece printed by his editors, and known to posterity, as his. But the affinities of its most Shakespearean portion, the Taming itself, connect it on the whole with the work of the last five years of the century. Petruchio's wooing is what Henry's and Hotspur's might have been, had their Kates resembled his. The same boisterous, militant, unromantic conception of love pervades them all. Undoubtedly the whole scheme of comic effect is, for the Shakespeare of 1595-99, astonishingly elementary. On the other hand, the technique is, within its limited scope, wonderfully sure and firm. So far as the piece betrays Shakespeare's hand at all, it suggests not immaturity but preoccupation. It is the off-hand sketch of a mature artist, whose serious energies were concentrated upon greater tasks. Meres, in 1598, does not include the play in his list of Shakespeare's excellent comedies; but this is indecisive in the case of a play so largely not Shakespeare's. In any case, it had long been familiar in 1609, when Samuel Rowlands made one of his ‘Six honest Husbands' apply Petruchio's methods to the kind gossip' his wife, who had accused him of drunkenness : The chiefest Art I have I will bestow Sources of The Taming has countless analogues in storythe Plot. literature but no close parallel. The only English tale founded on a similar motive, A Merry Jest of a Shrewd and Curst Wife, lapped in a Morel's Skin for her Good Behaviour (printed in Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, iv. 415), is certainly as old as 1575; but the husband's method of 'curing' his Shrew by wrapping 6 |
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