Played rightly, however, Petruchio becomes not a brawler, not a kind of damn-my-eyes bully and braggart, but a practical idealist, a man who, happening by chance upon a creature of stupendous undirected power, sets himself to the direction of that power toward nature's, if not humanity's, ends. At the first he cares nothing for Katherine save that the rumor of her fire and spirit has pleased his wild fancy. And never is there the faintest hint of the sentimentalist about him; his is never the softness of the lover, but rather the careful prudence of the utilitarian. Yet he unstintedly admires Katherine; this is somehow felt to be so by his rather pompous implication that he would hardly be taking all this trouble about the woman were she not the makings of a royal mate, fit even for his sky-wide vision and heart and humor.
Perhaps in Elizabethan days most of this was lost; possibly during the author's own life the play assumed rather the wild gayety and license of a farce, and all the comedy had to wait in abeyance for the years to bring it into its own. Undoubtedly very few, if any, of the auditors of Shakespeare's time felt the compunction to which Smith confessed when the pride of a proud woman was seen dragged at a man's chariot wheel. What the women of those days thought about it is not so certain, but probably it was pretty much what they think to-day. Certainly Helen's expressed view was in approximate accordance with the presumably unexpressed opinion of Elizabethan ladies; and to this, in the intermission before the last act, Smith called her attention.
"Do you realize that your belief that Katherine was pleased at being conquered is not at all modern?—it's absolutely medieval."
"Well, we are all medieval—quite largely—are we not?"
"Possibly—in spots. When the girl of to-day is not overpoweringly advanced, perhaps she is quite far behind. But I should hardly have expected so distinctly a medieval opinion from you."
"Heavens! why not? I sound horribly Bostonian. Am I so hopelessly advanced that you can credit me with no human sentiments at all?"
"Well, that," said Smith, "was scarcely my thought."
"It sounded very much like it. However, I'm glad if I were mistaken."
"You know very well," said her companion, in a lower voice, "what I think of you. I think—"
"Oh, but I don't—really," Helen quickly parried. This was getting hazardous; the conversation must be switched at once. "No matter what you think of me, you are almost sure to be quite mistaken. But some things I am willing to confess. And one of them, which may be very primitive, is this—that just because I myself am not a wild, tigress-like creature is no indication that I cannot realize how she would feel. Is it, now?"