ILLUSTRATIONS OF ACT V. SCENE I.-" A sailmaker in Bergamo." It seems rather odd to select sailmaking as the occupation of a resident in a town so far from the sea as Bergamo. It is possible, however, that the sails required for the navigation of the lakes Lecco and Garda might have been made in the intermediate town of Bergamo. I looked through the place for a sailmaker; but the nearest approach I could find to one was a maker of awnings, &c.-(M.) 2 SCENE II.—" A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled.” The fountain is the favourite of the many ornaments of the court of an Italian palazzo. It is important for its utility during the heats of summer; and such arts are lavished upon this species of erection as make it commonly a very beautiful object. It is worth the trouble of ascending a campanile in an Italian city in summer, merely to look down into the shady courts of the surrounding houses, where, if such houses be of the better sort, the fountains in the centre of the courts may be seen brimming and spouting, so as to refresh the gazer through the imagination. The birds that come to the basin to drink, and the servants of the house to draw water, form pictures which are a perpetual gratification to the eye. The clearness of the pool is the first requisite to the enjoyment of the fountain, without which, however elegant may be its form, it is "ill-seeming-bereft of beauty."-(M.) 3 SCENE II.-" Exeunt." Shakspere's play terminates without disposing of Christopher Sly. The actors probably dealt with him as they pleased after his most characteristic speech at the end of the second scene of Act I. The Taming of a Shrew' concludes as follows: "Then enter Two bearing of SLIE in his own apparel again, and leave him where they found him, and then go out: then enters the Tapster. Tap. 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, Slie? O wondrous! hath he lain here all night? I'll wake him; I think he's starv'd by this, But that his belly was so stuff'd with ale: What, now, Slie, awake, for shame! Slie. Sim, give 's some more wine: what, all the players gone? Am not I a lord? Tap. A lord with a murrain: come, art thou drunken still? Slie. Who's this? Tapster! O Lord, sirrah, I have had the bravest dream to-night that ever thou heard'st in all thy life. Tap. Yea, marry, but you had best get you home, For your wife will curse you for dreaming here to-night. Slie. 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 if she anger me. Tap. Nay, tarry, Slie, for I'll go home with thee, And hear the rest that thou hast dreamt to-night. VOL. II. [Exeunt omnes." 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. who said, when the satirist cried out "Give me leave To speak my mind, and I will through and through It was he it was he who said, in his own proper spirit of gentleness and truth, "Fie on thee! I can tell what thou wouldst 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 some 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 thou As You Like It. sands 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 of the comedy to which this bears so much resemblance, upon the surface, is a thoroughly unfeminine person, coarse and obstreperous, without the humour which shines through the violence of Shakspere's 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, enragee 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 : "For you are call'd plain Kate, And bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst; 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 other play. The imperturbable spirit of Petrucio, and the daring mixture of reality and jest in his deportment, subdued Katharine at the first interview : "Setting all this chat aside, Thus in plain terms :-Your father hath consented Katharine denounces him as "A madcap ruffian, and a swearing Jack ;" Petrucio heeds it not : "We have 'greed so well together, That upon Sunday is the wedding-day." Katharine rejoinds, "I'll see thee hang'd on Sunday first ;" but, nevertheless, the betrothment proceeds : "Give me thy hand, Kate: I will unto Venice, To buy apparel 'gainst the wedding-day: Provide the feast, father, and bid the guests; I will be sure my Katharine shall be fine. Bap. I know not what to say: but give me your hands; God send you joy, Petrucio! 't is a match. Gre. Tra. Amen, say we; we will be witnesses." Father and wife," says Petrucio. The betrothment is complete; * Paul Duport, Essais Littéraires, tom. ii. p. 305. |