THE UNTAMED SHREW;
or, Wanted a Petruchio.
(A Shakspearian Foreshadowing of the Situation in France.)
Prophetic Swan! To picture in advance
The future's pageantry of personage
And scene was thine unique prerogative;
So easily thy creations take the mould
Of aftertimes and characters unborn.
Paris to-day seems Padua, thy fair shrew,
The tricksy termagant, "curst Katharine,"
The Paduan Xantippe, prickly, perverse,
Yet fascinating vixen, dons to-day
A Gallic guise, and fumes in French, and flounces
In skirts à la République.
What said Gremio?
"Your gifts are so good, here's none will hold you!"
And who may hold the fair Lutetian shrew?
No man, "I wis," is "half-way to her heart
But if he were, doubt not her care should be
To comb his noddle with a three-legg'd stool,
And paint his face, and use him like a fool."
Here's Katharine—but where's Petruchio?
"What! shall I be appointed hours, as though, belike
I knew not what to take, and what to leave, ha!"
There speaks the sweet-faced shrew, and takes to-day
What she will leave to-morrow. Yet she shines
In the description of Hortensio.
"With wealth enough, and young, and beauteous;
Brought up as best becomes a gentlewoman;
Her only fault (and that is faults enough)
Is, that she is intolerably curst,
And shrewd, and froward: so beyond all measure,
That, were my state far worser than it is,
I would not wed her for a mine of gold."
And yet there be good fellows in the world,
'An a man could but haply light on them,
Would take the veriest vixen "with all faults."
And many a one hath said, or seemed to say,
"For I will board her, though she chide as loud
As thunder, when the clouds in autumn crack."
But with what issue? Like Hortensio,
His head is broken by the vixen's lute,
Ere he hath time to teach her government
Of frets or stops, or skilful fingering.
How many, with Hortensio, might say,
When asked if he could break her to the lute,—
"Why, no; for she hath broke the lute to me.
I did but tell her, she mistook her frets,
And bow'd her hand to teach her fingering;
When with a most impatient devilish spirit,
'Frets, call you these?' quoth she: 'I'll fume with them:'
And with that word, she struck me on the head,
And through the instrument my pate made way;
And there I stood amazed for a while,
As on a pillory, looking through the lute:
While she did call me, rascal fiddler,
And twangling Jack; with twenty such vile terms,
As she had studied to misuse me so.
Her masters have not learned true mastery,
And he, her latest would-be teacher, turns
Too prompt and pusillanimous a back
Upon his wilful pupil, beaten off
Quicker than buffeted Hortensio
In poor, poltroonish, post-deserting flight;
Leaving the lute whose harmonies his hand
Should have bowed hers to, broken and unstrung,
In the shrew's angry and outrageous grasp:
See how the Gallic Katharine in her fume,
Flouting all mastery, flouncing uncontrolled
In furious anger, flings the shattered lute,
Unstrung, aside, as did the Paduan shrew,
Spurning all government—till Petruchio came!
"Come, come you wasp; i' faith you are too angry!"
So, in Petruchio's words, say France's friends.
Whilst foes and half-allies look doubtful on,
From the chill Eastward or more genial North,
Wondering what stable faith, in love or hate,
May rest upon such shifting shrewishness.
Where waits Petruchio, and will he come
In purple velvet, or in soldier steel,
Or simple, civic, hero-covering cloth,
To tame this Katharine of the Phrygian cap,
And smiling, in the mocking calm of power,
Say of the shrew, like him of Padua:—
"Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?
Have I not in my time heard lion's roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puff'd up with winds,
Rage like an angry boar chafèd with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in a pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets' clang?
And do you tell me of a woman's tongue;
That gives not half so great a blow to th' ear
As will a chestnut in a farmer's fire?
Tush! tush! fear boys with bugbears.—
I fear none!"