Petruchio could not be persuaded to change his dress. He said Katharine was to be married to him, and not to his clothes. And, finding it was in vain to argue with him, to the church they went, he still behaving in the same mad way, for when the priest asked Petruchio if Katharine should be his wife, he swore so loud that she should, that, all amazed, the priest let fall his book, and as he stooped to take it up this mad-brained bridegroom gave him such a cuff that down fell the priest and his book again. And all the while they were being married he stamped and swore so that the high-spirited Katharine trembled and shook with fear. After the ceremony was over, while they were yet in the church, he called for wine, and drank a loud health to the company, and threw a sop which was at the bottom of the glass full in the sexton’s face, giving no other reason for this strange act than that the sexton’s beard grew thin and hungerly, and seemed to ask the sop as he was drinking. Never sure was there such a mad marriage; but Petruchio did but put this wildness on the better to succeed in the plot he had formed to tame his shrewish wife. Baptista had provided a sumptuous marriage feast, but when they returned from church, Petruchio, taking hold of Katharine, declared his intention of carrying his wife home instantly, and no remonstrance of his father-in-law, or angry words of the enraged Katharine, could make him change his purpose. He claimed a husband’s right to dispose of his wife as he pleased, and away he hurried Katharine off; he seeming so daring and resolute that no one dared attempt to stop him. Petruchio mounted his wife upon a miserable horse, lean and lank, which he had picked out for the purpose, and, himself and his servant no better mounted, they journeyed on through rough and miry ways, and ever when this horse of Katharine’s stumbled he would storm and swear at the poor jaded beast, who could scarce crawl under his burthen, as if he had been the most passionate man alive. At length, after a weary journey, during which Katharine had heard nothing but the wild ravings of Petruchio at the servant and the horses, they arrived at his house. Petruchio welcomed her kindly to her home, but he resolved she should have neither rest nor food that night. The tables were spread, and supper soon served; but Petruchio, pretending to find fault with every dish, threw the meat about the floor, and ordered the servants to remove it away; and all this he did, as he said, in love for his Katharine, that she might not eat meat that was not well dressed. And when Katharine, weary and supperless, retired to rest, he found the same fault with the bed, throwing the pillows and bedclothes about the room, so that she was forced to sit down in a chair, where, if, she chanced to drop asleep, she was presently awakened by the loud voice of her husband storming at the servants for the ill-making of his wife’s bridal-bed.