Gremio.  Tut, she’s a lamb, a dove, a fool to him;
     I’ll tell you.  Sir Lucentio; when the priest
     Should ask if Katherine should be his wife? 
     Ay, by gogs woons, quoth he; and swore so loud,
     That, all amaz’d, the priest let fall the book;
     And as he stooped again to take it up,
     This mad-brain’d bridegroom took him such a cuff,
     That down fell priest and book, and book and priest. 
     Now take them up, quoth he, if any list.

   Tronio.  What said the wench when he rose up again?

   Gremio.  Trembled and shook; for why, he stamp’d and swore,
     As if the vicar meant to cozen him. 
     But after many ceremonies done,
     He calls for wine; a health, quoth he; as if
     He’d been aboard carousing with his mates
     After a storm; quaft off the muscadel,
     And threw the sops all in the sexton’s face;
     Having no other cause but that his beard
     Grew thin and hungerly, and seem’d to ask
     His sops as he was drinking.  This done, he took
     The bride about the neck, and kiss’d her lips
     With such a clamorous smack, that at their parting
     All the church echoed; and I seeing this,
     Came thence for very shame; and after me,
     I know, the rout is coming;—­
     Such a mad marriage never was before.

The most striking and at the same time laughable feature in the character of Petruchio throughout, is the studied approximation to the intractable character of real madness, his apparent insensibility to all external considerations, and utter indifference to everything but the wild and extravagant freaks of his own self-will.  There is no contending with a person on whom nothing makes any impression but his own purposes, and who is bent on his own whims just in proportion as they seem to want common-sense.  With him a thing’s being plain and reasonable is a reason against it.  The airs he gives himself are infinite, and his caprices as sudden as they are groundless.  The whole of his treatment of his wife at home is in the same spirit of ironical attention and inverted gallantry.  Everything flies before his will, like a conjurer’s wand, and he only metamorphoses his wife’s temper by metamorphosing her senses and all the objects she sees, at a word’s speaking.  Such are his insisting that it is the moon and not the sun which they see, &c.  This extravagance reaches its most pleasant and poetical height in the scene where, on their return to her father’s, they meet old Vincentio, whom Petruchio immediately addresses as a young lady: 

   Petruchio.  Good morrow, gentle mistress, where away? 
     Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too,
     Hast thou beheld a fresher gentlewoman? 
     Such war of white and red within her cheeks;
     What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty,
     As those two eyes become that heav’nly face? 
     Fair lovely maid, once more good day to thee: 
     Sweet Kate, embrace her for her beauty’s sake.