THIS play was produced in a "taming" age. Men tamed each other by the axe and the fagot; parents tamed their children by the rod and the ferrule, as they stood or knelt in trembling silence before those who had given them life; and, although England was then called the "paradise of women," and, as opposed to the treatment of horses, they were treated " obsequiously," husbands thought that "taming," after the manner of Petrucio, by oaths and starvation, was a commendable fashion. Fletcher was somewhat heretical upon this point; for he wrote a play called 'The Tamer Tamed; or the Taming of the Tamer,' in which Petrucio, having married a second wife, was subjected to the same process by which he conquered "Katharine the curst." The discipline appeared to be considered necessary for more than a century afterwards; for we find in the 'Tatler' a story told as new and original, of a gentleman in Lincolnshire who had four daughters, one of whom was of "so imperious a temper (usually called a high spirit), that it continually made great uneasiness in the family," but who was entirely reclaimed by the Petrucio recipe of "taking a woman down in her wedding shoes."

We are the happier our fortune-living in an age when this practice of Petrucio is not universally considered orthodox; and we owe a great deal to him who has exhibited the secrets of the "taming school" with so much spirit in this comedy, for the better belief of our age, that violence is not to be subdued by violence. It was he who said, when the satirist cried out

"Give me leave

To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world"-

it was he who said, in his own proper spirit of gentleness and truth,

"Fie on thee, I can tell what thou would'st do

"Most mischievous foul sin in chiding sin."

It was he who found "a soul of goodness in things evil," who taught us, in the same delicious reflection of his own nature, the real secret of conquering opposition

"Your gentleness shall force,

More than your force move us to gentleness."*

Pardon be for him, if, treading in the footsteps of a predecessor whose sympathies with the peaceful and the beautiful were immeasurably inferior to his own, and sacrificing something to the popular appetite, he should have made the husband of a froward woman "kill her in her own humour,” and bring her upon her knees to the abject obedience of a revolted, but penitent slave :—

"A foul contending rebel,

And graceless traitor to her loving lord."

Pardon for him? If there be one reader of Shakspere, and especially if that reader be a female, who cherishes unmixed indignation when Petrucio, in his triumph, exclaims

"He that knows better how to tame a shrew,
Now let him speak,"-

we would say, the indignation which you feel, and in which thousands sympathise, belongs to the age in which you live; but the principle of justice, and of justice to women above all, from which it springs, has been established, more than by any other lessons of human origin, by him who has now moved your anger. It is to him that woman owes, more than to any other human authority, the popular elevation of the feminine character, by the most matchless delineations of its purity, its faith, its disinterestedness, its tenderness, its heroism, its union of intellect and sensibility. It is he that, as long as the power of influencing mankind by high thoughts, clothed in the most exquisite language, shall endure, will preserve the ideal elevation of women pure and unassailable from the attacks of coarseness or libertinism,-ay, and even from the degradation of the example of the crafty and worldly-minded of their own sex ;-for it is he that has delineated the ingenuous and trusting Imogen, the guileless Perdita, the impassioned Juliet, the heart-stricken but loving Desdemona, the generous and courageous Portia, the unconquerable Isabella, the playful Rosalind, the world-unknowing Miranda. Shakspere may have exhibited one froward woman wrongly tamed; but who can estimate the number of those from whom his all-penetrating influence has averted the curse of being froward? If Shakspere requires any apology for the Taming of the Shrew, it is for having adopted the subject at all,—not for his treatment of it. The Kate that he found ready to his hand was a thoroughly unfeminine person, coarse and obstreperous, without the humour which shines through the violence of his Katharine. He describes his Shrew

"Young and beauteous;

Brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman." She has " a scolding tongue," "her only fault." Her temper, as Shakspere has delineated it, is the result of her pride and her love of domination. She is captious to her father; she tyrannizes over her younger sister; she is jealous of the attractions of that sister's gentleness. This is a temper that perhaps could not be subdued by kindness, except after Petrucio's fashion of "killing a wife with kindness." At any rate, it could not be so subdued, except by a long course of patient discipline, quite incompatible with the hurried movement of a dramatic action. In the scene where Katharine strikes Bianca her temper has been exhibited at the worst. It is bad enough; but not quite so bad as appears from the following description of a French commentator:-" Catherine bat sa sœur par fantaisie et pour passer le temps, malgré les prières et les larmes de Bianca, qui ne se défend que par la douceur. Baptista accourt, et met Bianca en sureté dans sa chambre. Catherine sort, enragée de n'avoir plus personne à battre." It is in her worst humour that Petrucio woos her; and surely nothing can be more animated than the wooing:—

As You Like It.

