The Taming of the Shrew Read Online Free PDF Page A

earliest works. Assuming that Quarto
The Taming of a Shrew,
registered for publication May 1594, is a version of the text rather than a source for it (see below), the play is likely to predate the long periods of plague closure that inhibited theatrical activity from summer 1592 onward, but there is no firm evidence for a more precise date.
    SOURCES: The Induction’s scenario of a beggar transported into luxury is a traditional motif in ballads and the folk tradition; the shrewish wife is also common in fabliaux and other forms of popular tale, as well as classical comedy; Socrates, wisest of the ancients, was supposed to be married to the shrewish Xanthippe; the courtship of Bianca is developed from George Gascoigne’s
Supposes
(1566), itself a prose translation of Ludovico Ariosto’s
I Suppositi
(1509), an archetypal Italian Renaissance comedy suffused with conventions derived from the ancient Roman comedies of Plautus and Terence. Some scholars suppose that
The Taming of a Shrew
(1594) is a badly printed text of an older play that was Shakespeare’s primary source, but others regard it as an adaptation of Shakespeare’s work; it includes the Christopher Sly frame, the taming of Kate (with a differently named tamer) and a highly variant version of the Bianca subplot.
    TEXT: The 1623 Folio is the only authoritative text; it seems to have been set from manuscript copy, possibly a scribal transcript that retains some of the marks of Shakespeare’s working manuscript. The 1594 Quarto
Taming of a Shrew
must be regarded as an autonomous work, but it provides a source for emendations on a few occasions where it corresponds closely to
The Shrew
.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

LIST OF PARTS
    in the Induction
    Christopher SLY , a drunken beggar/tinker
    A LORD
    HOSTESS
    A PAGE named Bartholomew
    Players
    Huntsmen
    Servants
    BAPTISTA Minola, a gentleman of Padua
    KATE (Katherina), his elder daughter, the “shrew”
    BIANCA , his younger daughter
    PETRUCHIO , a gentleman from Verona, suitor to Kate
    LUCENTIO , in love with Bianca (disguises himself as “Cambio,” a Latin tutor)
    VINCENTIO , Lucentio’s father, a merchant from Pisa
    GREMIO , an aged suitor to Bianca
    HORTENSIO , friend of Petruchio and suitor to Bianca (disguises himself as “Litio,” a music tutor)
    TRANIO , Lucentio’s servant
    BIONDELLO , a boy in the service of Lucentio
    Petruchio’s servants
    GRUMIO
    CURTIS
    A PEDANT
    A WIDOW
    A TAILOR
    A HABERDASHER
    Servants and Messengers (Petruchio has servants named NATHANIEL , JOSEPH , NICHOLAS , PHILIP, and PETER )

Act 3 [Scene 1]
running scene 3 continues
    Enter Lucentio
[
disguised as Cambio
]
, Hortensio
[
disguised as Litio
]
and Bianca
    LUCENTIO      Fiddler, forbear. You grow too forward, sir 1 .
    Have you so soon forgot the entertainment 2
    Her sister Katherine welcomed you withal 3 ?
    HORTENSIO     But, wrangling pedant, this is
    The patroness of heavenly harmony:
    Then give me leave to have prerogative 6 ,
    And when in music we have spent an hour,
    Your lecture 8 shall have leisure for as much.
    LUCENTIO      Preposterous 9 ass, that never read so far
    To know the cause why music was ordained 10 !
    Was it not to refresh the mind of man
    After his studies or his usual pain 12 ?
    Then give me leave to read philosophy,
    And while I pause, serve in 14 your harmony.
    HORTENSIO     Sirrah, I will not bear these braves 15 of thine.
    BIANCA     Why, gentlemen, you do me double wrong
    To strive for that which resteth in my choice 17 .
    I am no breeching scholar in the schools 18 ,
    I’ll not be tied to hours nor ’pointed 19 times,
    But learn my lessons as I please myself.
    And, to cut off all strife, here sit we down.
    Take you your instrument, play you the whiles 22 .
    To Hortensio
        His lecture will be done ere you have tuned.
    HORTENSIO     You’ll leave his