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The wager thou hast won; and I will add
Unto their losses twenty thousand crowns;
Another dowry to another daughter,

For she is chang'd, 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.

Re-enter KATHARINA, with BIANCA and Widow. See, where she comes, and brings your froward wives As prisoners to her womanly persuasion. Katharine, that cap of yours becomes you not; Off with that bauble, throw it under foot.

[KATHARINA pulls off her cap,

and throws it down.

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 supper-time. Bian. The more fool you for laying on my duty. Pet. Katharine, I charge thee, tell these headstrong women

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

no telling.

Pet. Come on, I say; and first begin with her. Wid. She shall not.

Pet. I say she shall:- and first begin with her. Kath. Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind

brow,

And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,
To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor.
It blots thy beauty, as frosts do bite the meads;

Confounds thy fame, as whirlwinds shake fair buds;
And in no sense is meet, or amiable.

A woman mov'd 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 labour, both by sea and land,

To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
While 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's 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?

I am asham'd, 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,

4

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,
My heart as great, my reason, haply, more
T bandy word for word, and frown for frown,

4 That is, the gentle qualities of our minds.

But now I see our lances are but straws,

Our strength as weak, our weakness past compare,
That seeming to be most, which we 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.

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 LUCEN.] 'Twas I won the wager, though you hit the white; 7

And, being a winner, God give you good-night! [Exeunt PET. and KATH. Hor. Now go thy ways; thou hast tam'd a curst

shrew.

Luc. 'Tis a wonder, by your leave, she will be

tam'd so.

That is, let down, abate your pride, your spirit.

[Exeunt.

That is, the fate of you both is decided; for you both hav w'ves who exhibit early proofs of disobedience.

7 The white was the central part of the mark or butt in archery Here is also a play upon the name of Bianca, which is white in Italian.

INTRODUCTION

ΤΟ

THE WINTER'S TALE

THE earliest notice we have of THE WINTER'S TALE is from the manuscript Diary of Dr. Simon Forman, lately discovered in the Ashmolean Museum. The description there given is so close as to leave no room for doubt or mistake; bearing date May 15, 1611, and running thus: "Observe there how Leontes, king of Sicilia, was overcome with jealousy of his wife with the king of Bohemia, his friend that came to see him; and how he contrived his death, and would have had his cup-bearer to have poisoned him, who gave the king of Bohemia warning thereof, and fled with him to Bohemia. Remember, also, how he sent to the oracle of Apollo, and the answer of Apollo that she was guiltless. and that the king was jealous, &c.; and how, except the child was found again that was lost, the king should die without issue; for the child was carried into Bohemia, and there laid in a forest. and brought up by a shepherd; and the king of Bohemia's son married that wench, and how they fled into Sicilia to Leontes; and the shepherd having showed the letter of the nobleman whom Leontes sent, and by the jewels found about her she was known to be Leontes' daughter, and was then sixteen years old. Remember, also, the rogue that came in all tattered, like Coll Pipei, and how he feigned him sick, and to have been robbed of all he had; and how he cozened the poor man of all his money, and after came to the sneep-shear with a pedlar's pack, and there cozened them again of all their money. And how he changed apparel with the king of Bohemia's son, and then how he turned courtier, &c. Beware of trusting feigned beggars and fawning fellows."

Malone once thought The Winter's Tale to have been written in 1604; but he gave up this opinion late m life upon finding it stated in the office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, Master of the Revels in 1623, that The Winter's Tale was "an old play formerly allowed of by Sir George Buck." Buck became Master

of the Revels in October, 1610, which office he held till May, 1622. So that we may fairly conclude the play to have been new, and probably in its first run, when Forman saw it at the Globe Theatre.

It also appears from the accounts of Sir George Buck, that "a play called The Winter's Night's Tale" was acted at Whitehall by the king's players," November 5, 1611. As the king's play

ers were the company to which Shakespeare belonged, there can be little doubt that The Winter's Night's Tale was Shakespeare's Winter's Tale. In the same account are included eleven other plays, The Tempest being one, the oldest of which probably had not been written more than three years; which yields something of an argument that The Winter's Tale was selected for performance at court because it was then popular and new. And in our Introduction to The Tempest we have seen that both these plays are most likely referred to by Ben Jonson in his Bartholomew Fair, which was first acted in 1614; and that the style of the reference favours the opinion that the plays had not then lost the charm of novelty. Upon the whole, therefore, we have no scruple in setting down the composition of The Winter's Tale to the winter of 1610-11, when the Poet was in his forty-sixth year.

That The Winter's Tale was written after The Tempest, has been justly argued by Mr. Collier, and for this reason: Shakespeare, as we shall presently see, in his plot and story closely follows the Pandosto of Robert Greene. In the novel, however, the new-born babe is put into a boat and turned adrift at sea without a keeper, and so floats to the place where she is found by the shepherd and there is no apparent reason why Shakespeare should have varied from the novel herein, unless it were to avoid a repetition of incident; he having already done a similar thing in the case of Prospero and Miranda.

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As for the rest, The Winter's Tale first appeared in the folio of 1623, being the fourteenth in the series of Comedies, regularly divided into acts and scenes, and having at the end a list of the persons headed The Names of the Actors." The printing is remarkably clear, though in several passages the sense is so perplexed and obscure as to make us regret the want of earlier impressions.

Greene's Pandosto, or, as it is sometimes called, Dorastus and Fawnia, seems to have been one of the most successful books of the time; there being no less than fourteen old editions of it known, the first of which was in 1588, and the second in 1607; and between these there were, no doubt, several editions that have been lost, as that was the very time when it would naturally have been in the greatest demand. Greene was a scholar, a man of some genius, Master of Arts in both the Universities, and had indeed much more of learning than of judgment in the use and application thereof; it having been seemingly impossible for him to write without overloading his pages with classical allusion, or

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