At least as striking is the culminating point of Shakespeare's adaptation of the old play called _The Taming of a Shrew_. He took very lightly this piece of task-work, executed, it would seem, to the order of his fellow-players. In point of diction and metre it is much less highly finished than others of his youthful comedies; but if we compare the Shakespearian play (in whose title the Shrew receives the definite instead of the indefinite article) point by point with the original, we obtain an invaluable glimpse into Shakespeare's comic, as formerly into his tragic, workshop. Few examples are so instructive as this. Many readers have no doubt wondered what was Shakespeare's design in presenting this piece, of all others, in the framework which we Danes know in Holberg's[1] _Jeppe paa Bjerget._ The answer is, that he had no particular design in the matter. He took the framework ready-made from the earlier play, which, however, he throughout remodelled and improved, not to say recreated. It is not only far ruder and coarser than Shakespeare's, but does not redeem its crude puerility by any raciness or power. Nowhere does the difference appear more decisively than in the great speech in which Katharine, cured of her own shrewishness, closes the play by bringing the other rebellious women to reason. In the old play she begins with a whole cosmogony: "The first world was a form without a form," until God, the King of kings, "in six days did frame his heavenly work":-- "Then to his image he did make a man, Olde Adam, and from his side asleepe A rib was taken, of which the Lord did make The woe of man, so termd by Adam then, Woman for that by her came sinne to vs, And for her sin was Adam doomd to die. As Sara to her husband, so should we Obey them, loue them, keepe and nourish them If they by any meanes doo want our helpes, Laying our handes vnder theire feete to tread, If that by that we might procure there ease." And she herself sets the example by placing her hand under her husband's foot. Shakespeare omits all this theology and skips the Scriptural authorities, but only to arrive at the self-same result:-- "Fie, fie! unknit that threatening unkind brow, And dart not scornful glances from those eyes, To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor. . . . . . . . . . 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, Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;