"_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!