account of AS YOU LIKE IT. scription of Ganimed, at the act. It is Phebe's de end of the third "Think not I love him, tho' I ask for him; But sure he's proud, and yet his pride becomes him; He is not very tall, yet for his years he's tall; There was a pretty redness in his lip, Than that mix'd in his cheek; 'twas just the difference I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet I have more cause to hate him than to love him; For what had he to do to chide at me?" THE TAMING OF THE SHREW. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is almost the only one of Shakspeare's comedies that has a regular plot, and downright moral. It is full of bustle, animation, and rapidity of action. It shows admirably how self-will is only to be got the better of by stronger will, and how one degree of ridiculous perversity is only to be driven out by another still greater. Petruchio is a madman in his senses; a very honest fellow, who hardly speaks a word of truth, and succeeds in all his tricks and impostures. He acts his assumed character to the life, with the most fantastical extravagance, with complete presence of mind, with untired animal spirits, and without a particle of ill-humour from beginning to end. The situation of poor Katherine, worn out by his incessant persecutions, becomes at last almost as pitiable as it is ludicrous, and it is difficult to say which to admire most, the unaccountableness of his actions, or the unalterableness of his resolutions. It is a character which most husbands ought to study, unless perhaps the very audacity of Petruchio's attempt might alarm them more than his success would encourage them. What a sound must the following speech carry to some married ears! "Think you a little din can daunt my ears? Loud larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang? That gives not half so great a blow to hear, Not all Petruchio's rhetoric would persuade more than "some dozen followers" to be of this heretical way of thinking. He unfolds his scheme for the Taming of the Shrew, on a principle of contradiction, thus: "I'll woo her with some spirit when she comes. When I shall ask the banns, and when be married ?" He accordingly gains her consent to the match, by telling her father that he has got it; disap points her by not returning at the time he has promised to wed her, and when he returns, creates no small consternation by the oddity of his dress and equipage. This however is nothing to the astonishment excited by his madbrained behaviour at the marriage. Here is the account of it by an eye-witness :— "GREMIO. Tut, she's a lamb, a dove, a fool to him : Ay, by gog's woons, quoth he; and swore so loud, This mad-brain'd bridegroom took him such a cuff, TRANIO. What said the wench when he rose up again? swore, As if the vicar meant to cozen him. But after many ceremonies done, He calls for wine; a health, quoth he; as if Such a mad marriage never was before." The most striking and at the same time laughable feature in the character of Petruchio throughout is the studied approximation to the intractable character of real madness, his apparent insensibility to all external considerations, and utter indifference to everything but the wild and extravagant freaks of his own self-will. There is no contending with a person on whom nothing makes an impression but his own purposes, and who is bent on his own whims just in proportion as they seem to want common sense. With him a thing's being plain and reasonable is a reason against it. The airs he gives himself are infinite, and his caprices as sudden as they are groundless. The whole of his treatment of his wife at home is in the same spirit of ironical attention and inverted gallantry. Everything flies before his will, like a conjuror's wand, and he only metamorphoses his wife's temper by metamorphosing her senses and all the objects she looks upon at a word's speaking. Such are his insisting that it is the moon, and not the sun, which they see, &c. This extravagance reaches its most pleasant and poetical height in the scene where, on their return to her father's, they meet old Vincentio, whom Petruchio immediately addresses as a young lady : "PETBUCHIO. Good morrow, gentle mistress, where Tell me, sweet Kate, and tell me truly too, U |