How now! what news?

Bion. Sir, my mistress sends you word 80 That she is busy, and she cannot come. Pet. How! she is busy, and she cannot come! Is that an answer?

Gre. Ay, and a kind one too: Pray God, sir, your wife send you not a worse. Pet. I hope, better.

Hor. Sirrah Biondello, go and entreat my wife To come to me forthwith. [Exit Bion. Pet. O, ho! entreat her! Nay, then she must needs come. Hor.

I am afraid, sir, Do what you can, yours will not be entreated."

The wager thou hast won: and I will add
Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns;
Another dowry to another daughter,
For she is changed, as she had never been.
Pet. Nay, I will win my wager better yet,
And show more sign of her obedience,
Her new-built virtue and obedience. [wives
See where she comes and brings your froward
As prisoners to her womanly persuasion. 120
Re-enterKATHArina, with Bianca and WIDOW.

Katharina, that cap of yours becomes you not: Off with that bauble, throw it under foot.

Wid. Lord, let me never have a cause to sigh, Till I be brought to such a silly pass!

Bian. Fie! what a foolish duty call you this? Luc. I would your duty were as foolish too: The wisdom of your duty, fair Bianca, Hath cost me an hundred crowns since suppertime.

Bian. The more fool you, for laying on my duty.

Pet. Katharine, I charge thee, tell these headstrong women

130

What duty they do owe their lords and husbands. Wid. Come, come, you're mocking: we will

have no telling.

A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty;
And while it is so, none so dry or thirsty
Will deign to sip or touch one drop of it.
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labor both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold, 150
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and
safe;

And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord? 160
I am ashamed that women are so simple
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,

170

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, ourweakness 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.

Pet. Why, there's a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate. 180

Luc. Well, go thy ways, old lad; for thou shalt ha't.

Vin. 'Tis a good hearing when children are toward.

Luc. But a harsh hearing when women are froward.

Pet. Come, Kate, we'll to bed.

We three are married, but you two are sped. [To Luc.] 'Twas I won the wager, though you hit the white; And, being a winner, God give you good night! [Exeunt Petruchio and Katharina. Hor. Now, go thy ways; thou hast tamed a curst shrew.

Luc. 'Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be tamed so. [Exeunt.

ACT I.

SCENE I. Rousillon. The COUNT's palace. Enter BERTRAM, the COUNTESS of ROUSILLON,

HELENA, and LAFEU, all in black. Count. In delivering my son from me, I bury a second husband.

Ber. And I in going, madam, weep o'er my father's death anew: but I must attend his majesty's command, to whom I am now in ward, evermore in subjection.

Laf. You shall find of the king a husband, madam; you, sir, a father: he that so generally is at all times good must of necessity hold his virtue to you; whose worthiness would stir it up where it wanted rather than lack it where there is such abundance.

Count. What hope is there of his majesty's amendment?

Laf. He hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time. Count. This young gentlewoman had a father, O, that 'had!' how sad a passage 'tis!whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. Would, for the king's sake, he were living! I think it would be the death of the king's disease.

Laf. How called you the man you speak of, madam?

Count. He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so: Gerard de Narbon. 31

Laf. He was excellent indeed, madam: the king very lately spoke of him admiringly and mourningly: he was skilful enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against mortality.

Ber. What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of?

Laf. A fistula, my lord.

Ber. I heard not of it before.

COUNTESS OF ROUSILLON, mother to Ber

tram.

HELENA, a gentlewoman protected by the Countess.

An old Widow of Florence.

DIANA, daughter to the Widow.

VIOLENTA, neighbors and friends to the MARIANA, S Widow.

French and Florentine.

Florence; Marseilles.

Was

Laf. I would it were not notorious. this gentlewoman the daughter of Gerard de Narbon?

Count. His sole child, my lord, and bequeathed to my overlooking. I have those hopes of her good that education promises; her dispositions she inherits, which makes fair gifts fairer; for where an unclean mind carries virtuous qualities, there commendations go with pity: they are virtue and traitors too: in her they are the better for their simpleness; she derives her honesty and achieves her goodness. Laf. Your commendations, madam, get from her tears.

Count. 'Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in. The remembrance of her father never approaches her heart, but the tyranny of her sorrows takes all livelihood from her cheek. No more of this, Helena; go to, no more; lest it be rather thought you affect a sorrow than have it. 61

Hel. I do affect a sorrow indeed, but I have it too.

Laf. Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living. Count. If the living be enemy to the grief, the excess makes it soon mortal.

Ber. Madam, I desire your holy wishes.
Laf. How understand we that?
Count. Be thou blest, Bertram, and succeed
thy father

70

In manners, as in shape! thy blood and virtue Contend for empire in thee, and thy goodness Share with thy birthright' Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech. What heaven more will,

That thee may furnish and my prayers pluck down,

Fall on thy head! Farewell, my lord; 'Tis an unseason'd courtier; good my lord, 80 Advise him.

Laf.

