THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. FIRST printed in the folio of 1623.*-The date of its composition is uncertain. Malone, who once thought that it was written in 1606, finally assigned it to the year 1596, observing; "It must not be concealed, however, that The Taming of the Shrew is not enumerated among our author's plays by Meres in 1598; a circumstance which yet is not sufficient to prove that it was not then written; for neither are The Second and Third Parts of King Henry the Sixth mentioned by him, though those plays had undoubtedly appeared before that year." Life of Shakespeare, p. 343. Mr. Collier, on no very substantial grounds, conjectures that it was written "not very long" after 1601. Introd. to the Taming of the Shrew.-This comedy,-the Induction not excepted, is a rifacimento of an earlier anonymous play, first printed in 1594, A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called The Taming of a Shrew. As it was sundry times acted by the Right honorable the Earle of Pembrook his seruants. But the earlier play, the author of which has been vainly guessed at‚† contains nothing similar to the incident of the Pedant personating Vincentio ; and for that part of the plot Shakespeare was indebted to the Supposes of Gascoigne, a free translation of I Suppositi of Ariosto. (The first edition of The Taming of a Shrew was reprinted for the Shakespeare Society in 1844.)—1863. Mr. Grant White is of opinion that "in The Taming of the Shrew three hands at least are traceable; that of the author of the old play, that of Shakespeare himself, and that of a co-labourer. The first appears in the structure of the plot, and in the incidents and the dialogue of most of the minor scenes; to the last must be assigned the greater part of the love-business between Bianca and her two suitors; while to Shakespeare belong the * It appears from an entry in the Stationers' Registers, dated 19th November 1607, that Nicholas Ling transferred his interest in the anonymous play of The Taming of a Shrew to John Smethwick; who, observes Mr. Halliwell, "as far as is at present known, never republished the older comedy; and it is by no means impossible that in 1607 he had become the proprietor of Shakespeare's comedy [The Taming of the Shrew], and considered it advisable to purchase Ling's right in the other work, the similarity of title obviously rendering it in some degree a rival publication. In support of this opinion, it is to be remarked that The Taming of the Shrew is not included in the list of 'so many of' Shakespeare's plays belonging to Blount and Jaggard in 1623 'as are not entered to other men;' that Smethwick was one of the proprietors of the first folio; and that he was also the publisher of the quarto edition of Shakespeare's comedy, which appeared in 1631 under the following title,—A wittie and pleasant Comedie called The Taming of the Shrew," &c. Introd. to The Taming of the Shrew. But Mr. Collier maintains that the quarto of the present play (see vol. i. p. 156 of this work) was printed many years before its publication,-perhaps as early as 1607, but was suppressed, we know not why, till "some copies of it, remaining in the hands of Smithwicke the stationer, were issued in 1631," with a new title-page. See Mr. Collier's Introd, to The Taming of the Shrew in the second edition of his Shakespeare, where he discusses this point at considerable length: but whether, as he asserts, the editors of the folio of 1623 printed The Taming of the Shrew from the quarto, or whether, as others have believed, the quarto was printed from that folio, is, after all, a matter of not the slightest importance. + See my Account of Marlowe and his Writings, pp. li.-liii.,-Works, ed. 1858. strong clear characterization, the delicious humour, and the rich verbal colouring of the recast Induction, and all the scenes in which Katharina and Petruchio and Grumio are the prominent figures, together with the general effect produced by scattering lines and words and phrases here and there, and removing others elsewhere, throughout the rest of the play." Introd. to The Taming of the Shrew. A Lord. DRAMATIS PERSONE. CHRISTOPHER SLY, a tinker. Hostess, Page, Players, Huntsmen, and Servants. S BAPTISTA, a gentleman of Padua. VINCENTIO, a merchant of Pisa. LUCENTIO, Son to Vincentio. PETRUCHIO, a gentleman of Verona. GREMIO, } suitors HORTENSIO, suitors to Bianca. Persons in the Tailor, Haberdasher, and Servants. SCENE-sometimes in Padua, and sometimes in Petruchio's house in the country. "Is apparently a misreading of Grunnio in the old Timon [an anonymous play, printed from a Ms. for the Shakespeare Society.." Walker's Crit. Exam, &c, vol. ii p. 31. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. INDUCTION. SCENE I. Before an alehouse on a heath. Enter Hostess and SLY. Sly. I'll pheeze you, in faith. Host. A pair of stocks, you rogue! Sly. Y'are a baggage: the Slys are no rogues; look in the Chronicles; we came in with Richard Conqueror. Therefore, paucas pallabris; let the world slide: sessa! Host. You will not pay for the glasses you have burst? Sly. No, not a denier. Go by, Jeronimy,-go to thy cold bed, and warm thee. (1)* * Go by, Jeronimy,-go to thy cold bed, and warm thee.] "There is a fustian old play called The Spanish Tragedy, which, I find, was the common butt of raillery to all the poets of Shakespeare's time; and a passage, that appeared very ridiculous in that play, is here humorously alluded to. Hieronimo applies to the King for justice on the murderers of his son; but Lorenzo, one of the murderers, interferes to hinder him from an audience; 'Hiero. Justice, O justice to Hieronimo! Lor. Back! seest thou not the king is busy? King. Who is he that interrupts our business? Hiero. Not I:-Hieronimo, beware; go by, go by." THEOBALD (his note altered). The Spanish Tragedy (of which the earliest edition known is dated 1599) was written by Thomas Kyd, and, with all its bombast and extravagance, shows that the author possessed no ordinary powers as a dramatist: see the Memoir of Shakespeare prefixed to the present work, p. 46. Partly in consequence of its great popularity, our early playwrights were never tired of ridiculing it; and sometimes, as Shakespeare does here, they put portions of it into the mouths of their lowest characters: so Heywood, in his Fair Maid of the West, makes Clem say, "It is not now as when Andrea liv'd, |