Hortensio.  He’ll make the man mad to make a woman of him.

   Katherine.  Young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet,
     Whither away, or where is thy abode? 
     Happy the parents of so fair a child;
     Happier the man whom favourable stars
     Allot thee for his lovely bed-fellow.

   Petruchio.  Why, how now, Kate, I hope thou art not mad: 
     This is a man, old, wrinkled, faded, wither’d,
     And not a maiden, as thou say’st he is.

   Katherine.  Pardon, old father, my mistaken eyes
     That have been so bedazed with the sun
     That everything I look on seemeth green. 
     Now I perceive thou art a reverend father.

The whole is carried on with equal spirit, as if the poet’s comic Muse had wings of fire.  It is strange how one man could be so many things; but so it is.  The concluding scene, in which trial is made of the obedience of the new-married wives (so triumphantly for Petruchio), is a very happy one.—­In some parts of this play there is a little too much about music-masters and masters of philosophy.  They were things of greater rarity in those days than they are now.  Nothing, however, can be better than the advice which Tranio gives his master for the prosecution of his studies: 

     The mathematics, and the metaphysics,
     Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you: 
     No profit grows, where is no pleasure ta’en: 
     In brief, sir, study what you most affect.

We have heard the Honey-Moon called ’an elegant Katherine and Petruchio’.  We suspect we do not understand this word elegant in the sense that many people do.  But in our sense of the word, we should call Lucentio’s description of his mistress elegant: 

     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.

When Biondello tells the same Lucentio for his encouragement, ’I knew a wench married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit, and so may you, sir’—­there is nothing elegant in this, and yet we hardly know which of the two passages is the best.

The taming of the shrew is a play within a play.  It is supposed to be a play acted for the benefit of Sly the tinker, who is made to believe himself a lord, when he wakes after a drunken brawl.  The character of Sly and the remarks with which he accompanies the play are as good as the play itself.  His answer when he is asked how he likes it, ’Indifferent well; ’tis a good piece of work, would ’twere done,’ is in good keeping, as if he were thinking of his Saturday night’s job.  Sly does not change his tastes with his new situation, but in the midst of splendour and luxury still calls out lustily and repeatedly ‘for a pot o’ the smallest ale’.  He is very slow in giving up his personal identity