Nor no such men as you have reckon'd up,

As Stephen Sly, and old John Naps o' the Green,
And Peter Turf, and Henry Pimpernell ;

And twenty more such names and men as these,
Which never were, nor no man ever saw.
Sly. Now, Lord be thankèd for my good amends!
All. Amen. [One of the Servants presents SLY with a
cup of liquor, which he drinks.

Sly. I thank thee: thou shalt not lose by it.

Enter the Page as a Lady, with Attendants.

Page. How fares my noble lord?

Sly. Marry, I fare well; for here is cheer enough. Where is my wife?

Page. Here, noble lord: what is thy will with her? Sly. Are you my wife, and will not call me husband? My men should call me lord: I am your goodman.

Page. My husband and my lord, my lord and husband; I am your wife in all obedience.

Sly. I know it well. — What must I call her?

Lord. Madam.

Sly. Al'ce madam, or Joan madam?

Lord. Madam, and nothing else: so lords call ladies.

Sly. Madam wife, they say that I have dream'd,

And slept about some fifteen year or more.

Page. Ay, and the time seems thirty unto me,

Being all this time abandon'd from your bed.

Sly. 'Tis much. Servants, leave me and her alone. Madam, undress you, and come now to bed.

Page. Thrice-noble lord, let me entreat of you

To pardon me yet for a night or two;

Or, if not so, until the Sun be set :

For your physicians have expressly charged,

In peril to incur your former malady,

bed:

That I should yet absent me from your

I hope this reason stands for my excuse.

Sly. Ay, it stands so, that I may hardly tarry so long. But I would be loth to fall into my dreams again: I will therefore tarry, in despite of the flesh and the blood.

Enter a Servant.

Serv. Your Honour's players, hearing your amendment, Are come to play a pleasant comedy;

For so your doctors hold it very meet,

Seeing too much sadness hath congeal'd your blood,
And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy:

Therefore they thought it good you hear a play,
And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
Which bars a thousand harms, and lengthens life.

Sly. Marry, I will; let them play it. Is not a commonty

a Christmas gambol or a tumbling-trick?

Page. No, my good lord; it is more pleasing stuff.

Sly. What, household stuff?

Page. It is a kind of history.

Sly. Well, we'll see't.

Come, madam wife, sit by my side,

And let the world slip: we shall ne'er be younger.

[They sit down.

Enter LUCENTIO and TRANIO.

Luc. Tranio, since, for the great desire I had
To see fair Padua, nursery of arts,
I am arrived in fruitful Lombardy,
The pleasant garden of great Italy;

And, by my father's love and leave, am arm'd
With his good will, and thy good company,
My trusty servant, well approved in all ;
Here let us breathe, and haply institute
A course of learning and ingenious1 studies.
Pisa, renowned for grave citizens,

Gave me my being, and my father first,

A merchant of great traffic through the world,
Vincentio, come of the Bentivolii.

Lucentio his son, brought up in Florence,

It shall become to serve all hopes conceived 3.
To deck his fortune with his virtuous deeds:
And therefore, Tranio, for the time I study,
Virtue, and that part of philosophy

Will I apply, that treats of happiness
By virtue specially to be achieved.

1 Ingenious for ingenuous, and in the sense of liberal. The two words appear to have been confounded in the Poet's time.

2 Shall for will again. See page 143, note 17. Also in the scene before this: "Scratching her legs, that one shall swear she bleeds."

3 That is, to fulfil the expectations of his friends.

4 Apply here means ply. So in Gascoigne's Supposes, 1566: "I feare he applyes his study so, that he will not leave the minute of an houre from his booke."

Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left,
And am to Padua come, as he that leaves
A shallow plash, to plunge him in the deep,
And with satiety seeks to quench his thirst.

Tra. Mi perdonate, 5 gentle master mine,
I am in all affected as yourself;

Glad that you thus continue your resolve
To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy.
Only, good master, while we do admire
This virtue and this moral discipline,
Let's be no stoics nor no stocks, I pray ;
Or so devote to Aristotle's ethics,
As6 Ovid be an outcast quite abjured:
Balk logic with acquaintance that you have,
And practice rhetoric in your common talk;
Music and poesy use, to quicken you ;
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.

Luc. Gramercies,8 Tranio, well dost thou advise.

5 Mi perdonate is Italian for pardon me.

6 The use of as for that in such clauses was very common. continually in Bacon's Essays. See, also, page 143, note 17.

It occurs

7 This phrase has exercised the commentators prodigiously; and some have supposed balk to be a misprint. A writer in The Edinburgh Review, July, 1869, vindicates the text, conclusively, I think, as follows: The primary signification of the noun balk is separation; from the Anglo-Saxon balca, a division-ridge or furrow. From the noun comes the verb to balk, to divide, to separate into ridges and furrows. Balk logic is therefore exactly equivalent to chop logic, meaning divide, separate, distinguish, in a logical matter, according to the forms and rules of logic. Both words, chop and balk, signalize the processes of definition and division, of sharp analytic distinction, in which the essence of logic consists; and the mental value of which is represented in the saying of Socrates, that if he could find a man able skilfully to divide, he would follow his steps, and admire him as a god." 8 Gramercies is great thanks; from the French grand merci.

If Biondello now were come ashore,

We could at once put us in readiness;

And take a lodging, fit to entertain

Such friends as time in Padua shall beget.

But stay awhile: what company is this?

Tra. Master, some show, to welcome us to town.
Enter BAPTISTA, CATHARINA, BIANCA, GREMIO, and HORTEN-
SIO. LUCENTIO and TRANIO stand aside.

Bap. Gentlemen, impórtune me no further,
For how I firmly am resolved you know;
That is, not to bestow my youngest daughter
Before I have a husband for the elder:
If either of you both love Catharina,

Because I know you well, and love you well,
Leave shall you have to court her at your pleasure.
Gre. To cart her rather she's too rough for me.

:

There, there, Hortensio, will you any wife?

Cath. [To BAP.] I pray you, sir, is it your will

To make a stale of me amongst these mates?9

Hor. Mates, maid! how mean you that? no mates for you, Unless you were of gentler, milder mood.

Cath. I' faith, sir, you shall never need to fear:

I wis 10 it is not half way to her heart;

But, if it were, doubt not her care should be

9 "Do you mean to make a mockery or a laughing-stock of me among these fellows?" The Poet several times uses stale thus for jest or butt; as in 3 Henry VI., iii. 3: "Had he none else to make a stale but me? Then none but I shall turn his jest to sorrow." But Catharina probably has withal a quibbling allusion to the chess-term stale-mate. So in Bacon's essay of Boldness: "Like a stale at chess, where it is no mate, but yet the game cannot stir."

10 It is beyond question that I wis was originally one word, i-wis, the Saxon genitive gewis used adverbially, and meaning truly or certainly. It is also beyond question that Shakespeare, and other writers of his time, used it as a pronoun and a verb, and as equivalent to I ween, or, in Yankee