What was he like?

100

I have forgot him: my imagination
Carries no favor in't but Bertram's.
I am undone: there is no living, none,
If Bertram be away. Twere all one
That I should love a bright particular star,
And think to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love. 'Twas pretty, though a plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,
In our heart's table'; heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favor:
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his reliques. Who comes here?
Enter PAROLLES.

Hel. I will stand for't a little, though therefore I die a virgin.

Par. There's little can be said in't; 'tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity, is to accuse your mothers; which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself; and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish,proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by't: out with't! within ten year it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase; and the principal itself not much the worse: away

with't!

Hel. How might one do, sir, to lose it to her own liking?

Par. Let me see: marry, ill, to like him that ne'er it likes. 'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying; the longer kept, the less worth: off with't while 'tis vendible; answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion: richly suited, but unsuitable: just like the brooch and the tooth-pick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek: and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears, it looks ill, it eats dryly; marry, 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet 'tis a withered pear: will

110

Par. Are you meditating on virginity? Hel. Ay. You have some stain of soldier in you let me ask you a question. Man is enemy to virginity; how may we barricado it against him? Par. Keep him out.

Hel. But he assails; and our virginity, though valiant, in the defence yet is weak: unfold to us some warlike resistance.

Par. There is none: man, sitting down before you, will undermine you and blow you up. 130 Hel. Bless our poor virginity from underminers and blowers up! Is there no military policy, how virgins might blow up men?

Par. Virginity being blown down, man will quicklier be blown up: marry, in blowing him down again, with the breach yourselves made, you lose your city. It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept, it is ever lost: 'tis too cold a companion; away with't!

181

Hel. Not my virginity yet...
There shall your master have a thousand loves,
A mother and a mistress and a friend,
A phoenix, captain and an enemy,
A guide, a goddess, and a sovereign,
A counsellor, a traitress, and a dear;
His humble ambition, proud humility,
His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,
His faith, his sweet disaster; with a world
Of pretty, fond, adoptious christendoms,
That blinking Cupid gossips. Now shall he-
I know not what he shall God send him well!
The court's a learning place, and he is one—191
Par. What one, i' faith?

Hel. That I wish well. 'Tis pity-
Par. What's pity?

Hel. That wishing well had not a body in't, Which might be felt; that we, the poorer born, Whose baser stars do shut us up in wishes, Might with effects of them follow our friends, And show what we alone must think, which never Returns us thanks.

Enter Page.

200

Par. I am so full of businesses, I cannot answer thee acutely. I will return perfect courtier: in the which, my instruction shall serve to naturalize thee, so thou wilt be capable of a courtier's counsel and understand what advice shall thrust upon thee; else thou diest in thine unthankfulness, and thine ignorance makes thee away: farewell. When thou hast leisure, say thy prayers; when thou hast none, remember thy friends: get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee: so, farewell. (Exit. 230

Hel. Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull. What power is it which mounts my love so high, That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye? The mightiest space in fortune nature brings To join like likes and kiss like native things. Impossible be strange attempts to those 239 That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose What hath been cannot be: who ever strove To show her merit, that did miss her love? The king's disease-my project may deceive me, But my intents are fix'd and will not leave me. [Exit.

Young Bertram.

20

King. Youth, thou bear'st thy father's face; Frank nature, rather curious than in haste, Hath well composed thee. Thy father's moral parts

now,

Mayst thou inherit too! Welcome to Paris.
Ber. My thanks and duty are your majesty's.
King. I would I had that corporal soundness
As when thy father and myself in friendship
First tried our soldiership! He did look far
Into the service of the time, and was
Discipled of the bravest: he lasted long;
But on us both did haggish age steal on
And wore us out of act. It much repairs me 3ɔ
To talk of your good father. In his youth
He had the wit which I can well observe
To-day in our young lords; but they may jest
Till their own scorn return to them unnoted
Ere they can hide their levity in honor:

40

So like a courtier, contempt nor bitterness
Were in his pride or sharpness; if they were,
His equal had awaked them, and his honor,
Clock to itself, knew the true minute when
Exception bid him speak, and at this time
His tongue obey'd his hand; who were below
He used as creatures of another place, [him
And bow'd his eminent top to their low ranks,
Making them proud of his humility,
In their poor praise he humbled. Such a man
Might be a copy to these younger times; [now
Which, follow'd well, would demonstrate them
But goers backward.
Ber.
His good remembrance, sir,
Lies richer in your thoughts than on his tomb;
So in approof lives not his epitaph
As in your royal speech.

50

King. Would I were with him! He would always say

Methinks I hear him now; his plausive words
He scatter'd not in ears, but grafted them,
To grow there and to bear,-Let me not live,'—
This his good melancholy oft began,
On the catastrophe and heel of pastime,
When it was out,- Let me not live,' quoth he,
After my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff
Of younger spirits, whose apprehensive senses 60
All but new things disdain; whose judgments
[cies

are