KATHARINE AND PETRUCHIO.

“IF

APPENDIX.

I. SUBSTANCE AND CHARACTERS OF THE COMEDY.

F Shakespeare requires any apology for The Taming of the Shrew,' it is for his having adopted the subject-not for his treatment of it. The Kate that he found ready to his hand was

*

* *

*

a thoroughly unfeminine person, coarse and obstreperous, without the humour which shines through the violence of Katharine. * * Her temper, as Shakespeare has delineated it, is the result of her pride and her love of domination. This is a temper that, perhaps, could not be subdued by kindness, except after Petruchio's fashion. 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.

*

* * * *

*
*

*

*

* * * * *

*

* *

* * *

"The great skill which Shakespeare has shown in the management of this comedy is established in the conviction that he produces all along that Petruchio's character is assumed. Whatever he may say, whatever he may do, we are satisfied that he has a real fund of good-humour at the bottom of all the outbreaks of his inordinate self-will. We know that if he succeeds in subduing the violence of his wife by a much higher extravagance of violence, he will be prepared not only to return her affection, but to evoke it, in all the strength and purity of woman's love, out of the pride and obstinacy in which it has been buried."

KNIGHT.

"Petruchio is a madman in his senses; a very honest fellow, who hardly speaks a word of truth, and succeeds in all his tricks and impostures. He acts his assumed character to the life, with the most fantastical extravagance, with complete presence of mind, with untired animal spirits, and without a particle of ill-humour from beginning to end."

HAZLITT.

"The Katharine and Petruchio scenes border upon the farcical, but Shakespeare's interest in the characters of the shrew and her tamer keep these scenes from passing into downright farce. Katharine, with all her indulged wilfulness and violence of temper, has no evil in her. In her home enclosure she seems a formidable creature; but, when caught away by the tempest of Petruchio's masculine force, the comparative weakness of her sex shows itself: she, who has strength of her own, and has ascertained its limits, can recognize superior strength; and, once subdued, she is the least rebellious of subjects."

DowDEN.

"The crabbed shrew is forced to resign her absurd pretensions, and is completely cured by the merry device of her husband, who pretends to be possessed by a similar but greater petulance; and thus, put to shame by the distorted image of her own perversity, she is restored to the modest position which naturally becomes her sex. Thus does perversity, whose evil consequences invariably redound on itself, become its own avenger; and the dialect of irony, which forms the proper instrument of the retribution of comedy, by displaying the weakness and sinfulness of man in its own nothingness, here appears pre-eminently in its peculiar office of physician to the soul. A feigned perversity of temper becomes the medicine of a real disease." ULRICI.

II. NOTES.

The correct spelling of the name of Katharine's tamer is Petrucio. It is suggested that Shakespeare wrote the word with the h, in order that the actors might not err in its pronunciation. The shrew, in the original, is named Katharina.

Fear boys with bugs."- Frighten boys with hobgoblins.

The Adriatic, though well land-locked, and in summer often as still as a mirror, is subject to severe and sudden storms. The great sea-wall which protects Venice, distant 18 miles from the city, is frequently surmounted, in winter, by "the swelling Adriatic seas.'

"

The "points" were amongst the most costly and elegant parts of the dress of Queen Elizabeth's time; and to have "two broken points" was indicative of more than ordinary negligence of dress.

The Humour of Forty Fancies was, it is conjectured by Warburton, a slight collection of old ballads or short poems, which Grumio stuck in his hat, for a feather.

Jacks were leathern drinking vessels; Jills were cups or measures of

metal.

The servants named by Grumio, in his apologetic speech to Petruchio, on the arrival of the latter at his country-house, are introduced, as speakers, into the stage copy,-though-they say only two or three words, -and are used to add to the comic bustle and confusion of the scene. Curtis, a man in the original, is presented as an old woman.

The text, in this version of the "Taming of the Shrew," is, with a few trifling exceptions, strictly that of Shakespeare.

At Venice, surrounded by the sea, the temperature is rarely below 6° Reaumur -18° Fahrenheit; but the cold is much greater on the mainland, even at its nearest points; and at Padua, from which Petruchio's country-house was, evidently, not distant, it is frequently so great as to justify all Grumio's complaints of the weather.

III. COSTUME FOR KATHARINE AND PETRUCHIO.

The Italy of Shakespeare's own time is intended to be presented in this play. The male costume of Padua given by Vecellio is only that of official persons. The trunk-hose, long-bellied doublet, short cloak, precise ruff, and sugar-loaf cap or high velvet bonnet, appear, says Knight, to have been worn throughout Lombardy and the northern Italian states at this period. Hints as to costume suitable for this piece may be found in the Prompt-Books of "Othello" and "The Merchant of Venice." The text warrants a change of dress for Katharine, between the two acts of this version; but this is not imperative. Trifles may sometimes be properly ignored. Thus, the critical observer will notice that accelerated movement, in the present arrangement of this piece, has been obtained at some sacrifice of probability and consistency in the incidents - which, especially toward the end, are huddled close together. But this increases the frolic atmosphere, and the stage effect.

NEW-YORK, October 29th, 1878.

W. W.