The Taming of the Shrew

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

By WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Preface and Annotations by

HENRY N. HUDSON

Introduction by

CHARLES H. HERFORD

The Taming of the Shrew

By William Shakespeare

Preface and Annotations by Henry N. Hudson

Introduction by Charles H. Herford

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7595-6

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-7762-2

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Cover Image: A detail of The Taming of the Shrew: Katherine and Petruchio, 1855 (oil on canvas), Martineau, Robert Braithwaite (1826-69) / Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, UK / Bridgeman Images.

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CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

INDUCTION.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

ACT I.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

ACT II.

SCENE I.

ACT III.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

ACT IV.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

SCENE III.

SCENE IV.

SCENE V.

SCENE VI.

ACT V.

SCENE I.

SCENE II.

BIOGRAPHICAL AFTERWORD

Preface

Not mentioned by Meres in 1598, though undoubtedly written before that time; nor ever printed, that we know of, till in the folio of 1623. The date of the writing has not been definitively settled, nor is it likely to be. Malone gave it as his final judgment that this play was one of the Poet’s "very early productions, and near, in point of time, to The Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labours Lost, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona." This judgment has not, I think, been successfully impugned since Malone’s day.

Another play, called The Taming of a Shrew, was first printed in 1594, again in 1596, and a third time in 1607. In the title-page of 1594 we have the words, As it was sundry times acted by the right-honourable the Earl of Pembroke’s Servants. This play and Shakespeare’s agree in having substantially the same plot, order, and incidents, so far as regards the Lord, the Tinker, Petruchio, Catharine, and the whole taming process. The scene of the former is at Athens, of the latter at Padua, both of which are represented as famous seats of learning. In The Taming of a Shrew, Alphonsus, an Athenian merchant, has three daughters, Kate, Emelia, and Phylema. Aurelius, son to the Duke of Sestos, goes in quest of Phylema, Polidor of Emelia: as for Kate, she is such a terrible shrew that nobody seems likely to want her; which puts the father upon taking an oath not to admit any suitors to the younger two till the elder is disposed of. Presently Ferando, hearing of her fame, offers himself as her lover, and proceeds to carry her by storm. The wooing, the marriage, the entertainment of the bride at Ferando’s country house, the passages with the Tailor and Haberdasher, the trip to her father’s, and Kate’s subdued and pliant behaviour, all follow in much the same style and strain as in Shakespeare’s play. The underplot, however, is quite different. Aurelius and Polidor do not carry on their suits in disguise; though the former brings in a merchant to personate his father, who arrives in time to discover the. trick, and lets off plenty of indignation thereat. All the parties being at length married, the play winds up with a wager between the three husbands respecting the obedience of their several wives; and the tamed Kate reads her sisters a lecture on the virtue and sweetness of wifely submission.—The persons and proceedings of the Induction, also, are much the same in both plays, save that, in The Taming of a Shrew, Sly continues his remarks from time to time throughout the performance; and finally, having drunk himself back into insensibility, is left where he was found, and upon awaking regards it all as a glorious dream; whereas in The Taming of the Shrew this part is not carried beyond the first Act.

It is commonly supposed that Shakespeare’s play was written later than the other, and founded upon it; and in what follows I shall take for granted that such was the case, though it does not seem to me to have been proved. It is certain, indeed, that one of the plays must have been in a great measure borrowed from the other; but I think no slight argument might be made for reversing the alleged order. The common opinion, however, being admitted to be right, the close similarity of title, matter, and interest shows that the Poet had no thought of disguising his obligations: rather it looks as if he meant to turn the popularity of the other play to the advantage of his own company. Nevertheless, except in a very few lines and phrases adopted or imitated, the dialogue, language, and poetry of Shakespeare’s play are, for the most part, of quite a different race from those of the other: the characters, even when partly borrowed, are wrought out into a much more distinct and determinate individuality; and the texture and style of the workmanship lift it immeasurably above its model. Still the other play must be owned to have considerable merit; probably few English dramas then in being should take rank much before it: it has occasional blushes of genuine poetry, some force and skill of characterization, and a good deal of sound stage-effect; though, upon the whole, the style is very stiff, frigid, pedantic, and artificial; and often, in setting out to be humorous, it runs into flat vulgarity or vapid commonplace.

