To offer war where they should kneel for peace,

Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway

When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.

Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,

Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,

But that our soft conditions and our hearts

Should well agree with our external parts?

Come, come, you froward and unable worms,

My mind hath been as big as one of yours,

My heart as great, my reason haply more,

To bandy word for word and frown for frown;

But now I see our lances are but straws,

Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,

That seeming to be most which we indeed least are.

Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,

And place your hands below your husband’s foot,

In token of which duty, if he please,

My hand is ready, may it do him ease.

PETRUCCIO

Why, there’s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate.

They kiss

LUCENTIO

Well, go thy ways, old lad, for thou shalt ha’t.

VINCENTIO

‘Tis a good hearing when children are toward.

LUCENTIO

But a harsh hearing when women are froward.

PETRUCCIO Come, Kate, we’ll to bed.

We three are married, but you two are sped.

’Twas I won the wager, though (to Lucentio) you hit

the white,

And being a winner, God give you good night.

Exit Petruccio with Katherine

HORTENSIO

Now go thy ways, thou hast tamed a curst shrew.

LUCENTIO

’Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so.

Exeunt

ADDITIONAL PASSAGES

The Taming of A Shrew, printed in 1594 and believed to derive from Shakespeare’s play as performed, contains episodes continuing and rounding off the Christopher Sly framework which may echo passages written by Shakespeare but not printed in the Folio. They are given below.

A. The following exchange occurs at a point for which there is no exact equivalent in Shakespeare’s play. It could come at the end of 2.1.The ‘fool’ of the first line is Sander, the counterpart of Grumio.

Then Sly speaks

SLY Sim, when will the fool come again?

LORD He’ll come again, my lord, anon.

SLY Gi’s some more drink here. Zounds, where’s the tapster? Here, Sim, eat some of these things.

LORD So I do, my lord.

SLY Here, Sim, I drink to thee.

LORD My lord, here comes the players again.

SLY O brave, here’s two fine gentlewomen.

B. This passage comes between 4.5 and 4.6. If it originates with Shakespeare it implies that Grumio accompanies Petruccio at the beginning of 4.6.

SLY Sim, must they be married now?

LORD Ay, my lord.

Enter Ferando and Kate and Sander

SLY Look, Sim, the fool is come again now.

C. Sly interrupts the action of the play-within-play. This is at 5.1.102 of Shakespeare’s play.

Phylotus and Valeria runs away.

Then Sly speaks

SLY I say we’ll have no sending to prison.

LORD My lord, this is but the play. They’re but in jest.

SLY I tell thee, Sim, we’ll have no sending to prison, that’s flat. Why, Sim, am not I Don Christo Vary? Therefore I say they shall not go to prison.

LORD No more they shall not, my lord. They be run away.

SLY Are they run away, Sim? That’s well. Then gi’s some more drink, and let them play again.

LORD Here, my lord.

Sly drinks and then falls asleep

D. Sly is carried off between 5.1 and 5.2.

Exeunt omnes

Sly sleeps

LORD

Who’s within there? Come hither, sirs, my lord’s

Asleep again. Go take him easily up

And put him in his own apparel again,

And lay him in the place where we did find him

Just underneath the alehouse side below.

But see you wake him not in any case.

BOY

It shall be done, my lord. Come help to bear him hence.

Exit

E. The conclusion.

Then enter two bearing of Sly in his own apparel again and leaves him where they found him and then goes out. Then enter the Tapster

TAPSTER

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, Sly! O wondrous, hath he lain here all night?

I’ll wake him. I think he’s starved by this,

But that his belly was so stuffed with ale.

What ho, Sly, awake, for shame!

SLY Sim, gi’s some more wine. What, ’s all the players gone? Am not I a lord?

TAPSTER

A lord with a murrain! Come, art thou drunken still?

SLY

Who’s this? Tapster? O Lord, sirrah, I have had

The bravest dream tonight that ever thou

Heardest in all thy life.

TAPSTER

Ay, marry, but you had best get you home,

For your wife will course you for dreaming here tonight.

SLY

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,

An if she anger me.

TAPSTER

Nay, tarry, Sly, for I’ll go home with thee

And hear the rest that thou hast dreamt tonight.

Exeunt omnes

THE FIRST PART OF THE CONTENTION

(2 HENRY VI)

WHEN Shakespeare’s history plays were gathered together in the 1623 Folio, seven years after he died, they were printed in the order of their historical events, each with a title naming the king in whose reign those events occurred. No one supposes that this is the order in which Shakespeare wrote them; and the Folio titles are demonstrably not, in all cases, those by which the plays were originally known. The three concerned with the reign of Henry VI are listed in the Folio, simply and unappealingly, as the First, Second, and Third Parts of King Henry the Sixth, and these are the names by which they have continued to be known. Versions of the Second and Third had appeared long before the Folio, in 1594 and 1595; their head titles read The First Part of the Contention of the two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster with the Death of the Good Duke Humphrey and The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York, and the Good King Henry the Sixth. These are, presumably, full versions of the plays’ original titles, and we revert to them in preference to the Folio’s historical listing.