"She is made finally to like it, though."
"Yes; she is—in the play. But I never could more than half believe that she actually liked it, for all that. Oh, I've no doubt it's wrong to prefer ungoverned wrath to sane and controlled sobriety; but she was so magnificent in her savagery that it seemed a shame she had to be tamed at all. Like the lions and the other animals that they train to jump through hoops, you miss something, you know; some splendid essence has evaporated, and I for one am sorry to watch it go."
"They tell me," said the girl, demurely, "that under the proper conditions and auspices young ladies are secretly glad to be subjugated."
"I suppose they have it naturally—cradle of the race, and all that sort of thing. Just the same, I still continue to prefer Katherine in her first state."
"You speak of her as though she were an etching."
"She suggests one, in that gown she wore in the last act—or would, except for the color."
"From that rather supercilious remark I should gather that you do not admire colored etchings."
"Hybrid affairs, don't you think?"
But before this subject could be pursued, the play once more resumed the center of the stage.
It is the immortal prototype of farce comedy, this play of the "Taming of the Shrew." In the hands of a lesser author it would have lost its comedy and degenerated purely into farce, restricting itself to more ignoble aims and to a more indulgent public. For farce, after all, is farcical, and the mood for its appreciation is not one which is sympathetic to any great or moving thing. And in the hands of interpreters less than intelligently fine, the play may still descend into the lower class; but this cannot be done without degrading it beyond any likeness to its real self.