It is uncertain when or by whom The Taming of a Shrew was written. Malone conjectured it to be the work of Robert Greene, who died September 3, I592. The weight of probability bears strongly in favour of that conjecture. An argument of no mean force has been drawn from the Orlando Furiosa, which was undoubtedly the work of Greene. Both were anonymous, were issued the same year, and by the same publishers; and both are called Histories. Knight, after stating this point, adds the following: It is impossible, we think, not to be struck with the resemblance of these performances, in the structure of the verse, the excess of mythological allusion, the laboured finery intermixed with feebleness, and the occasional outpouring of a rich and gorgeous fancy.

This view has been strengthened by an anonymous writer of our own country, who has pointed out a number of passages in The Taming of a Shrew that were evidently copied from Marlowe’s Faustus and Tamburlaine. From these the writer himself infers the play to have been by Marlowe. Against this, Dyce gives his verdict as follows: "I find enough in The Taming of a Shrew to convince me that it was the work of some one who had closely studied Marlowe’s writings, and who frequently could not resist the temptation to adopt the very words of his favourite dramatist. It is quite possible that he was not always conscious of his plagiarisms from Marlowe; recollections of whose phraseology may have mingled imperceptibly with the current of his thoughts."

Marlowe died June 1, 1593. Of his Faustus the earliest known edition was in 1604. All the notices we have of it seem to infer that it had not been printed in I 594, when The Taming of a Shrew first came out. So that the author of the latter play, whoever he might be, must have had access to the manuscript of Faustus. As this was probably written as early as 1589, there appears no reason but that the forecited plagiarisms from it may have been made several years before The Taming of a Shrew came from the press. The question, then, rises, who would be more likely to have such a freedom with Marlowe’s manuscript than his admiring friend and fellow-dramatist, Robert Greene?

The upshot of all this argument, so far as regards the matter in hand, is, that Shakespeare’s play may have been written before Greene’s death. If this be granted, (and the internal evidence makes strongly for as early a date,) then we may fairly presume The Taming of the Shrew to have been one of the plays referred to in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance. A part of the passage is quoted in vol. i., page 25, of this edition; but I must here quote it more fully. He is exhorting Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele, those Gentlemen his quondam acquaintance, that spend their wits in making plays:

"Base-minded men all three of you, if by my misery ye be not warned: for unto none of you, like me, sought those burs to cleave; those puppets, I mean, that speak from our mouths, those antics garnished in our colours. Is it not strange that I to whom they all have been beholding, is it not like that you to whom they all have been beholding, shall, were ye in that case that I am now, be both of them at once forsaken? Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tiger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country."

That the upstart crow meant Shakespeare, is on all hands admitted. And the general opinion is, that the Second and Third Parts of King Henry the Sixth are the plays in which Shakespeare more especially drew upon the labours of Greene and his friends. Yet the originals of those plays are not nearly so much in Greene"s manner as The Taming of a Shrew. It may indeed be urged that Greene is referring to the Shake-scene only as an actor, not as a writer, of plays: but the Johannes Fac-totum clearly points him out as a do-all, one who could turn his hand to any thing, and could beat the others in whatever he undertook. And the "Tiger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide" evidently refers to a line in 3 Henry VI., i. 4: "O tiger’s heart wrapp’d in a woman’s hide;" thus apparently pointing at the Shake-scene as a writer of plays. All this, to be sure, does not conclude but that the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI. may have been among the writings alluded to; for Greene complains of others’ grievances as well as his own: but the forecited passage certainly conveys the impression that the writer had himself suffered by the purloining of his plumes; that his own work had been specially invaded.

I have already observed how Shakespeare’s play varies from the other in the matter of the underplot. Here he has been traced to The Supposes, a play translated from Ariosto’s I Suppositi by Gascoigne, and acted at