Comedy plays; Man-woman relationships -- Drama; Married people -- Drama; Padua (Italy) -- Drama; Sex role -- Drama
BAPTISTA.
Is it new and old too? How may that be?
BIONDELLO.
Why, is it not news to hear of Petruchio’s coming?
BAPTISTA.
Is he come?
BIONDELLO.
Why, no, sir.
BAPTISTA.
What then?
BIONDELLO.
He is coming.
BAPTISTA.
When will he be here?
BIONDELLO.
When he stands where I am and sees you there.
TRANIO.
But say, what to thine old news?
BIONDELLO.
Why, Petruchio is coming, in a new hat and an old jerkin; a pair of old
breeches thrice turned; a pair of boots that have been candle-cases,
one buckled, another laced; an old rusty sword ta’en out of the town
armoury, with a broken hilt, and chapeless; with two broken points: his
horse hipped with an old mothy saddle and stirrups of no kindred;
besides, possessed with the glanders and like to mose in the chine;
troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of
windgalls, sped with spavins, rayed with the yellows, past cure of the
fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots, swayed
in the back and shoulder-shotten; near-legged before, and with a
half-checked bit, and a head-stall of sheep’s leather, which, being
restrained to keep him from stumbling, hath been often burst, and now
repaired with knots; one girth six times pieced, and a woman’s crupper
of velure, which hath two letters for her name fairly set down in
studs, and here and there pieced with pack-thread.
BAPTISTA.
Who comes with him?
BIONDELLO.
O, sir! his lackey, for all the world caparisoned like the horse; with
a linen stock on one leg and a kersey boot-hose on the other, gartered
with a red and blue list; an old hat, and the humour of forty fancies
prick’d in’t for a feather: a monster, a very monster in apparel, and
not like a Christian footboy or a gentleman’s lackey.
TRANIO.
’Tis some odd humour pricks him to this fashion;
Yet oftentimes he goes but mean-apparell’d.
BAPTISTA.
I am glad he’s come, howsoe’er he comes.
BIONDELLO.
Why, sir, he comes not.
BAPTISTA.
Didst thou not say he comes?
BIONDELLO.
Who? that Petruchio came?
BAPTISTA.
Ay, that Petruchio came.
BIONDELLO.
No, sir; I say his horse comes, with him on his back.
BAPTISTA.
Why, that’s all one.
BIONDELLO.
Nay, by Saint Jamy,
I hold you a penny,
A horse and a man
Is more than one,
And yet not many.
Enter Petruchio and Grumio.
PETRUCHIO.
Come, where be these gallants? Who is at home?
BAPTISTA.
You are welcome, sir.
PETRUCHIO.
And yet I come not well.
BAPTISTA.
And yet you halt not.
TRANIO.
Not so well apparell’d as I wish you were.
PETRUCHIO.
Were it better, I should rush in thus.
But where is Kate? Where is my lovely bride?
How does my father? Gentles, methinks you frown;
And wherefore gaze this goodly company,
As if they saw some wondrous monument,
Some comet or unusual prodigy?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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