"For you are call'd plain Kate,

And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst;
But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom,
Kate of Kate-Hall, my super-dainty Kate,
For dainties are all cates; and therefore, Kate,
Take this of me, Kate of my consolation;-

+ Paul Duport, Essais Littéraires, tom. ii. p. 305.

Hearing thy mildness prais'd in every town,
Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded,
(Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs,)

Myself am mov'd to woo thee for my wife."

Mr. Brown* has very judiciously pointed out the conduct of this scene, as an example of Shakspere's intimate knowledge of Italian manners. The conclusion of it is in reality a betrothment; of which circumstance no indication is given in the older play. The imperturbable spirit of Petrucio, and the daring mixture of reality and jest in his deportment, subdued Katharine at the first interview :

"Father and wife," says Petrucio. The betrothment is complete; and Katharine acknowledges it when Petrucio does not come to his appointment:

"Now must the world point at poor Katharine,

And say-Lo! there is mad Petrucio's wife,
If it would please him come and marry her."

The "taming" has begun; her pride is touched in a right direction. But Petrucio does come. What passes in the church is matter of description, but the description is Shakspere all over. When we compare the freedom and facility which our poet has thrown into these scenes, with the drawling course of his predecessor, we are amazed that any one should have a difficulty in distinctly tracing his "fine Roman hand." Nor are the scenes of the under-plot in our opinion less certainly his. Who but Shakspere could have written these lines?-

"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."

Compare this exquisite simplicity, this tender and unpretending harmony, with the bombastic images, and the formal rhythm, of the old play; the following passage for example:

"Come fair Emelia, my lovely love,
Brighter than the burnish'd palace of the Sun,
The eyesight of the glorious firmament,

In whose bright looks sparkles the radiant fire
Wily Prometheus slily stole from Jove."

And who but Shakspere could have created Grumio out of the stupid Sander of his predecessor? That "Ancient, trusty, pleasant, servant Grumio,"

is one of those incomparable characters who drove the old clowns and fools off the stage, and trampled their wooden daggers and coxcombs for ever under foot. He is one of that numerous train that Shakspere called up, of whom Shadwell said, that "they had more wit than any of the wits and critics of his time." When Grumio comes with Petrucio to wed, he says not a word; but who has not pictured him "with a linen stock on one leg, and a kersey boot-hose on the other-a very monster in apparel, and not like a Christian foot-boy or a gentleman's lackey?" We imagine him, like Sancho or Ralpho, somewhat under-sized. His profound remark, "considering the weather, a taller man than I would take cold," is indicative equally of his stature and and his wit. His scene with Curtis, in the fourth Act, is almost as good as Launce and Touchstone.

* Shakspeare's Autobiographical Poems.

But we are digressing from Petrucio, the soul of this drama. Hazlitt's character of him is very just:-"Petrucio 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 great skill which Shakspere has shown in the management of this comedy, is established in the conviction that he produces all along that Petrucio's character is assumed. Whatever he may say, whatever he may do, we are satisfied that he has a real fund of good humour at the bottom of all the outbreaks of his inordinate self-will. We know that if he succeeds in subduing the violence of his wife by a much higher extravagance of violence, he will be prepared not only to return her affection, but to evoke it, in all the strength and purity of woman's love, out of the pride and obstinacy in which it has been buried. His concluding line,

Of the 'Induction' we scarcely know how to speak without appearing hyperbolical in our praise. It is to us one of the most precious gems in Shakspere's casket. The elegance, the truth, the high poetry, the consummate humour, of this fragment, are so remarkable, that if we apply ourselves to compare it carefully, with the earlier Induction upon which Shakspere formed it, and with the best of the dramatic poetry of his contemporaries, we shall in some degree obtain a conception, not only of the qualities in which he equalled and excelled the highest things of other men, and in which he could be measured with them,-but of those wonderful endowments in which he differed from all other men, and to which no standard of comparison can be applied. Schlegel says, "The last half of this prelude, that in which the tinker in his new state again drinks himself out of his senses, and is transformed in his sleep into his former condition, from some accident or other is lost." We doubt whether it was ever produced; and whether Shakspere did not exhibit his usual judgment in letting the curtain drop upon honest Christopher, when his wish was accomplished at the close of the comedy which he had expressed very early in its progress:

"'Tis a very excellent piece of work, madam lady; 'Would 't were done!"

Had Shakspere brought him again upon the scene, in all the richness of his first exhibition, perhaps the impatience of the audience would never have allowed them to sit through the lessons of "the taming-school." We have had farces enough founded upon the legend of Christopher Sly, but no one has ventured to continue him. Neither this fragment, nor that of Cambuscan bold,' could be made perfect, unless we could "Call up him that left half-told The story."